Bart Ehrman and The Quest of The Historical Jesus of Nazareth
Bart Ehrman and The Quest of The Historical Jesus of Nazareth
Bart Ehrman and The Quest of The Historical Jesus of Nazareth
and the
QUEST OF THE HISTORICAL
JESUS OF NAZARETH
contributors
david fitzgerald is, among other things, a writer and historian on the
speaker’s bureau of both the Secular Student Alliance and Center for
Inquiry; Director of the world’s first Atheist Film Festival; an audience
favorite at Skepticon; and author of Nailed: Ten Christian Myths That Show
Jesus Never Existed At All (voted one of the top 5 Atheist/Agnostic books
of 2010); and the forthcoming The Complete Heretic’s Guide to Western
Religion (Book One: The Mormons) and Jesus: Mything in Action.
An Evaluation of Ehrman’s
Did Jesus Exist?
Edited by
Frank R. Zindler & Robert M. Price
2013
American Atheist Press
Cranford, New Jersey
ISBN-13: 978-1-57884-020-5
ISBN-10: 1-57884-020-1
FAX: 908-276-7402
www.atheists.org
Thomas Paine
CHAPTER ONE
Bart Ehrman: Paradigm Policeman
Robert M. Price
CHAPTER TWO
How Not to Defend Historicity
Richard Carrier, Ph.D.
CHAPTER THREE
The Phallic ‘Savior of the World’ Hidden in the Vatican
Acharya S/D.M. Murdock
CHAPTER FOUR
Cognitive Dissonance: The Ehrman-Zindler Correspondence
Frank R. Zindler
CHAPTER FIVE
Did the Earliest Christians Regard Jesus as ‘God’?
Earl Doherty
CHAPTER SIX
‘Mythicist Inventions’ Creating the Mythical Christ from the
Pagan Mystery Cults
Earl Doherty
CHAPTER SEVEN
Will the Real Jesus Please Stand Up?
David Fitzgerald
CHAPTER EIGHT
Is Bart Ehrman Qualified to Write About Christian Origins?
Frank R. Zindler
CHAPTER NINE
Bart Ehrman and the Art of Rhetorical Fallacy
Frank R. Zindler
CHAPTER TEN
Bart Ehrman’s Most Important Critical Method
Frank R. Zindler
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Bart’s Subtitle
Frank R. Zindler
CHAPTER TWELVE
Archaeology, Bart Ehrman, and the Nazareth of ‘Jesus’
René Salm
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Mark’s ‘Jesus from Nazareth of the Galilee’
Frank R. Zindler
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Was There a Historical ‘Jesus of Nazareth’?
D.M. Murdock
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
“Key Data” and the Crucified Messiah A Critique of Pages
156–74 of Did Jesus Exist?
Earl Doherty
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Bart Ehrman and The Crucified Messiah
Frank R. Zindler
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Bart Ehrman and the Body of Jesus of Nazareth
Frank R. Zindler
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
The Epistle to the Hebrews and Jesus Outside the Gospels
Earl Doherty
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Bart Ehrman And The Cheshire Cat Of Nazareth
Frank R. Zindler
CHAPTER TWENTY
Ehrman’s Concluding Case Against Mythicism
Earl Doherty
ENVOI
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Bart Ehrman and the Emperor’s New Clothes
a.k.a. Frank R. Zindler
FOREWORD
—Frank R.
Zindler, Editor, American Atheist Press
PREFACE
By Frank R. Zindler
Bart Ehrman’s Did Jesus Exist? The Historical Argument for Jesus of
Nazareth may very well prove to be the last book written by an
undisputedly first-rank scholar of the New Testament attempting to prove
the existence of a Jesus specifically of Nazareth. To be sure, there will be
some attempts to show that a shadowy Jesus of somewhere once existed.
But because there really is no likelihood that credible historical evidence
will ever be discovered, such efforts will soon be seen to be fruitless. Most
assuredly, however, fundamentalist apologists will never give up the
struggle to prove the historical reality of Jesus of Nazareth: they have a
vested interest in his historical reality. But scientifically oriented scholars, I
expect, will likely soon understand that we are now in the midst of a
paradigm shift in religious studies that is as earth-shaking and revolutionary
as the adoption of plate tectonics in geology in the 1960s. Indeed, many
younger scholars have already abandoned the ‘Historical Jesus,’ and more
than a few senior scholars are assuming an agnostic, wait-and-see stance as
the struggle to save the life of an admittedly dead Jesus of Nazareth plays
itself out on the Internet and other venues of scholarly and popular
discussion.
As I shall explain, for many years now, Mythicists — scholars who are
not convinced by the evidence offered to establish the historical reality of
Jesus of Nazareth — have hoped for the appearance of a book by a secular,
main-line scholar who would make a credibly complete argument for the
historicist case. Although many attempts were made during the last half of
the twentieth century to produce detailed biographies of a turn-of-the-era
Sage from Galilee, and though a number of books contained scattered
materials that might be used to construct arguments intended to demonstrate
his historical reality, no serious scholar ever attempted to produce a
comprehensive treatise marshaling all the best evidence and arguments in
order to prove for once and for all that a man styled Jesus of Nazareth once
walked the earth obedient to the same laws of physics and physiology that
rule the lives of mortals such as we.
Mythicists have hoped for a book such as Ehrman’s for a number of
reasons. First of all, although Mythicists of the nineteenth and early
twentieth centuries had reasonably little difficulty in having their work
published, their counterparts of the last half of the twentieth and twenty-first
centuries have had to resort to small and obscure publishing houses or
simply give up altogether and rely on Internet publication to disseminate
their findings. It has been difficult for Mythicists to find a public voice to
bring their discoveries to an enlightened reading public. A book such as
Ehrman’s, it was hoped, would finally bring public notice to at least some of
the Mythicists’ reasons for denying the historicity of Jesus of Nazareth.
Secondly, during most of the twentieth century historicist scholars have
scrupulously avoided engaging Mythicists in dialogue or debate. As a
result, even the existence of Mythicists has been obscured from public view.
Mythicist arguments — when through accident or otherwise, Mythicist
claims have been propelled into momentary public view — have been
dismissed with claims such as “These ideas long ago were found to be
without merit,” or “Albert Schweitzer disproved such fanciful claims over a
hundred years ago.” To have a book appear that takes them seriously would
have the effect of rescuing them from the oblivion suffered by Mythicist
scholars going back to Charles Dupuis in the 1790s.
Thirdly, it has been hoped that an authoritative and comprehensive
statement of the historicist case would allow for a more focused argument.
Throughout the twentieth century, Mythicists have had to engage in a sort
of shadow boxing. They have never been able to engage historicists in
comprehensive, hard-hitting debate regarding all the evidences on either
side. Only occasional Mythicist arguments have been disputed in particular
skirmishes, while their overall case has been ignored. At the same time, it
has been very difficult for Mythicists to discover just exactly what the
arguments of secular historicist scholars are. Almost all of them claim that
the historicity of Jesus of Nazareth is so well established that it requires no
further proof. N.T. Wright, for example, in his 1996 Jesus and the Victory of
God [Fortress] made the incredible claim that:
Fourthly, Mythicists have wished for a book such as Ehrman’s for the
simple reason that they have been confident that it would be impossible to
discover really new evidence for Jesus of Nazareth and that such a book
would only be able to collect the various arguments used by apologists and
dress them up in more modern, secular garb. Such a book would be
extremely easy to refute. By successfully refuting the best arguments of the
best historicist scholars, it has been hoped, the Ghost of Galilee might
finally be laid to rest — at least in the still-haunted halls of secular
Academe.
It is hard, then, to describe the depth of disappointment that Mythicist
scholars have experienced after reading Ehrman’s long-awaited book. It has
been difficult for many to believe that Did Jesus Exist? The Historical
Argument for Jesus of Nazareth could have been written by the New York
Times best-seller author who also wrote the masterful The Orthodox
Corruption of Scripture and the prestigious Loeb Classical Library’s new
edition of The Apostolic Fathers.
Some have hypothesized that the research was done by graduate students
and that Ehrman simply reworked the material to stamp it with his
characteristically easy style. Ehrman, however, emphatically denies this and
avers that he personally studied all the Mythicist sources. Considering the
fact that he is a man who gave up Christianity for ethical and moral reasons
(especially the problem of theodicy), categorically we cannot question the
honesty of his claim. But alas, if the inadequacy of the book cannot be
blamed on graduate students, the responsibility for the failures of
scholarship embodied therein — failures that will be detailed in the
following pages — must rest with Professor Ehrman.
As noted above, the appearance of Did Jesus Exist? left Mythicists in a
state of stunned perplexity. It was as though they were reading an
apologetic screed written by a religious true believer. If one ignore as non-
evidence the fanciful argument of long-lost Aramaic documents underlying
the Gospels, one sees that Ehrman has not produced any new evidence to
support the hypothesis that Jesus of Nazareth was an historical figure.
Indeed, it appears that his survey of historicist arguments has been almost as
incomplete as his survey of Mythicist evidence. Worse yet — as will be
shown by the authors of this volume — Ehrman has committed numerous
fallacies of informal logic, has not dealt with the vast majority of the most
important Mythicist authors and arguments of the last two hundred years,
and seems to have abandoned the methods of serious secular scholars in
order to perform for the benefit of his literate New York Times best-seller
audience. It has even been suggested by some that Ehrman is pandering to a
religious audience as well. It is likely that such claims are both scurrilous
and unfair. Readers will have to decide that for themselves after carefully
reading the following pages.
INTRODUCTION
Surprised by Myth
Robert M. Price
Overkill
Overview
On the other hand, the outsider perspective is valid in some helpful
respects, too, for what seems to insiders an insultingly over-simple
stereotype can function also as a valid Ideal Type. This is a heuristic device
which delineates a kind of text-book abstraction distilling common features
shared by disparate real-world phenomena despite their manifold
differences. The point is not to say, “Yessir, all religions (or dying-and-
rising god myths or ancient Mystery Cults, or Christians or Buddhists or
Republicans) are just like this!” Of course none of them is. This is why you
can collect statements from all the major world faiths to the effect that, “Oh,
your definition of religion is fine, only ours is not a religion.” But Ideal
Types are most definitely not definitions! Instead, they are like measuring
sticks; by holding the Ideal Type of ‘a religion’ (for example) alongside any
one of the actual on-the-ground religions, its unique distinctives leap into
focus. We begin to understand each religion better by asking how it came to
differ and why. The point is not to reduce them to a lowest common
denominator but more fully to appreciate their fascinating diversity. And
Christ Mythicism, or New Testament Minimalism, is very diverse.
Whenever historians of theology try to group major thinkers into
movements (categories), some living representatives are sure to protest their
inclusion: “Hey! Don’t tar me with that brush!” I was very interested in the
Death of God movement of the 1960s. Paul van Buren (The Secular
Meaning of the Gospel) protested his inclusion alongside Thomas J.J.
Altizer (The Gospel of Christian Atheism) and William Hamilton (The New
Essence of Christianity). So did Gabriel Vahanian (The Death of God), who
once told me, “What Altizer thinks is the solution, I think is the problem!”
Yet these very different theologians did belong together, or at least under
the same microscope, even if, to borrow Paul Tillich’s metaphor, some were
positioned along the outside and others along the inside of the same circle’s
rim. And so with me and my fellow inmates in these pages.
That little trip down theological memory lane reminds me of another
1960s phenomenon: collections of essays and reviews in the wake of
recently popular books. Harvey Cox’s The Secular City, Bishop Robinson’s
Honest to God, Joseph Fletcher’s Situation Ethics all called forth a
gathering of echoes: The Secular City Debate, The Honest to God Debate,
The Situation Ethics Debate. I loved these books, mainly because they
helped me understand the works under consideration. It was not always
easy to be sure one understood what the new thinkers were saying, and it
was so helpful to see that, say, Bultmann had spotted the same problem I
thought I had noticed in Robinson. Okay, then, maybe I was on the right
track. I have a whole shelf of books like this. And of course my point is that
I like to think of the present book as something of a late member of this
genre. As you perused Professor Ehrman’s send-up of our work, did you
think you spotted the ad hominem fallacy? The appeal to consensus fallacy?
If so, rest assured you were not alone. Did you find yourself thinking, “Hold
on a second — I read Earl Doherty, and I didn’t think he meant that!” Me
neither. So let’s compare notes.
Overture
My own contribution, “Bart Ehrman: Paradigm Policeman,” seeks to
locate Professor Ehrman’s anti-Mythicist polemic in the hidden
sociological-professional framework that governs how mainstream
academics see (and don’t see) these issues, a perspective helpful for
accounting for their public pronouncements when we cannot see how facts
or cogent reasoning can have led to them. Then I take the opportunity to
defend myself and my published opinions from Professor Ehrman’s
contemptuous misrepresentations of them.
Richard Carrier’s “How not to Defend Historicity” deals with such an
array of pseudo-scholarly errors in Ehrman’s anti-Mythicist broadside that it
is downright startling to read his caution to the reader that he has restricted
his treatment to the iceberg tip of Ehrman’s most shockingly egregious
gaffes. One almost dreads to learn what floats beneath the water line
(though, rest assured, the subsequent essays will dredge up yet more). It is
not quite as if Carrier systematically engages Ehrman’s case either against
Jesus Mythicism or on behalf of a historical Jesus. Indeed, his point is that
Ehrman makes it impossible to go that far, because his book lingers on the
level of sophomoric superficiality. Many of Professor Ehrman’s widely read
books are popularizations of the party-line consensus of mainstream biblical
scholarship, a useful service to be sure, but in Did Jesus Exist? the
Professor seems to reveal that, when it comes to the needful expertise in
adjacent fields, he himself relies on popularized treatments, often outdated
at that. This Richard Carrier lays bare with scrupulous and merciless
scrutiny. And it is important for him to do so; sometimes being too polite in
a critique tends to lend respectability, hence credibility, to an opposing view
that deserves neither. If a doctor fears to issue an accurately terrifying
diagnosis for fear of traumatizing the patient, no one will apply the serious
treatment that is needed.
Acharya S. (pen name of D.M. Murdock) is one of the prime targets for
Professor Ehrman’s haughty derision. Her chief sin in Ehrman’s eyes would
appear to be her lack of diplomas on the wall, notwithstanding Acharya’s
extensive researches, including on-site investigations of archaeological
materials, and her extensive documentation of her theories. She dares to
plumb neglected and forgotten works by old writers, separating the wheat
from the chaff where these old authors lacked the (more recent) knowledge
that would have enabled them to tell the difference. Like a scribe who
produces from her treasury goods old and new [Matt. 13:52], she has a
knack for displaying intriguing data neglected by ‘mainstream’ scholars
who simply do not know what to make of them. Such items of evidence are
rejected or ignored by scholars who have long since assembled the jigsaw in
a particular way and find that these oddly shaped bits cannot be
conveniently inserted. Acharya dissents: she sees the need to start over and
to redo the puzzle. One such puzzle piece is the bizarre artifact inscribed
with the caption “Savior of the World,” a bust of a rooster-headed man
whose beak is replaced with an erect penis! Was this thing an improbable
caricature of Jesus Christ? An artist’s conception of the fabled Antichrist?
An idol of the penis god Priapus? Any way you cut it, the ancient world was
full of oddities that imply a stranger, more complex picture than many
would like to think. Well, Bart Ehrman not only knows not what to make of
the dickhead deity (we could forgive him for that); he just wishes it away,
declaring it a figment of Acharya’s fevered imagination. Such libel only
reveals a total disinclination to do a fraction of the research manifest on any
single page of Acharya’s works. In fact, one inevitably thinks of Erich von
[2]
Daniken’s Chariots of the Gods? In it he declares, “Without actually
consulting Exodus, I seem to remember that the Ark was often surrounded
by flashing sparks.” Here Acharya obligingly does what she shouldn’t have
to do, providing (again!) the documentation for her account of “The Phallic
Savior of the World in the Vatican Museum.” Are Acharya’s hypotheses and
speculations debatable? That is no surprise when one ventures, and one
suspects that is what Ehrman, safely ensconced in the cocoon of mainstream
scholarship, really cannot brook.
Oversights
Refusing to do the necessary fact-checking (a crime for which Richard
Carrier has damningly indicted Ehrman) is one thing. How much worse to
have had masses of the relevant research literally placed under one’s nose
only to dismiss it summarily, seemingly without even reading it, and later to
pretend no such evidence exists. Such is the disgusting spectacle on display
in my co-editor’s “Cognitive Dissonance: The Zindler-Ehrman
Corresondence.” Zindler, a polymath, supplied Dr. Ehrman with truckloads
of evidence regarding Docetism, Mithraism, the anachronism of Nazareth in
the gospels, and more, in short, all the matters on which Ehrman would
later, in print, claim Zindler had supplied no documentation. Mister Short
Term Memory.
[3]
You know what cognitive dissonance is: as Leon Festinger explained
it, cognitive dissonance is the condition of urgent discomfort arising in the
mind when one is presented with conflicting data or with truths that collide
with cherished beliefs. One cannot long tolerate the blaring klaxons, so one
rushes to harmonize the contradictions or even to repress the offending data.
Tillich had already said it: “In this respect fundamentalism has demonic
aspects. It splits the conscience of its thoughtful adherents and forces them
to suppress aspects of the truth of which they are dimly aware.” Bart
Ehrman may not be a fundamentalist anymore, but sometimes the old
behavior patterns kick in. As seen to great disadvantage in these letters
(actually e-mails), the prestigious author of Did Jesus Exist? portrays
himself as requiring no further education, thank you. Nothing he does not
already know can possibly be true. Why waste his valuable time with
information that would upset his best-selling apple cart? Sorry to say so.
Sorry he says so.
Bart Ehrman just cannot bring himself to take Earl Doherty seriously.
Why? Alas, the poor fellow lacks credentials. Never mind that his vast
erudition is manifest in both depth and breadth. Who is being sophomoric:
he who dares to write without ‘proper’ credentials? Or he who takes his
stand on his sheepskin? Did Earl Doherty publish his own book? So did
Hume. The real question is: did Professor Ehrman bother to read it? If he
did read the whole thing, it is quite surprising that he treats it as he does in
Did Jesus Exist? At any rate, Doherty’s essay, “Did the Earliest Christians
Regard Jesus as God?” raises a fascinating issue as it addresses Dr.
Ehrman’s dogmatic pronouncement that the earliest Christians were
adoptionists who believed Jesus was a righteous man given divine honors in
heaven after his death. In other words, Ehrman is saying Mythicists have it
exactly wrong when they contend that Jesus was first considered a god
existing on the heavenly plane, and only subsequently reconceived as an
incarnate demigod walking the earth. What this debate boils down to, I
think, is a replay among scholars (even Atheist ones, as both Doherty and
Ehrman are) of the Christological controversies among early Christian
bishops. Both Doherty’s and Ehrman’s models of early Christian belief in
Jesus are in effect rival Christologies. Ehrman himself is, in effect, an
adoptionist, while Doherty is advocating Jesus as God ‘incarnated’ in an
eventual Christian reduction of the original myth. To put it another way,
Doherty can be understood as paralleling William Wrede’s Messianic Secret
[4]
theory , whereby the evangelist Mark sought to harmonize the competing
beliefs of two adoptionist factions. One believed that Jesus had become
God’s messiah at his resurrection, while the other believed that Jesus had
been the functioning messiah from his Jordan baptism onward. Mark’s
contrived solution was to posit that, while the messiahship did commence
with the baptism, Jesus managed to keep it a secret “till the son of man
should have risen from the dead” [Mark 9:9]. Subsequent gospel writers
discarded the secrecy motif, rewriting the stories so that Jesus proclaimed
both his messianic office and his divine dignity. In the same way, Mythicists
argue that the evangelists began with the second-stage belief that Jesus had
come to earth in the form of man [Phil. 2:7], keeping his true divine nature
a secret [1 Cor. 2:8], allowing occasional glimpses of it (e.g., the
mountaintop Transfiguration), but immediately hushing it up [Mark 9:9;
3:11–12]. And the post-Markan evangelists felt less and less inclined to
keep the originally suppressed divinity hidden. The essential deity of Christ
began to reassert itself not in the life of Jesus but in the evolution of gospel
writing. The same sort of progression occurred in the case of Hercules,
originally a sun god, subsequently historicized as an earthbound demigod,
full of super-powers, and eventually returning to full godhood, ascending to
Olympus at his death.
Doherty’s next essay, “‘Mythicist Inventions’: Creating the Mythical
Christ from the Pagan Mystery Cults,” calls the bluff of apologetics-
influenced scholarship by Jonathan Z. Smith and others, of which Ehrman’s
assertions are wholly derivative, the kind of thing H.P. Lovecraft called
[5]
“second-hand erudition.” Ehrman, echoing Smith (not to mention
evangelicals like Ehrman’s mentor Bruce M. Metzger and Edwin M.
Yamauchi) pursues what Doherty rightly brands a scorched earth policy of
denying not only that Christians could have borrowed Mystery Religion
mythemes like that of the resurrected god, but even that such myths existed
in the first place! Where such syncretism did exist, why, it must have been
the archaic pagan cults cribbing from Christianity, like the Saturday Night
Live skit where, worried about ratings, Johnny Carson starts remodeling his
late-night talk show after Arsenio Hall’s. And all this at an early time when
Christianity could not possibly have been perceived as a threatening rival to
be imitated or coopted.
Overchoice
David Fitzgerald’s “Will the Real Jesus Please Stand up?” does, among
many others, two vital things. His main point, as I see it, is to highlight
what ought to be obvious but obviously is not. When Bart Ehrman and
others denounce Christ-Mythicism, they do so in the name of a supposedly
monolithic scholarly consensus on the historical Jesus. But this ostensible
unanimity vanishes like the mirage it is once we realize that each of the
“historical Jesus” reconstructions is as different from its rivals as any one of
them is from Mythicism! A huge menagerie of Jesus theories can be
entertained — but not this one. They never let poor Rudolph join in any
reindeer games.
This fact that a single “historical Jesus” construct does not exist can be
seen as something like a modern form of Docetism. In documents featuring
this doctrine (e.g., Acts of John), Jesus is seen by different individuals in
different forms in the same moment, a tip-off to the fact that, having no
single form, he really has no form at all. Shouldn’t our intrepid questers for
the historical Jesus draw the same inference? What genuine historical figure
can give rise to such an array of portrayals?
The second outstanding value of “Will the Real Jesus Please Stand up?”
is the role of our foil Bart Ehrman in the essay. Unlike everyone else here,
Fitzgerald makes no attempt to call out Ehrman and to dare him to face the
music. No, Professor Ehrman appears here in quite a different capacity, a
richly quotable source of arguments against gospel historicity. How on
earth, ask many readers of both Misquoting Jesus and Did Jesus Exist? can
the same man have written both? If the sources for Jesus are so pathetically
unreliable as Ehrman everywhere contends, on what possible basis can
Ehrman use them to establish the existence of a historical Christ? He is
trying to sit on a limb he has long since sawed off.
My co-editor’s “Is Bart Ehrman Qualified to Write about Christian
Origins?” is what I would have to call an exercise in Socratic humility. On
the surface Zindler is responding to Ehrman’s insulting sneers to the effect
that Zindler just lacks the necessary expertise which Ehrman himself of
course implicitly possesses in spades. Picture Zindler quoting 2 Corinthians
11:18, 21b. “Since many boast of worldly things, I, too, will boast… But
whatever anyone dares to boast of — I am speaking as a fool — I also dare
[6]
to boast of that.” But the underlying point is that, as Van A. Harvey has
pointed out, history is “a field-encompassing field.” Indeed it is so vast that
no one can possibly master it all. This is the reason for collegiality among
scholars, all of whom are necessarily specialists and welcome correction
and supplementary knowledge from others. At least that is true of most of
us. Zindler would never say so, but it is obvious he is a polymath and a
Renaissance man. And Ehrman? I think of Alan Quartermain’s comment in
the movie The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: “I’m waiting to be
impressed.”
Frank Zindler’s “Bart Ehrman and the Art of Rhetorical Fallacy” makes
inescapably clear just how little Jesus scholars have any right to take for
granted, as well as, ironically, how very much they do take for granted.
(You can guess which particular New Testament scholar Zindler makes his
focus, but the critique applies to many, many more.) In the process, Zindler
is obliged to click on the “reveal codes” key to make visible the underlying
logical fallacies upon whose currents Ehrman’s surface argumentation
floats. There is a significant amount of duplicity involved, but one must
judge Professor Ehrman self-deceived — you know, like a religious
apologist. Ehrman’s most blatant errors are easy to catch (except, of course,
that he has not caught them). He commits again and again the fallacious
appeal to majority opinion and the ad hominem fallacy, dismissing
someone’s views because of some perceived personal failure, such as one’s
damning lack of a doctorate or a prestigious teaching post. On a more
fundamental level, Zindler notes, Professor Ehrman commits the logical sin
of assuming the consequent: if he pokes enough holes in the various Christ
Myth arguments, he thinks he has established the historical Jesus. Not so
fast.
Instances of plain old carelessness abound, too. Ehrman tells us that
Josephus mentions Jesus of Nazareth when in fact Josephus never once
names that town, and it matters. Again, Ehrman lumps Mythicists together,
as if they were all fast food franchise owners, dutifully using the same
recipes handed down by the home office. The views of William Benjamin
Smith he ascribes to J.M. Robertson. What’s the difference? They’re both
worthless Mythicist cranks, aren’t they?
Zindler shows how heavily Ehrman leans on the weak reed of the appeal
to a greater mystery to explain a lesser one, banking, e.g., on the
hypothetical gospel sources Q, M, L, etc. to close the gap between the
gospels and the historical Jesus. Indeed, any appeal to oral tradition about
Jesus is hopelessly circular, taking for granted a historical Jesus at the
beginning of the process. It is the same when apologists tell us that the few
decades between Jesus and the gospels are not long enough to allow for
embellishment of the facts. But isn’t the starting date one of the issues
under debate? If Jesus never existed, the bottom drops out, doesn’t it? There
is so much, too much, more in the same vein. But I’m afraid we have
Ehrman, not Zindler to blame for that.
Professor Ehrman seems to have grown too accustomed to the role he
plays in his popular books, as a guide who can authoritatively declaim what
he takes for granted, serving it up to an audience who will simply swallow
it. Frank Zindler’s role, by contrast, is that of a food taster. Or better, that of
Chef Gordon Ramsey on Kitchen Nightmares.
In “Bart Ehrman’s Most Important Critical Method” Frank Zindler takes
appreciative note of an axiom Professor Ehrman employs in his field of
expertise, New Testament textual criticism (the ‘lower criticism’ as it used
to be called). When considering two possible manuscript readings, the
parsimonious explanation is to be preferred, the one that offers the most
natural, least contrived accounting for all the evidence. If the longer reading
at Luke 22:19b–20, the words of institution of the eucharist mentioning
both bread and cup, were the original text, where could the short version,
lacking most of the standard formula, have come from? Who would have
abbreviated the sacred words? On the other hand, if Luke had written the
shorter version, it is easy to imagine some scribe comparing it with the
fuller versions of Mark and Matthew and deciding a previous copyist must
have fallen asleep at the switch and skipped some text and that it fell to him
to “restore” what “must” have been accidentally omitted. Zindler merely
wonders why Ehrman does not think to apply the same cogent reasoning to
many other questions. For instance, if the Christian eucharist evolved
directly from the Jewish Passover seder, as most want to believe, how can
one possibly account for the element of ritual blood-drinking, even only
symbolically? Can we even begin to imagine Jews adopting such imagery?
It would have been like using child-molestation imagery, given the taboos
of Leviticus. On the other hand, suppose the ritual came from a religion like
those of Osiris or Dionysus, where such imagery is naturally at home.
Shouldn’t we prefer that explanation? But one is little inclined to favor, or
even to think of such an explanation if one despises the heretical notion of
early Christian dependence upon the Mystery Religions.
[7]
James Barr once observed that scholarly evangelicals often choose to
enter fields like textual criticism and archaeology. This enables them to
become New Testament scholars with Ph.D. degrees while evading all
engagement with the dangerous, faith-threatening questions of biblical
historicity, authorship, etc. Their acquaintance with these latter is then liable
to be second-hand. They may even fall back on the apologetics they learned
from InterVarsity Christian Fellowship or William Lane Craig. I can only
say that it appears to me this is roughly what happened in Professor
Ehrman’s case. How interesting that it was not critical scholarship that led
him into unbelief, but rather the troubling question of theodicy, the problem
of evil. I suspect this is why he seems to cling to the facile and far-fetched
rationalizations of evangelical apologetics. He had never gotten to the point
of seeing through them before something else made him jump ship. (What
explains Jonathan Z. Smith’s apologetical posture I cannot begin to guess.)
Overdraft
Zindler strikes again in a brief note on “Bart’s Subtitle.” In it Ehrman
refers to “Jesus of Nazareth,” a tag that already begs the question of the
historical character of the Christian savior. In fact, the case for the historical
Nazareth is even more tenuous than that for its most famous resident. But it
is yet another datum Ehrman takes for granted simply because nearly
everybody else does. Strikingly, he quips that, even if crank skeptics were
able to debunk Jesus’ Nazareth origins, it would not undermine a historical
Jesus; he would be simply be Jesus from someplace else. What Ehrman
fails to see is that Jesus is already “Jesus from someplace else,” that is,
Jesus from wherever theologians need him to be from, and from no one
place more than another as long as he belongs someplace. Nazareth is
another Utopia: both a good place and at the same time no place.
Can anything good come out of Nazareth if there was no Nazareth to
come out of? René Salm raises that koan-like question in his “Archaeology,
Bart Ehrman, the New Skepticism, and the Nazareth of ‘Jesus.’” He easily
shows how Ehrman, while denouncing Salm as being no archaeologist, is in
precisely the same position, able to do no more than Salm does: to
scrutinize the assertions of archaeologists and popular news (mis)reporters,
something Salm does in remarkable depth but Ehrman does not. Ehrman, as
Salm shows, is all too eager to take the word of those whose reading of the
evidence comports with tradition. Ehrman’s defensive reaction to Salm’s
demonstration that no datable evidence suggests, much less establishes, the
existence of Nazareth during the ostensible time of Jesus exactly parallels
the umbrage taken by the Biblical Archaeology Review alliance of
conservative Christians and Jews at the work of Old Testament Minimalists.
As there is no archaeological evidence for the Exodus, the conquest of
Canaan, or the monarchy of David and Solomon (did God send angels
down to vacuum up all the evidence?), so there is no sign of Nazareth. How
dismaying for biblical traditionalists to find themselves in the same sinking
boat with Mormon apologists who have never been able to scrape up a
speck of the once-mighty Nephite and Lamanite civilizations. “Lord, save,
we perish!”
Frank Zindler, in his “Mark’s ‘Jesus from Nazareth of the Galilee’”
addresses Dr. Ehrman’s sneering dismissal of his claim that the sole
occurrence of the place name “Nazareth” in Mark, namely in chapter 1,
verse 9, is an interpolation. Needless to say, Zindler thinks (as I and others
do) that all the Markan references to “Jesus the Nazarene/Nazorean” refer
to a sect label, not to a town (though later writers, who lived in a time when
there was once again a populated Nazareth, did take the epithet to denote
Jesus’ home town). Ehrman, who dedicated a whole book to the
demonstration of extensive scribal ‘corrections’ of the New Testament text,
laughs off Zindler’s suggestion as a case of what some call “surgical
exegesis:” a verse contradicts your pet theory? Just claim it is not original to
the text! But Bart knew better, as he admits somewhere in an endnote (like a
newspaper printing a retraction on page 50 of a false report it had the
previous day trumpeted on page one). In materials he had earlier sent to
Ehrman, Zindler had made an impressive case for Mark 1:9, as well as the
whole prologue to which it belongs, constituting an interpolation. He
repeats that case in this response essay, then adds an extensive Bayesian
analysis of Ehrman’s counter claim that a grammatical anomaly in Mark
1:9, relevant to Zindler’s theory, was a simple scribal goof. I will admit that
I can make as little sense of Bayesian probability calculus as I can of Star
Trek’s warp drive mechanics — or, for that matter, of setting the clock on
my VCR! But suffice it to say that for all of Professor Ehrman’s flaunting
his Ph.D. like a peacock’s tail, Frank Zindler’s essay proves once again that
New Testament scholarship is too important to be left to the professional
academics.
“Was There a Historical ‘Jesus of Nazareth’?” by D.M. Murdock
(Acharya S.) returns to the holy ghost town of Nazareth. She summarizes
the basic work of Frank Zindler and René Salm but goes on to explain how
and why the phantom town was conjured from Jesus’ sectarian epithet. As
she notes, it is far from rare in the history of Jesus scholarship to suggest
that “Jesus of Nazareth” aims to paper over the sectarian origins of a
historical Jesus who was a Nazirite or a Nazorean. But what if there were
no Jesus in the first place? Murdock, like Zindler, acknowledges that, once
turned into an earthly figure, Jesus seemed to require some definite place to
live. Not to have had one might suggest that the son of man had no place to
lay his head because he never touched the ground at all. After Superman
comes to earth, when he seeks a semblance of an earthly identity (Clark
Kent), he has to hail from somewhere in particular, since all earthlings do.
Thus he dwells first in Smallville, then in Metropolis. So Jesus must hail
from someplace, too.
But why Nazareth? Why not Hooterville or Gotham City? Here is
Murdock’s distinctive contribution: ‘Nazareth’ is a manufactured
fulfillment of supposed scriptural prophecies of a messianic Branch (netzer)
of David’s family tree, or of a new Nazirite like Samson who should save
Israel from her enemies. Interestingly, her suggestion here strikingly
parallels that of Richard Carrier with regard to Arimathea, which will pass
for a genuine place name but is very likely a pun for ‘best (ari-) disciple
(mathetes) town.’
Finally, we should linger on Murdoch’s telling reference to Euhemerism,
the theory of the pre-Socratic thinker Euhemerus to the effect that
mythology’s deities were legendary magnifications of actual historical
figures. The historical Hercules, for instance, must have been a mighty
warrior, the historical Asclepius a renowned physician. One supposes the
real Apollo had operated a tanning parlor. At any rate, is it not clear that
‘historical critics’ like Ehrman and his SBL brethren are modern day
Euhemerists? And one must suspect it is only vestigial theological habits of
mind that prevent Ehrman and company from seeing that there is little more
likelihood of there having been a historical Jesus than there is of there
having been a historical Hercules.
Earl Doherty shows again, in his chapter, “ ‘Key Data’ and the Crucified
Messiah,” how a self-educated prodigy may have a keener view of the data
and a wider horizon for theorizing than someone, a product of the academy,
who is, to use Rabbi Yohannon ben Zakkai’s description of a pupil, “a
plastered cistern that loseth not a drop.” Doherty shows with seemingly
effortless ease how Ehrman is so absolutely controlled by the assumptions
of conventional scholarship that he remains oblivious of glaring
contradictions both in his positions and in his defenses of them. He just
cannot get the gospels out of his head as he reads the epistles and so reads
the former into the latter. He believes that the earliest records depict Jesus
as a peasant prophet and teacher, never a dying and rising savior. What
records might those be? A collection of SBL seminar papers?
Frank Zindler (“Bart Ehrman and the Crucified Messiah”) forms a tag
team with Earl Doherty in addressing Bart Ehrman’s argument on how no
one would have invented a crucified messiah, so there must have been one.
If Doherty exposes the shaky foundations upon which Ehrman has built,
Zindler goes deeper still. To switch metaphors, we may say that Zindler
goes back before Square One: never mind the viability of a crucified Christ,
what if the earliest “Christians” spoke and wrote, as Suetonius, Marcion,
and Tacitus did, not of Christos but of Chrestos (a common name meaning
‘the good’)? No messiah at all then. The New Testament texts may even
have read this way at first, which would certainly make sense of the fact
[8]
that, as Werner Kramer demonstrated decades ago, there is but a single
place in the whole Pauline Corpus where ‘Christ’ even might make sense as
a reference to Jesus as the Jewish messiah [Romans 9:5], everywhere
functioning as an alternate personal name, even as most people use it today.
Again, how precious little we have any right to take for granted!
Overload
“Bart Ehrman and the Body of Jesus of Nazareth” by Herr Zindler
discusses a problem that Bart Ehrman does not seem to know he has,
namely, if we start with a historical individual who lived in the first third of
the first century of the Common Era, how easy is it to imagine that within
another thirty years there grew up a widespread and long-lived belief that
this individual had never existed in the flesh but was only what we might
call a hologram without weight or substance? This was the ‘heresy’ of
Docetism (from the Greek dokeo, ‘to seem’). But to call it a heresy implies
it was a secondary development, a subsequent mutation from a prior proto-
orthodox belief in a real fleshly man (divine incarnation, mere mortal, or
demigod as you please). As an Atheist, Dr. Ehrman obviously does not
condemn any religious belief as false doctrine (or rather, he condemns them
all), however severe he is in branding as thought crimes scholarly theories
he does not like. But he does retain the classic Catholic view of church
history despite his avowal (in his Lost Christianities) of the Bauer thesis
[9]
(Walter Bauer, Orthodoxy and Heresy in Earliest Christianity) . Bauer
mounted a powerful argument that what eventually triumphed as Catholic
Orthodoxy was a secondary development in many areas of the Roman
Empire, where the first known churches were Marcionite, Gnostic, etc. The
later research of James M. Robinson and Helmut Koester (Trajectories
[10]
through Early Christianity) and Burton L. Mack (A Myth of Innocence:
[11]
Mark and Christian Origins) has followed Bauer’s hint to demonstrate
how the various ‘heresies’ had equally deep roots in the New Testament
canon as later Orthodoxy did—or claimed. But the notion of ‘proto-
orthodoxy’ being coeval with the Ebionite, Gnostic, and Encratite ‘Lost
Chrsitianities’ represents a sneaky compromise with Bauer, as if to admit
that, all right, our Christianity’s evolutionary prototype may not have been
the only game in town, thus not after all the earliest, but it was at least as
old as the others — and proved the fittest survivor (with a little help from
Constantine). But I should say that our Christianity was already a secondary
amalgam of elements chosen from earlier types. Pre-existence Christology
came from Gnosticism, the sacramental system from the Mystery Religions,
etc. This is the iceberg of which Frank Zindler explores the docetic tip.
Overhaul
Earl Doherty is up to bat again in “The Epistle to the Hebrews and Jesus
outside the Gospels,” where he does exactly what scientific theorists do
[12]
when they inaugurate a new paradigm : he focuses on a bit of hitherto
anomalous data, something the conventional framework just could not
figure out how to make good sense of, and starts over, making that odd bit
of data the center of a new model, whereupon the rest of the data fall into
place around it in a new and comprehensive pattern. In this way Copernicus
revolutionized astronomy by focusing on the mystery of the retrograde
motion of the planets, and he discovered that that motion made new sense if
only one cast aside the ancient assumption of geocentricity. If one posited
heliocentricity, implying that we see the motions of the other planets from a
moving platform, the apparent doubling back of the planets turned out to be
an optical illusion. Earl Doherty has ventured that if we resolve no longer to
read into Hebrews the gospel story of an earthly Jesus, the weird business
about Jesus offering his sacrifice in heaven, not on earth, goes from being
the nail in the tire to being the hub of the wheel. All the business of Jesus
assuming a body [Heb. 10:5] “in the days of his flesh” [Heb. 5:7] is at once
seen to mean the same thing it does in The Ascension of Isaiah: the descent
of the Savior through the cosmic spheres, not to this solid earth, but into one
of the lower heavens where the Archons, Principalities and Powers hover,
and where they killed him [1 Cor. 2:8; Col. 2:13–15], precisely as the
Gnostic Primal Man of Light was ambushed in space above the physical
creation at the dawn of time.
Likewise, it suddenly begins to make sense that Hebrews gives no details
of any earthly life of a human Jesus, why the words placed upon his lips are
all scripture quotes — since the whole thing was the product, not of
historical memory, but of esoteric scriptural exegesis (decoding).
Over and out
In “Bart Ehrman and the Cheshire Cat of Nazareth,” Frank Zindler
supplies a review of the numerous factors that make it unlikely that any
historical Jesus ever existed. Many have done this, though few so
extensively yet concisely. But Zindler is making a point seldom made even
by Mythicists. He notes how historical and literary critics have dismantled
and discarded so much of the gospel Jesus figure(s) that all that remains is a
fading phantom countenance like that of the fictional feline. And this forces
the question of what keeps ‘critics’ like Bart Ehrman believing in the
existence of Jesus. Why do his vacuous and circular arguments look good to
him? Isn’t it the simple and stubborn will to believe? The same thing that
motivates evangelical apologists? Reading Did Jesus Exist? one begins to
suspect that nothing could shake Bart Ehrman’s faith, and faith is what we
must call it. And then, as Zindler explains, we are talking about a ‘belief’
that is in principle impossible to falsify, and thus without content. If you
can’t think of any possible state of affairs that would mean your belief is
wrong after all, that means you can’t even draw the lines to define it. You’re
not really believing anything, just spouting slogans. Even so, if all the
evidence falls away, what do you even mean by ‘Jesus’?
The indefatigable Doherty (“Ehrman’s Concluding Case against
Mythicism”) helps wind our book down with his rejoinder to Professor
Ehrman’s own parting pot shot. Forgive me for being more blunt, less
restrained, than the even-tempered Doherty, who is both older and wiser
than me. Professor Ehrman, apparently tired of the scholarly pretense he has
assumed throughout his condescending screed, finishes by taking off the
gloves and smacking Mythicists with one massive ad hominem slur. Jesus
Mythicism, he avers, is nothing but a cynical weapon aimed by Humanist-
Atheist malcontents at the walls of religion. “Hey! Not only is there no
God, but your precious Jesus didn’t even exist! Nyah nyah nyah nyah
nyah!” Even if this libel were not a libel, even if Mythicists were such bitter
neurotics, that would not reflect in any degree on the validity or invalidity
of their arguments. How can an ostensibly serious scholar resort to such
tactics?
And the rank hypocrisy of it! As if Ehrman himself did not patently
delight, in his many books, in sticking his finger in the eye of the
fundamentalists to whose ranks he once belonged. Do not his
contemptuous barbs (quoted by Doherty), aimed at a Humanist group who
invited him as their convention speaker, betray a smug desire to show
himself superior to both those who like him and those who don’t? Is not the
gist of it “I wouldn’t join any group that would have someone like me as a
member”?
Frank Zindler (“Bart Ehrman and the Emperor’s New Clothes”) rounds
out this volume with a familiar parable, the application of which will hardly
surprise you. Nor, by this time, will you be surprised that it fits so very well.
Robert M. Price
December 22, 2012
PART I. Ehrman’s Arguments Engaged
CHAPTER ONE
Bart Ehrman: Paradigm Policeman
Robert M. Price
Copernican Revelations
I don’t want to be unfair. Bart does after all spar with many Mythicist
arguments, but it seems clear to me he is simply not ready to think outside
the box of his SBL peers. Again and again, as I read the book, I realized
that he and I occupy different universes of biblical criticism. He believes the
‘lucky seven’ Pauline Epistles to be authentic and holds to what I regard as
unrealistically early (apologetics-derived) dates for the gospels. He thinks
the canned speeches in Acts preserve facts about Jesus even though careful
[16]
vocabulary and conceptual studies by Earl Richard and others have
shown them all to be the creations of the Acts author. By contrast, I am a
student of the classic Higher Critics (e.g., F.C. Baur, D.F. Strauss, Wilhelm
Wrede, Rudolf Bultmann, Walter Schmithals) and the more extreme Dutch
Radical Critics (especially Willem Christiaan van Manen and L. Gordon
Rylands).
Like many neo-conservative New Testament scholars today, Bart is on
the one hand un-willing to entertain the possibility of textual interpolations
[17]
in the early decades from which no manuscript evidence survives at all;
while on the other, he is willing to trim away the more blatant marks of
Christian interpolation from the Testimonium Flavianum (what Josephus
supposedly says about Jesus) as scribal embellishments because it would
allow him to take what’s left as a genuine testimony to Jesus. Not that he
thinks it would prove much in either case — or does he? Depends on what
page you are reading.
Similarly, he accepts the claim of Papias, second-century bishop of
Hierapolis, that he had met people who claimed to be acquaintances of
Jesus’ disciples, even though he himself rejects everything Papias claimed
to have learned from them about the authorship of the gospels. Nor does he
mention Papias’ cartoonish account of the grotesque swelling of Judas
Iscariot to parade-float dimensions, something that surely ruins the good
bishop’s claim to any credibility. Do I remember correctly that Bart wrote a
[18]
book on fraud and forgery in the New Testament?
The methodological error here — trying to make bad evidence into good
[19]
— is a cousin to the error bemoaned by D.F. Strauss so long ago.
Protestant Rationalists supposed that, though the major point of a miracle
story, the supernatural event, might be rejected, other, tangential features
might nonetheless be genuine historical data. Strauss rejected this, pointing
out that the ancillary details were there only for the sake of the story’s main
point and that it was arbitrary to maintain the former while rejecting the
latter. But that is essentially Bart’s strategy in the case of the speeches in
Acts, the Josephus text, and the Papias traditions. He has no business
picking up the scraps. He has to throw the bathwater out once he has ejected
the baby. But he won’t.
In Did Jesus Exist? Bart makes repeated fallacious appeals to authority
and majority opinion, nor is he loathe to loathe. That is, he aims ad
hominem attacks like Cupid’s arrows. Personally, I do not appreciate it
when he invites the reader to write me off as a bitter ex-fundamentalist,
implying my work is a mere rationalization of my apostasy. He mistakenly
thinks I used to be an evangelical preacher. I did spend a dozen years as a
born-again Christian, but I became disillusioned with it precisely because,
against my every hope and desire, I found I could no longer accept the
apologetical arguments for gospel accuracy and biblical authority. What
irritation my writings sometimes display expresses my righteous
indignation at the bogus argumentation of the conservative writers. I suspect
that Bart has occasionally felt the same way. But at the end of the book he
writes all of us Mythicists off as merely pursuing an anti-religious agenda.
Is he a mind reader? Does it not occur to him that our embrace of radical
criticism might have led to our disillusionment with faith rather than being
an after-the-fact rationalization of it? Bart sounds like ‘Creation-Science’
fundamentalists who accuse scientists of espousing evolution merely as a
way to escape repenting and believing in God. Is he still thinking in the
patterns they taught him at Moody Bible Institute?
When I first discarded evangelicalism (years before I became a church
pastor) I held views almost identical to those Bart espouses today: Jesus
was an apocalyptic prophet much as Albert Schweitzer described him. And
these views were for me no more a function of my rejection of faith than
they are for Bart. Again like him, back then I viewed the arguments of G.A.
Wells (at the time a Mythicist) with astonishment and skepticism. But as the
years went by and I studied more and more perspectives neglected by most
scholars I knew, I found myself going in a more radical direction, not
because I found the notions particularly attractive, but because I could no
longer accept the arguments of moderate critics. And I have paid the price
for it professionally, not that I am complaining. Indeed, “the lines are fallen
unto me in pleasant places.”
Police Brutality
Let me turn to a few places where I believe Bart gets me wrong or offers
ineffective arguments against my views. Most often he just professes to find
my arguments implausible or unpersuasive. There is nothing I can do about
that. I have to rely upon my readers to make that call for themselves. I trust
they will not merely take his word for it. But there are a few points, I say,
where I really must raise an objection.
First, he says I misunderstand the criteria of dissimilarity and
[20]
embarrassment because I am wielding them in the wrong task, like
using a hammer to saw wood. These criteria are designed to establish which
gospel materials are authentic, but (he thinks) I am using them perversely to
demonstrate inauthenticity. He says I do not get it, that the proper use of the
criteria is to sift through the texts to find those that can jump the hurdles.
We should accept, he says, any gospel bit that does not appear so similar to
early Christian belief or to current Jewish material that it might have been
borrowed from one or the other. Anything that does not match up with early
Church or Jewish material must really be from Jesus, something distinctive,
a point where Jesus differed from Judaism. Or something he said that went
over like a lead balloon, not picked up by Christians.
What about the embarrassment criterion — what John Dominic Crossan
calls “damage control”? The idea here is that certain features in the gospel
material that gave later Christians theological headaches (Jesus receiving
John’s baptism of repentance, Jesus denying he is good and therefore that
he is God, his cry of dereliction from the cross, his admission of ignorance
concerning the time of the end, etc.) must be historical, since Christians
would never have made them up. (Thus embarrassment is a special case of
dissimilarity: if some loose end is conspicuous by the chagrin it caused later
Christians, it is dissimilar to their Christian beliefs and thus, ostensibly,
could not have been derived from them.) The purpose of the criteria is
indeed to help us winnow out the chaff and preserve the wheat. I know that.
Can Bart possibly miss my point that none of the material passes the
test? I think I am the first (though who cares?) to note that the basic axiom
of form criticism throws a deep shadow over the usefulness of dissimilarity
and embarrassment, and here’s why. Form critics argue that nothing would
have been preserved in the process of oral transmission that was not useful
for some purpose (catechetical, homiletic, ritual legitimization, polemical,
etc.) of the early Christians. Nothing seems to have been preserved for the
sake of abstract curiosity. Well, if that is so, then everything in the gospel
tradition reflects early Christian interests or we would not be reading it
now! And that means we cannot be sure anything was not fabricated to
serve those interests. It’s not that we know the stuff was fabricated; it’s just
that we can’t say it wasn’t — and that’s the point of these criteria, isn’t it?
To show what wasn’t fabricated? And nothing passes the test.
Bart, like all mainstream critics, is less critical than he thinks. In his
[21]
book Lost Christianities (which essentially recycles Walter Bauer’s
ground-breaking thesis in Orthodoxy and Heresy in Earliest Christianity),
[22]
Bart sets forth the amazing diversity of early Christian religion. Yet his
naïve use of the criterion of embarrassment in Did Jesus Exist? assumes
that all early Christians believed, thought, and practiced the same things.
But they didn’t. What was embarrassing to one writer or one generation or
one sect needn’t have been embarrassing to another. It is obvious, for
instance, that Mark had no problem with a humble Jesus who could apply to
John for a baptism of repentance or who could tell the Rich Young Ruler
not to call him good. Mark had no problem with Jesus being surprised at the
lack of faith among his townsfolk, or with his inability to heal them.
Matthew, however, did, so he changed all this. But that doesn’t make the
earlier version historical fact.
Bart seems to realize this when he recognizes the presence in Acts,
Romans, etc., of vestiges of adoptionist Christology, the belief that Jesus
was a mortal man subsequently adopted as God’s son, perhaps at his
baptism, perhaps at the resurrection. This hardly means Jesus must actually
have been adopted as God’s son somewhere along the line just because the
notion undermines the later pre-existence Christology. It just means that an
earlier belief was embarrassing to later believers. Likewise, just because
Matthew wished Mark hadn’t depicted Jesus as being baptized in the Jordan
confessing his sins doesn’t mean that it actually happened.
And this brings me to Bart’s lambasting my suggestion that the story of
Jesus’ baptism might have been rewritten from that of the Persian prophet
Zoroaster. Ehrman’s service revolver fires two cheap shots at this target. But
he is firing blanks. First, he complains that I can’t get my story straight,
since elsewhere I claim all the gospel narratives were worked up from Old
Testament originals. But I clearly stated that there were other sources, too.
Besides this, Bart admits that many gospel stories do seem to parallel
various Old Testament tales, but he laughs the fact off, pleading that the
stories may still preserve a core of historical material even though the tellers
of these tales may have added scriptural form and color to them.
What, pray tell, is left? Is Bart saying Jesus really did multiply food for
the crowds and this led the teller of the story to make it look like the similar
story where Elisha does the same thing? That won’t work: the only thing the
two stories have in common is the central ‘fact’ of the feeding miracle. And
isn’t it obvious that the ‘peripheral detail’ consists rather in the change from
Elisha as the miracle worker to Jesus? In any case, if a gospel story and an
Old Testament story look that similar, isn’t the simplest explanation that the
Jesus version has been rewritten from the Elijah, Elisha, or Moses version?
Bart is not shaving with Occam’s Razor. He is positing superfluous,
redundant explanations.
Secondly, he, like apologists, likes to seal off the sphere of biblical
culture from the adjacent religious world. I can understand that bias on the
part of conservatives who want to see Christianity flowing directly out of
the Old Testament, without other tributaries, for theological reasons. But
Bart allegedly no longer cares to defend such interests. Then why does he
ignore the massive influence of Zoroastrianism on Pharisaic Judaism?
Many scholars (except perhaps Bart’s professors at Wheaton College)
believe Jews derived from Zoroastrianism the belief in an end-time
resurrection, the apocalyptic periodization of history, the notion of a virgin-
born future savior, the idea of an evil anti-God, and an elaborate angelology.
The rabbis thought that Zoroaster was the same man as Baruch the scribe of
Jeremiah! That means they were trying to legitimatize the Jewish
assimilation of Zoroastrian themes during and after the Exile. T.W.
[23]
Manson suggested that the traditionalist Sadducees (‘Syndics,’
‘Councilmen’) resisted these borrowings and labeled those who accepted
them as Pharisees (i.e., ‘Parsees,’ ‘Persians,’ ‘Zoroastrians’). (Later the
Pharisees redefined the term to make it a badge of honor: Perushim now
denoting ‘Separatists,’ ‘Puritans.’ Am I such a nut for suggesting possible
Zoroastrian influence on the baptism story?
What I have just mentioned is an example of synchronic comparison:
tracing possible influence from one phenomenon to another close to it in
time and space. Bart gives me hell for my invocation of the fact that Hong
Xiuquan, the nineteenth-century Taiping messiah in China, called himself
“the younger brother of Jesus” as a possible parallel to the use of “brother
of the Lord” for James the Just (Galatians 1:19). Across so many centuries?
Far-fetched, right? How can Bart not recognize a diachronic comparison (a
comparison of analogous phenomena across time)? As I say quite clearly,
the Taiping messiah obviously could not have been claiming to be the blood
brother of Jesus unless he was Mel Brooks’s character the 2,000 Year Old
Man. No, he used the title to mean he was the earthly manifestation of
another hypostasis of the Godhead, just as Jesus had been. Such a title need
not at all imply its holder was the brother of a historical Jesus, either in the
first century or the 19th. I don’t see what’s so funny about that.
Speaking of James the Just, Bart paints me as claiming that James was
an eponymous (namesake) ancestor of a tribe, like the Old Testament tribal
[24]
patriarchs whom the ancients posited, as Hermann Gunkel argued, to
cement alliances between hitherto-independent tribes. With a sure grasp of
the self-evident, Bart protests that Christians were not an ethnic group! Nor
am I so stupid. I believe I made it pretty clear that the case of the Israelite,
Edomite, and Ishmaelite patriarchs is a historical analogy for the
hypothetical grafting together of James, a sect figurehead in his own right,
and Jesus as brothers in order to facilitate the combining of the two sects. I
would be much surprised if Bart did not believe that Luke’s connecting of
Jesus and John the Baptist as cousins is not exactly the same sort of thing.
Murder Mystery
The main problem with Did Jesus Exist? was the sheer number of errors,
fallacies, and misleading statements that fill it. It is important to emphasize
this: a handful of errors or fallacies would not condemn any book, as every
book has a few (even the best scholars make mistakes and get a few things
wrong), and a good book can more than compensate for that by being
consistently useful, informative, and on-point in every other respect. But
Ehrman’s book was so full of gaffes it is simply unsalvageable. It resembles
in this respect some of the worst Jesus-myth literature, which I can’t
recommend to people either, as it will misinform them far more than inform
them. Scholars can also correct their errors — if they are inclined to.
Ehrman, so far, does not seem at all inclined to.
I could not list all the errors, fallacies, and misleading statements I
marked up in my copy of his book. There were hundreds of them, averaging
at least one a page. This shocked me, because all his previous works were
not like this. Their errors are few, and well drowned out by their consistent
utility and overall accuracy in conveying the mainstream consensus on the
issues they address. But Did Jesus Exist? was a travesty.
In my critical review I chose a representative selection of the worst
mistakes, in order to illustrate the problem. Some mistook that as a
complete list, and suggested those weren’t enough errors to condemn the
book. Although they certainly were (not all of them, but many of them are
damning and render the book useless at its one stated purpose), they are not
a complete list, but just the tip of the iceberg. And that is the bigger
problem. The errors I chose to document and discuss are examples of
consistent trends throughout the book, of careless thinking, careless writing,
and often careless research. This means there are probably many more
errors than I saw, because for much of the book I was trusting him to tell me
correctly what he found from careful research; but the rest of the book
illustrates that I can’t trust him to correctly convey information about this
subject or to have done careful research.
I think I have an idea what happened, if reports are true that Ehrman has
said he takes only two or three weeks to write a book: with the exception of
Orthodox Corruption of Scripture (and a few related works), which
summarizes many years of his own dedicated research (and thus is an
excellent piece of scholarship, not aimed at laymen), all his books have
been just summaries of ‘what he knows’ from being a trained New
Testament scholar (plus occasionally a small foray into specific independent
research, as when he investigated the nature of forgery in the ancient world
for Forged, which could have been completed in a couple of long days at a
library). He is thus relying on field-established background knowledge.
This is fine when that’s what you are reporting on (as he usually does). But
when you are going outside your field, you do need to do a bit more, and
you do risk being wrong a bit more often. This is why it’s a good idea to
field ideas in other venues before committing them to print: it gives you an
opportunity to be corrected by other experts first.
I had said it was his “incompetence in classics (e.g. knowledge of
ancient culture and literature) and ancient history (e.g. understanding the
methodology of the field and the background facts of the period) that trips
him up several times,” and that now makes sense. He is fully competent to
make up for not being a classicist or specialist in ancient history, by getting
up to speed on what he needed — which for this task might have taken a
year or more — but he chose not to. Instead, from the armchair as it were, I
think he just relied on ‘what he knows’ — which was all just what he was
told or has read in New Testament studies. But that isn’t enough. Disaster
resulted. Following are only some of the examples I selected to illustrate
this.
[Acharya says] “‘Peter’ is not only ‘the rock’ but also ‘the
cock’, or penis, as the word is used as slang to this day.” Here
Acharya shows (her own?) hand drawing of a man with a rooster
head but with a large erect penis instead of a nose, with this
description: “bronze sculpture hidden in the Vatican treasure of the
Cock, symbol of St. Peter” (295). There is no penis-nosed statue of
Peter the cock in the Vatican or anywhere else except in books like
[42]
this, which love to make things up.
That’s the sum total of what he says about this. It is quite evident to me
that when he wrote this, he doubted the drawing came from any source, and
believed (and here implies to the reader) that she just made it up. There is
no such statue. That is what he is saying. Certainly, the one thing this
paragraph doesn’t say is that the statue she references does exist, is (or at
one time was) at the Vatican, and looks essentially just as her drawing
depicts it. It also does not say that she is merely wrong to interpret this
statue as being of Peter. And it fails to inform the public that statues like
this do come from antiquity, and represent the god Priapus. To the contrary,
all it says is that there is no such statue, she made this up — which is false.
This betrays Ehrman’s failure to even check.
But he now claims he did check. Sort of — he says he saw her citations
and assumed there were priapic statues; he did not actually say he checked
her sources or (as a genuinely concerned scholar might) contacted the
Vatican. Some commentators on his blog then tried claiming the statue was
never at the Vatican. But their misinformation and mishandling of the
sources is thoroughly exposed in an extensive comment by an observer at
[43]
Murdock’s website. The object may have been moved (as I implied was
possible in my original review), but Ehrman said it didn’t exist anywhere,
so its location is moot. And I should add, this is precisely the kind of source
analysis that Ehrman should already have worked through and been able to
discuss informedly. Yet in comments there he said the original
commentator’s findings were “very interesting” and “very hard to get
around,” indicating he didn’t in fact do any of this research himself and was
never familiar with the source materials on the statue. This is not how
scholars should behave. If you are going to challenge someone’s claim, you
check their sources, familiarize yourself with the facts of the case, and
communicate your findings to the public.
Now, of course, Ehrman claims he never said the statue didn’t exist. He
only said a statue of Peter didn’t exist. He thus parses his words hyper-
literally to argue that he said the exact opposite of what he said. You see,
when he said the statue didn’t exist, that it was made up, he meant a statue
of Peter, and since the statue that Murdock references and presents a
drawing of isn’t a statue “of Peter,” the statue doesn’t exist. This is an
amusing case of faux metaphysical deepness being used as an excuse to
read a sentence as saying a statue simultaneously does and doesn’t exist,
depending on what one calls it. Even if that is really what he was doing
when he wrote the book, this is just a variant of a textbook masked-man
fallacy (“That statue exists. She says it is a statue of Peter. No statues of
Peter exist. Therefore that statue doesn’t exist.”).
It’s bad enough that, even if this is true and he really meant to say the
opposite of what he appears to say, he obviously wrote it so badly he not
only sucks as a writer but can’t even tell that he sucks as a writer (indeed
only after repeated goading in comments did he confess that “maybe I
should have phrased it differently”). But trying to use the “I suck as a
writer” defense against the much worse crime of careless scholarship
requires him to claim the masked man fallacy isn’t a fallacy but a perfectly
reasonable way to argue. This convicts him of not understanding how logic
works. That is a zero net gain for him. Scholars who routinely argue
illogically — and don’t even know they are arguing illogically — are not
reliable scholars.
Before I get to the punchline, I really must emphasize this point. Even
granting his excuse, the fact that the wording is completely misleading and
will misinform the public still confirms my point in citing this example: we
can’t trust a book written like this. If he so badly botched this sentence that
he meant the opposite of what he said, then how many other sentences in
this book are as badly written and mean the opposite of what they say?
Indeed, the fact that he had to be repeatedly goaded before even admitting
that this sentence does that means he is not even capable of detecting when
a sentence he has written says the opposite of what he meant. That entails
we should trust his book even less, since whatever filter is supposed to
prevent him making these kinds of mistakes is clearly not working in his
brain.
As commentator Kim Rottman said:
Indeed. But I fear it may be worse than that. That’s because I don’t
actually believe him when he says he didn’t mean to say the statue didn’t
exist. I suspect that is a post-hoc rationalization that he cooked up in an
attempt to save face, after his careless and irresponsible scholarship on this
matter was exposed. I suspect this not only because his excuse is
implausible on its face (read his original paragraph again, and ask yourself
how likely it is that someone who wanted to say “the statue she depicts does
exist, but it’s not a statue of Peter” would say instead what he did), and not
only because he still doesn’t claim to have researched her sources or
contacted the Vatican (in other words, to do what he should have done), but
also because he said in a podcast (before my review and before Murdock
herself exposed him on this) that the statue did not in any sense exist.
That’s right. On the Homebrewed Christianity show, Ehrman says
Murdock talks about Peter the cock and shows a drawing of a statue with a
penis for a nose and claims this is in the Vatican museum, at which Ehrman
declares, with laughter, “It’s just made up! There is no such s[tatue]… It’s
just completely made up.” In context it is certainly clear he is saying there
is no such statue of any kind, that her drawing is not of any actual object.
[45]
I must leave it to you to decide what’s going on here. From both his
own wording in the book and this podcast, it certainly seems that Ehrman
had no idea the statue actually existed, until Murdock and I caught him on
it. Notably, I had emailed him about this weeks before my review, asking
what his response to Murdock was, because I was concerned it didn’t look
good. I had not yet read his book, so I didn’t know this would be such a
travesty. Ehrman never answered me (even though he has in the past). Only
after my review did he come out with the explanation that he meant to say
the statue existed but wasn’t connected to Peter. And on that point I suspect
he is lying.
I can give more leeway to a podcast interview, where we often forget to
say things or say things incorrectly, and we don’t get to re-read and revise to
improve accuracy and clarity (though this excuse doesn’t hold for a book).
But here this does not look like an accidental omission or a slip of the
tongue. He really does appear to think (at the time of that podcast) that the
statue was completely made up. And that certainly appears to be what he
says. Did he really also “mean to say” in that podcast that the statue wasn’t
“completely” made up, that in fact it existed, but that Murdock was only
wrong about what it symbolized? In other words, did he once again say, as
if by accident, exactly the opposite of what he meant? You tell me.
The clincher is the fact that he gives no argument at all in his book for
why Murdock is wrong to conclude this is a statue of Peter. His only
argument is that the statue doesn’t exist. This only makes sense as a rebuttal
if indeed he meant the statue wholly did not exist. Otherwise, why is she
wrong to conclude it symbolizes Peter? Ehrman doesn’t say. I consider this
good evidence that he is now lying about what he really thought and meant
when writing the book. Surely, in an argument that she was wrong, he
would give a reason why she is wrong. And he gave only one: the statue she
drew doesn’t exist. But it does — as even he now admits.
Establishing oneself as someone who prefers dishonesty to admitting
mistakes is not the way to argue for historicity. Neither is so thoroughly
failing at the job of informing the public on the actual facts.
Ehrman again exposes how careless his research for this book was by
horribly bungling his treatment of a key source. He discusses the one letter
of Pliny the Younger that mentions Christ, but in a way that demonstrates
he never actually read that letter, and misread the scholarship on it, and as a
result so badly misreports the facts concerning it that this section of his
book will certainly have to be completely rewritten if ever there is a second
edition.
The error itself is not crucial to his overall thesis, but it reveals the
shockingly careless way he approached researching and writing this book as
a whole. In fact, Ehrman almost made me fall out of my chair when I saw
this. He made two astonishing errors here that are indicative of his
incompetence with ancient source materials — the very same incompetence
he accuses Mythicists like D.M. Murdock of. First, he doesn’t correctly cite
or describe his source (yet in this particular case that should have been
impossible); and second, he fails to know the difference between a fact and
a hypothesis.
Ehrman says that Pliny discusses Christians in his correspondence with
emperor Trajan in “letter number 10,” and that “in his letter 10 to the
emperor Pliny discusses” the problem of the imperial decree against
firefighting societies in that province, “and in that context he mentions
[46]
another group that was illegally gathering,” the Christians. This is all
incorrect, and demonstrates that Ehrman never actually read Pliny’s letter,
and doesn’t even know how to cite it correctly, and has no idea that the
connection between Pliny’s prosecution of Christians and the decree against
illegal assembly affecting the firefighters in Bithynia is a modern scholarly
inference and not actually anything Pliny says in his letters.
In fact, Pliny never once discusses the decree against fire brigades in his
letter about Christians, nor connects the two cases in any way. Moreover,
neither subject is discussed in “letter number 10.” Ehrman evidently didn’t
know that all of Pliny’s correspondence to Trajan is collected in book 10 of
Pliny’s letters. His letter on the fire brigades in that book is letter 33; and his
letter on Christians is letter 96 (and therefore nowhere near each other in
[47]
time or topic). But Ehrman has still gotten the context wrong. The law
against illegal assembly was not a special law in that province, but had long
been a law throughout the whole empire — and it was not targeted at fire
brigades. Existing law required all social clubs to be licensed by the
government, and many clubs were so licensed. This included religious and
scientific associations, burial clubs, guilds, and, of course, fire brigades.
What was unique about Pliny’s province was that the state had been
denying these licenses even to fire brigades, and Pliny asked Trajan to lift
that injunction. (In letter 10.34, Trajan denies Pliny’s request, citing recent
unrest there.)
The connection between the Bithynian fire brigades and Christianity is
not that there was any special injunction against Christians (Trajan, in letter
10.97, explicitly says there wasn’t), but that in letter 96 Christianity appears
to be treated by Pliny like any unlicensed club, and both letters (96 and 97)
make it clear there was no specific law or decree against Christians.
Therefore, modern scholars conclude, the same law is probably what was
being applied in both cases (prosecuting Christians and banning firefighting
associations). And that’s kind of what Ehrman confusingly says — except
that he is evidently unaware that this is a modern conclusion and is not
actually stated in the source.
Ehrman’s treatment of the sources and scholarship on this issue betray
the kind of hackneyed mistakes and lack of understanding that he
repeatedly criticizes the ‘bad’ Mythicists of — particularly his inability
even to cite the letters properly and his strange assumption that both
subjects are discussed in the same letter. These are mistakes I would only
expect from an undergraduate. But if even Historicists like Ehrman can’t do
their research properly and get their facts right, and can’t even be bothered
to read their own source materials or understand their context, why are we
to trust the consensus of Historicists any more than Mythicists? And more
particularly, how many other sources has Ehrman completely failed to read,
cite, or understand properly? This is not how to argue for historicity.
But it gets worse. After I called him out on this, Ehrman refused to admit
his mistake. He claims it was just a typo. I do not believe he’s telling the
truth. Because the wording in the book does not look even remotely like he
knew that two different letters were being discussed, or that their
connection was a scholarly inference and not something directly revealed in
the context of “the letter” he twice references. I’ll quote the relevant section
in full (skipping only incidental material, and adding my emphasis in bold):
Ehrman falsely claims that from antiquity “we simply don’t have birth
notices, trial records, death certificates — or other kinds of records that one
has today” and is adamant not only that we have none, but that such records
were never even kept, because he asks “if Romans were careful record
[48]
keepers, it is passing strange that we have no records.” In fact, we have
lots of those things. I mean lots. (So in answer to Ehrman’s question,
“Where are they?,” probably some are in his own university’s library.) But
more importantly, Christians could have quoted or preserved such
documents relating to Jesus or his disciples, as such documents certainly
would have existed then. Thus a historian must explain why they did not.
A correct treatment of this issue would be to give reasons why Christians
didn’t quote or preserve any of these records; not to claim that no such
records existed or could have survived. That is simply false. What he said,
therefore, suggests he didn’t even check whether his claim was true, and he
had no significant experience with ancient documents other than New
Testament manuscripts, two marks against him that cast a shadow over the
whole book. And since such documents did exist, and therefore what he
actually needs to do is explain why Christians didn’t preserve them, the fact
that he attempts no such explanation means he doesn’t even understand the
issues in the historicity debate. If this is how clueless and careless he is,
again, what else is as wrong in this book?
At the very least, what he says in the book badly misinforms the public,
and that not on a trivial matter, but on a crucial issue in the debate between
Historicists and Mythicists. Although his conclusion is correct (I agree we
should perhaps not expect to have any such records for Jesus or early
Christianity), his premise is false. In fact, I cannot believe he said it. How
can he not know that we have thousands of these kinds of records? Yes,
predominantly from the sands of Egypt, but even in some cases beyond. I
have literally held some of these documents in my very hands. More
importantly, we also have such documents quoted or cited in books whose
texts have survived. For instance, Suetonius references birth records for
Caligula, and in fact his discussion of the sources on this subject is an
example I have used of precisely the kind of historical research that is
conspicuously lacking in any Christian literature before the third century.
[49]
From Ehrman’s list, “birth notices” would mean census receipts
declaring a newborn, tax receipts establishing birth year (as capitation taxes
often began when a child reached a certain age), or records establishing
citizenship (Roman or local, there being more than one kind), and we have
many examples of all three; as for “trial records” we have all kinds
(including rulings and witness affidavits); we have “death certificates,” too
(we know there were even coroner’s reports from doctors in cases of
suspicious death); and quite a lot else (such as tax receipts establishing
family property, home town, and family connections; business accounts;
personal letters; financial matters for charities and religious organizations).
As one papyrologist put it:
“Raise thyself up; shake off thy dust; remove the dirt which is
on thy face; loose thy bandages” (1363a–b = Utterance 553)
“Osiris, collect thy bones; arrange thy limbs; shake off thy dust;
untie thy bandages; the tomb is open for thee; the double doors of
the coffin are undone for thee; the double doors of heaven are open
for thee…thy soul is in thy body…raise thyself up!” (207b–209a and
[65]
2010b–2011a = Utterance 676).
So, regarding the death and resurrection of Osiris, clearly Ehrman states
what is in fact false.
This is most alarming because much of his case against Mythicism rests
on this false assertion. But worse, Ehrman foolishly generalizes to all
possible gods, repeatedly insisting there are no dying-and-rising gods in the
Hellenistic period. This proves he did no research on this subject whatever.
I shouldn’t have to adduce passages such as that from Plutarch, “[about]
Dionysus, Zagreus, Nyctelius, and Isodaetes, they narrate deaths and
[66]
vanishings, followed by returns to life and resurrections.” That looks
pretty cut and dried to me. But we needn’t rely on Plutarch, because for
Romulus and Zalmoxis we undeniably have pre-Christian evidence that
they actually die (on earth) and are actually raised from the dead (on earth)
and physically visit their disciples (on earth). Likewise for Inanna: a clear-
cut, death-and-resurrection tale for her exists on clay tablets inscribed a
thousand years before Christianity (in which she dies and rises in hell, but
[67]
departs from and returns to the world above all the same).
I was especially alarmed to see that Ehrman never once mentions
Romulus or Zalmoxis or Inanna — thus demonstrating he did no research
on this. He must not have even read my book Not the Impossible Faith,
even though he claims to have done so and even cites it. But he can’t have
actually read it, because I document the evidence, sources, and scholarship
on these gods there, yet his book shows no awareness of these gods or any
of the evidence I present for their resurrection cults. He ignores as well the
evidence I present for many other dying-and-rising gods and heroes. (Do
not mistake me for supporting false claims in this category, however;
Mithras was almost certainly not a dying-and-rising god, and Attis only
barely was.)
If Ehrman had done anything like a responsible literature review on this,
he would have found the latest peer reviewed scholarship establishing, for
example, that vanishing bodies as elements of resurrection tales were a
[68]
ubiquitous component of pagan mythmaking, for example. And thus a
dying-and-rising hero theme was incredibly ubiquitous, even if highly
flexible in the different ways this theme could be constructed. The only
literature Ehrman does address is Tryggve Mettinger’s work on pre-
[69]
Hellenistic dying-and-rising gods. Ehrman dismisses it as questionable
(without giving any good reason for that assessment), but ultimately admits
Mettinger might have a case for there being such gods. So Ehrman argues
instead, implausibly, that they can’t have influenced Christianity (even
though all the neighbors of Judea worshipped such gods for centuries right
up to the dawn of Christianity — they would have been well-known in
Tyre, for example — and Ezekiel 8:14 confirms their presence even in
Jerusalem itself). But Ehrman doesn’t address any of the evidence for these
same (much less other) gods in the Hellenistic period, the period actually
relevant to Christianity, which proves he did no checking, and isn’t even
aware of such evidence, nor even thought it was important for him to be.
Yet such evidence is abundant.
Ehrman ignores all this evidence and cherry picks his own evidence
instead, offering examples of Egyptian beliefs that the corpse of Osiris still
lay in its tomb, for example. But those Egyptians (not representing all
Egyptians) will have believed Osiris rose from the dead by assuming a new
body, and ascending to heaven therein, leaving the old one in its grave. And
the first Christians probably believed the very same thing of Jesus, the
empty tomb story evolving more than a generation later. There continued to
be Christians advocating that same view (of a ‘new body’ resurrection) for
[70]
centuries. The particular kind of resurrection effected is precisely the
kind of distinction that isn’t relevant. Osiris is a dead god who still “lives
again,” escaping the slumber of death, to live forever, as the king of heaven,
visiting and revealing himself to the living. Like all the gods that do this,
they do it in their divine resurrection bodies, which have replaced their
flesh-and-blood corpses. This is explicitly stated in the sources for many
[71]
gods, such as Hercules. Many Jews likewise believed the same thing
[72]
about their own resurrection. And Paul, our earliest Christian writer,
appears to say exactly that about earliest Christian belief, declaring that the
body that dies is not the body that rises (1 Corinthians 15:35–49), that in
fact we have entirely new bodies waiting for us in heaven, while our current
ones will be left to rot (2 Corinthians 5).
This notion of resurrection for gods and demigods is not spirit-survival
like the “Witch of Endor,” as Ehrman suggests, precisely because these are
gods, and gods have divine bodies. That’s what makes them gods (and not
just impotent spirits). The Jewish view of resurrection was essentially the
same view, only extended to humans, who would all become like gods — a
view that actually came from the Zoroastrians, and thus is not uniquely
[73]
Jewish. It was still called ‘resurrection,’ and it still involved a literal
death, followed (often a few days later) by a literal restoration to life, even
if in a newly-minted divine body.
Insofar as even the first Christians — or certainly later ones — believed
Jesus rose from the dead in the same body that died, that would be an
element of syncretism with the Jewish belief in corpse reanimation (held by
many but not all Jews), or even an adaptation of other pagan views of gods
that experience the same kind of resurrection — most clearly, Zalmoxis and
Inanna — and probably Inanna’s consort Tammuz, i.e., Adonis. As her
consort in the same myth, his celebrated resurrection is not likely to have
substantially differed from hers; we just don’t have the portion of the text
that describes it. (We only have external references to it being part of the
same cult’s mythology.) Even if the later Christian idea did not come from
these pagan ‘same-body’ resurrection myths, a pagan body-exchange
resurrection (returning to earth after their deaths in an immortal glorious
resurrection body, as Romulus does, for example) combined with a Jewish
resurrection of the flesh still gets you the version of dying-and-rising god
that we meet with, for example, in the Gospel of John. But that’s still just a
variant of the same mytheme: a god who dies and is then celebrated as
having risen again, in a more glorious body than he once had. That’s why
Osiris is said to have returned to life and been ‘restored to life’ and
‘recreated’ — the exact terms for resurrection, as even Ehrman admits
Plutarch freely uses to describe it. So is it likewise for other gods, from
Inanna and Zalmoxis to Hercules and Romulus, and many others besides.
Again, Ehrman exposes himself as completely uninformed on all of these
facts, almost willfully incompetent (trusting a single biased scholar and not
checking any of the evidence or reading any of the other literature to verify
what that scholar says), consistently misinforming his readers on the facts,
and thus hiding from them almost everything that actually adds strength to
the Mythicist thesis. That he does this on a point so central and crucial to
his entire argument is alone enough to discredit his entire book. This is not
how to argue for historicity. The fact that dying-and-rising god-cults
surrounded Palestine, and were in fact very fashionable at the time, simply
has to be accounted for.
This does not entail concluding that Jesus was a fictional person. Rather,
even if he was historical, the attribution to him of the properties of pagan
deities had to come from somewhere, and cultural diffusion is the obvious
source. Ehrman appears to be denying even that, which puts him at the far
extreme of even mainstream scholarship. He is implausibly implying that
it’s just a coincidence that in the midst of a fashion for dying-and-rising
salvation gods with sin-cleansing baptisms, the Jews just happened to come
up with the same exact idea without any influence at all from this going on
all around them. Such a coincidence is simply far too improbable to credit.
There were no gods like this in ancient China, but they were all over the
Mediterranean. So, if the Jews suddenly decided they had one, too, it is
almost certainly a product of cultural diffusion. Why deny this obvious
fact?
Ehrman says “we don’t have a single description in any source of any
[74]
kind of baptism in the mystery religions.” That is outright false, and one
of the most appallingly incompetent statements in this book. Apuleius gives
us a first person account of baptism in Isis cult, which he describes as a
symbolic death and resurrection for the recipient, exactly as Paul describes
Christian baptism in the New Testament (e.g., Romans 6:4), a fact that
surely undermines Ehrman’s entire argument and makes the Mythicist case
[75]
look significantly stronger. So this is certainly important for him to
know (and yet he would know it, if he actually had read my work — which
as we’ve seen, he apparently did not), and it is crucial for the reader to
know.
Evidence of baptism in Osiris cult (and that it granted eternal life) exists
[76]
in pre-Christian papyri, and several other sources. We also know that
something like baptism into eternal life was a feature of the cult of
Bacchus-Dionysus, and we know this not only because Plato mentions it
(discussing Orphic libations “for the remission of sins” that secure one a
better place in the afterlife), but also from actual pre-Christian inscriptions
[77]
(that’s right, words actually carved in stone). Both sources (Plato and
the inscriptions) also confirm the Bacchic belief that one could be baptized
on behalf of someone who had already died and thus gain them a better
position in the afterlife. It cannot be a coincidence that exactly the same
thing, baptism for the dead, is attested as a Christian rite by Paul (1
Corinthians 15:29). We have hints of baptismal rituals in other cults.
Tertullian, for example, mentions several pagan rituals of baptism for the
remission of sins, clearly understanding it to be a common practice
[78]
everywhere known. Certainly, in many of these cases the baptism was
part of a larger ritual (perhaps involving prayer or incense), but Christian
baptisms were not free of their own ritual accoutrements, so those hardly
matter to the point.
This also undermines Ehrman’s claim that there is no evidence that the
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death of Osiris (or any other god) “brought atonement for sin.” We
know Egyptian afterlife-belief made the physical weight of sin a factor in
deciding one’s placement in the afterlife (one’s soul was weighed against a
feather by Ma‘at, and too many sins made it weigh more, thus signaling
your doom), and that baptism into the death and resurrection of Osiris
washes away those sins (as we just saw) and thus lightens the soul to obtain
the best place in heaven. It is hard to imagine how this does not entail that
the death and resurrection of Osiris somehow procured salvation through
remission of sins. Clearly, as we saw even from as early as Plato, a similar
belief had developed in Bacchic and other cults.
We could perhaps get nit-picky as to what might be the exact theology of
the process, but whatever the differences, the similarity remains: the death
and resurrection of Osiris was clearly believed to make it possible for those
ritually sharing in that death and resurrection through baptism to have their
sins remitted. That belief predates Christianity, and Ehrman is simply wrong
to say otherwise. The evidence for this is clear, indisputable, and
mainstream — which means his book is useless if you want to know the
facts of this matter. Or any matter, apparently. This is not how to argue for
historicity. It ought to be rule number one: get the facts right.
8. Contradicting Yourself:
A Sign of Apologetics, Not Scholarship
Even with sound methods, to start with dozens of false facts (as Ehrman
does, as I just demonstrated with a sample of them) will produce false or
logically unsound conclusions. That would be enough to discredit the book.
One needn’t even question his methods. We know he made so many factual
errors, we can’t trust any of his factual claims. And in light of that even a
perfect method couldn’t have rescued this book. But the failure of his
methods remains important precisely to the extent that other historians in
this field might be fooled into trusting them and continuing to use them —
and lay readers might similarly be duped into trusting and using them
themselves.
I will not address here the one aspect of his methodology that the
scholarly literature has already soundly refuted: the ‘method of criteria.’ My
book Proving History already does that, in meticulous detail, summarizing
all the scholarship and evidence. Yet Ehrman cluelessly relies on that
method, showing no awareness of the fact that all peer reviewed studies of
it have denounced it as illogical (once again proving he didn’t check).
Instead, I will here address Ehrman’s particularly strange method of
inventing sources and witnesses. Ehrman illogically moves from the mere
possibility of hypothetical sources to the conclusion of having proved
historicity. How does he do that?
Ehrman argues that because Mark, Matthew, Luke, John, Thomas (yes,
Thomas) and various other documents all have material the others don’t,
that therefore we “have” dozens of “earlier” sources, which he sometimes
calls by their traditionally assigned letters like M, L, and Q. Ehrman is, of
course, inexplicably dismissive of Mark Goodacre’s refutation of the Q
hypothesis, claiming no one is convinced by it, yet cites not a single
rebuttal; I myself find Goodacre’s case persuasive, well enough at least to
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leave us in complete doubt of the matter. And the case is even worse for
the other hypothetical sources like M. Whether M or L or Q or anything
else, we don’t in fact have those sources, we aren’t even sure they exist, and
even if we were, we have no way of knowing what they really said. To
illustrate why that matters, take a look at the second redactions of the
Epistles of Ignatius and ask yourself how you would know what the first
redactions of those epistles said if you didn’t in fact have them (then go and
look at those first editions and see if you guessed successfully!). Just try
that, and you’ll see why Ehrman’s entire procedure is methodologically
ridiculous.
According to Ehrman’s method, the material added and changed in the
second redaction of the Ignatians had a ‘source’ and therefore we can rely
on it. But that’s absurd. The material added to the second redactions of the
Ignatian epistles is made up. It did not ‘have a source’ (except in that it
repeats common dogmas of later centuries). The same is true of most if not
all the material unique to any given Gospel. The miracle at Cana is
something John just made up. He did not ‘have a source for it.’ And even if
he did, that source made it up. Obviously. That’s why no one had ever heard
of it before, or anything even remotely like it before, and why it involved a
patently impossible event (the transmutation of matter; or if you have a
rationalist bent, a deceptive magician’s trick that would make no sense in
context and could not have any plausible motive). There is no argument for
historicity here. The story is false. And false stories cannot support the
existence of real people. And yet Ehrman repeatedly cites false stories, even
stories he himself confesses to be false (indeed, even false stories in forged
documents!) as evidence for the existence of Jesus, which is the most
unbelievably illogical thing I can imagine a historian doing.
Ehrman’s examples of finding hypothetical Aramaic sources exemplify
this fallacy. He cites Jesus’ cry on the cross, for example, which Mark gives
in Aramaic and translates, as evidence Mark was using an Aramaic source.
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Well, yes. His source is the Bible. If he was not translating the Hebrew
[95]
into Aramaic himself, then he was using a targum. Everyone knows
this. Scholar after scholar has pointed out that the entire crucifixion scene is
created out of material extracted from the Psalms, this specific cry on the
[96]
cross in particular, which is a quotation from Psalm 22. Ehrman doesn’t
mention this (misleading his readers again, by concealing rather crucial
information that undermines his point). But notice what happens when we
take it into account: Mark dressed up a scene by borrowing and translating a
line from the Bible, and Ehrman wants us to believe this is evidence for the
historicity of Jesus. Really. Think about that for a moment. Then kick his
book across the room to vent your outrage.
Mark does the same thing (puts a sentence in Jesus’ mouth in Aramaic,
then translates into Greek) in the story of the raising of Jairus’ daughter,
which Ehrman again cites as evidence that Mark was using Aramaic
[97]
sources. Apart from the fact that we should sooner suspect Mark drew
this line from the same targum that he used for embellishing the crucifixion
(and we just don’t have that targum to confirm), the bigger problem is that
everyone knows the Jairus story is fabricated. It didn’t happen. It’s a
literary creation, a reworking of an Old Testament story (a targum of which
may have contained, for all we know, the very line quoted by Jesus), with
[98]
obvious puns, and a symbolic and allegorical purpose. It’s possible it
was invented in Aramaic, but why would that matter? How does a story
being fabricated in Aramaic prove the characters in that story existed?
Jairus (whose name means ‘he will awaken’ or ‘be enlightened’), in a story
about resurrection and enlightenment) is most likely a fictional character.
So why couldn’t Jesus (whose name means ‘savior,’ lit. ‘God saves’) be just
as fictional? But even the notion that the story originated in Aramaic cannot
be proved. If Mark is an Aramaic speaker, then he may simply be
translating his own Aramaic thoughts and ideas into Greek. And even if he
is using an Aramaic source (and that source is not simply a targum), then
that source made this up. And made-up stories cannot be used as evidence
for the existence of the characters in them. Yet that is what Ehrman does
with them.
Consider how his ‘method’ would work if we applied it to the nativity
stories (which Ehrman himself concludes are fiction). According to
Ehrman’s methodology we have six independent sources for the miraculous
birth of Jesus: Matthew, Luke, the Protevangelion of James, Ignatius
(Ephesians 19), Justin Martyr, and Q (because some elements of the
nativities in Luke and Matthew are shared in common). And there are
probably others. We know these are all made up. Not a stitch of them is
true. But Ehrman’s method would compel us to assert that we have
undeniable proof of the miraculous birth of Jesus. For example, every one
of these ‘independent’ sources attests that a miraculous star or light from
heaven attended his birth. Six independent sources! What better evidence
could you want?
These are all different stories, too, written in different words, so (by
Ehrman’s logic) they “cannot” have been influenced by each other —
except where they are nearly identical, then (by Ehrman’s logic) they
corroborate each other. This is actually the way Ehrman argues for the
historicity of Jesus. That his very same method produces absurd
conclusions (“a miraculous star or heavenly light attended the birth of
Jesus”), demonstrates its logical invalidity. He is simply not allowing for
the obvious fact that all the new material in these stories is made up (even if
they used now lost sources, the material is still made up, it was just made up
in those sources), and that people can use a source by completely rewriting
it in their own words and changing any detail they please (which is why
nearly every specialist I have read on the Gospel of John disagrees with
Ehrman’s claim that John did not use Luke as a source; I think Ehrman is
[99]
not nearly honest enough with his readers about this).
Even with his assumption (never really defended, yet continually
employed) that ‘hypothesized underlying Aramaic source’ = ‘source written
in Judea in the 30s CE,’ Ehrman descends into the illogical, in this case a
textbook fallacy of affirming the consequent. Aramaic was not only spoken
in first century Judea; it was spoken in parts of Syria and Egypt and Asia
Minor and to an extent across the whole diaspora, and continually for
centuries. So ‘Aramaic source’ = ‘Judean source written in the 30s CE’ is a
ridiculous inference. And yet Ehrman repeatedly relies on it, arguing that
some lost sources behind the Gospels were in Aramaic (already a double
conjecture: that there were sources; and that they were in Aramaic), so
therefore they originated in Judea in the 30s CE. Why? Because Aramaic
was spoken in Judea in the 30s CE. Ehrman gives no other reason. That’s
illogical.
This is what he is doing:
If p, then If a source was written in Judea in the 30s If a dog ate your homework, then
q. CE, then it was probably written in Aramaic. you have no homework to turn in.
q. The Gospels used sources written in You have no homework to turn
Aramaic in.
Therefore, Therefore, those sources were probably Therefore, a dog ate your
p. written in Judea in the 30s CE. homework.
You can prove anything with logic like this. And the fact that it’s
illogical isn’t even the only thing wrong with this argument. He can’t really
establish q with any certainty, either (did the Gospels use sources written in
Aramaic? That’s been argued but never conclusively proven). Nor can he
establish the required inference that ‘Aramaic source’ entails ‘not made up.’
Someday I might compose an article applying Ehrman’s method to prove
a flying saucer crashed at Roswell and alien bodies were recovered from it.
Because I have a dozen independent sources (which by Ehrman’s method I
can convert into several dozen sources, by inventing a ‘Q’ for material two
sources share but change up, and an ‘M’ for material unique to one source
but not in the others, and so on), which contain stories that show signs of
deriving from the original language of the time and place the event
happened (1940s American English), all written within fifty years of the
event (thus an even better source situation than we have for the historicity
of Jesus!). So obviously those stories had ‘sources’ that date from the time
and place of the crash! If I limited myself only to material written by
‘believers’ (and people quoting them or relying on them alone as a source),
then by Ehrman’s method I would have to believe a flying saucer crashed at
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Roswell and alien bodies were recovered from it — which is silly.
Not only is fabrication a better explanation of the proliferation of
traditions (for Jesus just as for Roswell), the whole notion of using
hypothetical sources as ‘evidence’ suffers from another fatal problem. The
fact that we don’t have that source also means we don’t know exactly what
it said, and that makes it even more useless for determining historicity. For
example, if someone used a book like Revelation as a source for some
sayings of Jesus and put those sayings in the middle of Jesus’ Galilean
ministry, if we didn’t have Revelation we would not know that it actually
claimed those sayings came from a vision of Jesus in heaven and not an
actual historical Jesus. Likewise, if we did not have the Epistle of
Eugnostos, we would not know that the source used for the sayings of Jesus
in the Sophia of Jesus Christ actually originally identified those sayings as
coming from Eugnostos and not Jesus. A Christian just copied them over,
adapted them as needed, and changed who said them. Thus, not having the
actual source makes it impossible for us to know whether that source would
have supported historicity or not. The mere existence of such sources is
therefore useless — even when we can confirm there were such sources,
which we cannot honestly do with the kind of certainty Ehrman claims
anyway. This should not have to be said, because already many leading
mainstream scholars do not believe such certainty is warranted.
Needless to say, having surveyed even just a few problems, it’s clear
Ehrman has no logically credible method. Is this really the only way to
defend historicity? Illogical inferences are bad enough, and must be avoided
altogether. Historians need to seriously question and verify whether their
arguments are logically valid, and not just assume they are thinking or
[101]
arguing logically. But omitting mention of the kinds of facts I just
enumerated is also irresponsible, because most readers won’t know these
things. Yet concealing this information from them makes Ehrman’s case
seem stronger than it really is. His readers should rightly feel betrayed by
this.
(Note that I do not say, here or elsewhere, that the bronze sculpture itself is a
symbol of St. Peter, but only the cock or rooster, as in the story of Matthew
26:34, etc., in which Peter denies Christ three times before the cock crows. In
several places elsewhere in my book I provide the citation for the cock/rooster
being a symbol of St. Peter. I apologize for the ambiguity, but I was not in error
here, despite the constant attempts to make me appear as such.)
After providing the image, I then cited it as coming from “Walker, WDSSO,”
a reference to Barbara G. Walker’s The Woman’s Dictionary of Symbols and
Sacred Objects, included in my bibliography at the end of the book. Previous to
this image [168], I had discussed this theme of the ‘peter’ or cock, with the
esoteric and ‘vulgar’ meaning:
“Peter” is not only “the rock” but also “the cock” or penis, as the
word is used as slang to this day. As Walker says, “The cock was also a
symbol of Saint Peter, whose name also meant a phallus or male
principle (pater) and a phallic pillar (petra). Therefore, the cock’s image
was often placed atop church towers.”
The ‘Savior of the World’ image appears in Walker’s book on page 397,
where she remarks:
Over the years since The Christ Conspiracy was published, this image has
been the periodic focus of interest. Of late, in his book Did Jesus Exist?, Bart
Ehrman has raised up this image in my book and appears to be accusing me of
fabricating it. Quoting me first, he comments:
“ ‘Peter’ is not only ‘the rock’ but also ‘the cock,’ or penis, as the
word is use as slang to this day.” Here Acharya shows (her own?) hand
drawing of a man with a rooster head but with a large erect penis instead
of a nose, with this description: “Bronze sculpture hidden in the Vatican
treasure [sic] of the Cock, symbol of St. Peter” (295). [There is no penis-
nosed statue of Peter the cock in the Vatican or anywhere else except in
books like this, which love to make things up.]
(The “treasure” typo is Ehrman’s, while the ‘sic’ is mine. The other
comments in brackets and parentheses are Ehrman’s.)
In insinuating that I drew the image myself, Ehrman is indicating he did not
notice the citation under it in my book, clearly referring to Barbara Walker’s
work. He is further implying that I simply make things up, and he is asserting
with absolute certainty that no such bronze has existed in the Vatican,
essentially stating that I fabricated the entire story. Contrary to these unseemly
accusations, the facts are that I did not draw the image, the source of which was
cited, and that, according to several writers, the image certainly is “hidden” in
the Vatican, as I stated.
In The Woman’s Dictionary (397), Walker cites the image as “Knight, pl. 2,”
which, in her bibliography, refers to: Knight, Richard Payne. A Discourse on
the Worship of Priapus. New York: University Books, 1974. Consulting an
earlier edition of Knight’s book [1865], we find a discussion of the object in
question:
Here Knight references the image as “Plate II. Fig. 3.” Turning to the back of
the book, around page 263, we find the image (right), which is hand-drawn
because of its age, printed when photography was still not entirely feasible for
publishers.
On page 35, Knight mentions the “celebrated bronze” again:
The author follows this discussion with another about the ancient author
Macrobius and his work concerning the various gods of the Roman Empire and
their solar nature.
Here Middleton describes the “priapus effigy” as a rooster with a head crest
and the inscription “Savior of the World” or Servator orbis in the Latin. A
“learned man” interprets the image as a cock, a bird sacred to the sun, a symbol
of fertility and generative power. We can see where the term priapus
gallinaceus comes from, as it refers to the erect member of the god Priapus and
the Latin word for ‘rooster’ or ‘cock.’ Therefore, we are discussing an entire
genre of artifacts, evidently dating to before the common era and into it
(Gnostic?); other such examples can be cited.
In The Image of Priapus [67], Giancarlo Carlobelli writes:
Continuing our search, we find in Otto Augustus Wall’s Sex and Sex Worship
(Phallic Worship): A Scientific Treatise on Sex [437] a photograph of what
appears to be the original bronze statue (or at least its twin). Concerning this
artifact, Wall [438] states that “this representation of a bronze figure of
Priapus...was found in an ancient Greek temple...”
[107]
In the journal Studies in Iconography [7–8:94], published by Northern
Kentucky University, after discussing this “Savior of the World” artifact,
Lorrayne Y. Baird comments:
The most remarkable of all the examples of the Priapus gallinaceus
grotesque, however, is an antique Roman bronze of the Albani
collection. The bronze is a bust with the neck, shoulders and breast of a
human male figure, upon which is grafted the crested head of a cock
with an erect phallus replacing nose and chin. At the base of the bust
appears the inscription ΣΩΤΗΡ ΚΟΣΜΟΥ [Soter Kosmou] (“Savior of
the World”). This object was published under papal and royal authority,
exhibited for a time in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and is
now said to be held inaccessible in the secret collections of the Vatican.
During the life of this bronze, officials disagreed upon the probity of the
exhibit. One offended cardinal requested that the object be removed
from public view; whereupon, Pope Benedict XIV is reported to have
answered “that he had no authority over such a personage, being himself
but his vicar.”
Frank R. Zindler
The Correspondence
For Reason,
Frank
[113]
Ehrman replied on the following day:
Frank,
Thanks for your note. I’m glad you’ve enjoyed the books. …
And thanks for your lecture. I’m afraid I’m too crushed with a
writing deadline to be able to give it written evaluation, but I very
much appreciate your sending it along.
For what it’s worth, I don’t think that agnostics are atheists,
although I do lean more toward the atheist side of agnosticism
(“strong” agnostic, I like to think of myself. :-) ). All best,
-- Bart Ehrman
Dear Bart,
Ann and I will be attending the SBL meeting in New Orleans and
I am hoping against hope that you will be willing (and schedule-wise
able) to be our guest for dinner on one evening of the convention. I
see that you are speaking Sunday morning, and I don’t know if you
will be staying for the whole show or not. I have a bunch of books
and papers I would like to give to you. I could have sent them to you
by mail, but I am hoping I will be able to explain the purpose and
utility of each item face-to-face. Naturally, I hope to be able to “pick
your brain” on the historicity of Jesus issue.
For Reason,
Frank
This was very startling and quite unexpected. I forwarded the e-mail to
Ehrman on October 14, 2010, with the following comment and request:
Dear Bart,
As you know, in science the onus probandi rests with those who
assert the existence of a think [sic] or process. I would appreciate an
explanation. I was disappointed that you did not have time to read
my “Prolegomenon to a science of Christian origins” that I sent you
almost two years ago when you were trying to get several books
through the press. I would ask you now again to be so kind as to read
it.
For Reason,
Frank Zindler
American Atheist Press
Frank,
BTW, I have not done any radio programs for about a year.
-- Bart
Bart D. Ehrman
James A. Gray Professor
Department of Religious Studies
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
I was dismayed to see that he didn’t even bother to say if he had read the
articles and books I had given him or any of the evidence concerning
Nazareth and Capernaum! He did not deny that he had accused me of
“making something up.” Alarmed, lest our dialogue be abruptly terminated
before he might answer any of my questions at all, I answered Ehrman later
that day:
Bart,
I don’t really find it offensive, I find it hard to understand how
someone who knows so much about Christian origins would simply
appeal to authority and ad populum argumentation without fairly
evaluating the evidence against the majority opinion.
I asked you several years ago why you thought Jesus was
historical, what was the most important evidence in your opinion. To
my disappointment, you did not answer me then but it seemed
understandable at the time. But now I would really like to know why
you think Jesus was a real man. Surely, you must have some reason
better than the ad populum excuse.
Frank
Frank,
-- Bart
Bart D. Ehrman
James A. Gray Professor
Department of Religious Studies
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Bart,
Still in friendship,
Frank
[125]
Not receiving an answer to my question about Docetism, I wrote to
Ehrman again several days later:
Dear Bart,
I have just reread your first reply to me where you allude to all
the authorities who believe in an historical Jesus. It now occurs to
me that this has even less significance than ordinary ad populum
arguments. The reason is that virtually all of the “authorities” who
have pronounced upon the historicity of Jesus are handicapped and
compromised by their employment by church-related institutions.
Certainly, even an Atheist in the employ of a religious university or
seminary would not dare to express mythicist theories. Almost all
authorities were themselves educated at sectarian schools and were
never exposed to the abundant mythicist literature that has appeared
[127]
since the 1790s. Virtually all secular historians are not
themselves authorities on Jesus of Nazareth, taking the word of
religious authorities simply because they have never had any reason
to do otherwise. They never had reason to do otherwise because of
the effective suppression of mythicist writings.
Thus it is that only outsiders with respect to the sectarian
university-seminary world are able even to explore the mythicist
aspects of Jesus. You yourself are a rare exception to this, teaching
as you are at a public university. You are one of the few scholars
who would be free to “come out” with the news that Jesus of
Nazareth never lived as a man of flesh and blood.
I think you will have to agree that there isn’t a single fact that BY
ITSELF requires Jesus of Nazareth to have been an historical figure.
By contrast, the Res Gestae inscriptions of Augustus and Tiberius
instantly confer reality upon those figures. The many coins of other
rulers likewise BY THEMSELVES, even if only a single coin,
confer reality. There is nothing concerning Jesus of Nazareth that
can confer reality upon him in this way.
Several days later, Ehrman sent me the following reply. After reading it,
I ask readers to reread the letter above and form their own opinion as to
whether or not Ehrman’s answer was either adequate or fair.
Frank,
Thanks for your follow-up. There are lots and lots of scholars of
early Christianity who teach in secular settings. None of them is a
mythicist. That should probably tell you something. Though I know
it doesn’t. :-)
I certainly don’t challenge your right to ask hard questions. I
challenge your authority to answer them confidently without serious
training in the field. You would like an example where you
obviously go wrong. OK. Your claim that Christianity started as a
mystery religion. I’m afraid you don’t seem to know much about
[129]
mystery religions. But why should you? It’s a very complex
[130]
field.
All best wishes.
-- Bart Ehrman
Bart D. Ehrman
James A. Gray Professor
Department of Religious Studies
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
For personal reasons, I could not reply to this provocative and insulting
non-answer until several weeks later. Still thinking that I could engage him
at a scholarly level, I wrote the following:
Bart,
As you may have noted if you read my Prolegomenon (It just has
been published by Joe Hoffmann through Prometheus in a
proceedings volume for a meeting of the Jesus Project.), I seek to
make the study of Christian origins scientific. Step one for the
mysteries, I am collecting ALL uses in Greek of the term
“mysterion” (“musterion” for those who have forgotten why a “y”
was used in Latin transcription) in the NT, apostolic fathers,
apocrypha, church fathers up past Irenaeus, the surviving mystery
religious texts, including Hermetic stuff in Greek, etc. (I have used
your Loeb edition and will send you an errata list when I have time
to compile it.) Also, I will do the same for Latin. Hopefully, I’ll live
long enough to include Coptic and Syriac.
The greatest problem seems to be that you repeatedly fall into the
petitio principii fallacy. Consider, for example:
Why do you beg the question that there ARE in fact historical
events underlying them? Isn’t it more reasonable, since these are
“theologically molded accounts,” to suppose that these stories are
theopolitical aetiological tales concocted to justify the power
structures of various religious groups?
I hope I can find time to finish your book before Atlanta and that
we may have some time to discuss it together there.
Frank
Bart,
(1) Now that you are an Atheist, you are free from the most
compelling reason to believe in the historicity of Jesus of Nazareth.
It is true that the vast majority even of Atheist scholars still think he
was real, but to someone who believes that Jesus was a benevolent
[133]
god, historicity is sine qua non, but that no longer is an option.
(5) Although I have not yet gotten all the data into my Excel
spreadsheet, it is becoming quite clear that evolution went from
Christ to Jesus, not from Jesus to Christ. My survey of the Greek and
Latin texts of the NT, Apocrypha (not yet including the Coptic stuff),
the Apostolic Fathers, and the Greek and Latin Fathers of the first
few centuries indicates quite clearly that the evolutionary sequence
went from Christ to Christ Jesus, to Jesus Christ, to Jesus with the
definite article, to Jesus without the article, to Jesus of Nazareth.
First of all, Consider 1 Peter 5:1: “The elders which are among
you I exhort, who am also an elder, and a witness of the sufferings of
Christ, and also a partaker of the glory that shall be revealed...”
[136]
Is not the use of “Christ” anachronistic? Would not
the “real Peter” have spoken of the sufferings of his master Jesus?
Wouldn’t he have recalled a man rather than a title?
Secondly, the pericope adulterae: are you aware that this story
jumps around? It can also be found in John 21 and Luke 21 in some
MSS.
On page 167 you say that “... since the majority of Christians
were from the lower, working classes, the weekly meetings as a rule
took place either before the work day began, before, dawn, or after it
was over, after sundown, that is, when it was dark.” What actual
evidence do you have that the first Christians were lower-class? This
recently has been questioned and someone (I forget who, just now)
has found that on the contrary, a very large number of earliest
Christians were people of importance. This is of importance since it
would undermine the argument against mystery-cult origins of
Christianity by supporting the humble explanation for the “secret
meetings” of early Christians. I wonder if you have actual data to
support this claim or are just following the scholarly tradition.
I hope you have been able to read this far. Congratulations again
on an excellent book.
Frank
Bart,
Frank
July 17 , I *think*.
-- Bart
Bart,
Franx thanx for the quick reply. I am assuming the book includes
the Coptic texts also. Is that correct?
Frank
-- B
(By the way, did you get the four volumes of my collected short
works that I sent to you several months ago? I hope they didn’t get
lost at the University.)
“The most likely explanation for the low quality of the papyrus,
the rapid cursive hand, and the frequent rate of errors is that this
manuscript was the product of an exercise in scriptural memory.”
Indeed.
Frank
Several weeks later, René Salm informed me that Ehrman was actually
going ahead with a book to refute the Christ-Myth theory. Given the
potentially pivotal position of Nazareth archaeology in that theory, and —
quite frankly — doubting that he would actually read Salm’s technically
challenging book, I wrote a summary of the evidence against a settlement at
‘Nazareth’ at the turn of the era.
Bart,
I am very pleased to learn that you are going ahead with your
book on the historicity of Jesus of Nazareth and are willing to make
a serious effort to refute the Christ-Myth Theory. Even before your
book is finished, I am certain it will be a valuable contribution to NT
scholarship.
(3) Origen could not decide if the place was called Nazareth or
Nazara, and the MSS of Luke show a stunning uncertainty as to the
exact spelling of the name. Reuben Swanson’s NT Greek MSS: Luke
gives the following variants:
Nazara, Nazaret, Nazareth, Nazarat, and Nazared, and I think
more variants could be found in MSS of the other gospels and
Church Fathers.
If there actually had been a town with a definite name,
how could such differences in spelling have arisen? To be sure, the
difference between Nazaret and Nazareth (unaspirated vs. aspirated
/t/) are minimal to our English ears, but to a speaker of Koine or
Aramaic the difference between /t/ and /th/ was phonemic and would
not likely have been confused. But how could Nazaret(h) be
confused with Nazara? What actual city name could have given rise
to both spellings? (I will discuss the origin(s) of the name later on
below.)
(5) Like many other holy places of the NT, Nazareth seems to
have been discovered by Constantine’s mother, with the aid of
willing-to-please tour guides.
(11) Rene has shown that the Franciscan sites on the hill are not
datable to the turn of the era. In doing so, he has refuted the Biblical
claims at the same time that he has refuted the Franciscans.
(Interestingly, no synagogue has ever been found atop the hill as
would follow from Luke 4:29. Indeed, no buildings of any kind
existed atop the hill until early modern times.)
(12) Although there doubtless was a city somewhere on the
valley floor at the times of the tombs evaluated by Rene, it is
extremely unlikely the valley floor was inhabited at the turn of the
era. If it had been inhabited, abundant mortuary and agricultural
remains clearly datable to that period would be found on the hillside.
As you (Bart) well know, the task of the historian is to discover what
is or was PROBABLE, not just what is or was POSSIBLE. In
science, the onus probandi rests upon the one positing the existence
of a process or thing. Without sufficient evidence forthcoming, the
scientist cannot accept the reality of the process or thing posited.
(13) Unlike the case of other archaeological sites that date with
certainty to the first centuries BCE and CE, virtually no coins
datable to that period have ever been found at Nazareth. By contrast,
hundreds to thousands of coins are typically recoverable from other
[138]
sites inhabited at that period.
Where to begin? Hebrew doesn’t have vowels? Even if what was meant
was that the word for ‘branch’ would have been written without vowels,
could so sloppy a sentence have been written by the same person who
edited and translated the Loeb Classical Library edition of the Greek text of
the Apostolic Fathers? Why is Ehrman showing me as using NZR as a
Hebrew word, instead of the consonantal skeleton of a Greek word
representing the Hebrew N-Ts-R (netser), the word for ‘branch’? Why does
he not understand that I was deriving the names Nazara and Nazaret(h) by
‘back formation’ from the Greek epithets Nazoraios or Nazarenos, not
directly from N-Ts-R—and not at all from N-Z-R (although other scholars
whom I respect do thus derive the names)? Why doesn’t Ehrman criticize
my linguistic/phonetic argument? Why doesn’t he even mention that I have
such an argument?
Ehrman quips, “Zindler does not marshal any evidence for this view [!]
but simply asserts it. And he does not explain why Christians who did not
know what NZR meant simply didn’t ask someone.” Neither Josh
McDowell nor Lee Strobel could have made a sillier comment. Exactly
whom would those Christians have asked? When and where and under what
circumstances would they have made such inquiry? Would anyone even
think to ask someone “Where does Jimmy the Greek come from?”
But to return to my e-mail of July 14, 2011:
(21) It seems clear that “Jesus of Nazareth” was the end of the
evolutionary line for this character in the canonical NT. Almost
certainly, he started as a heavenly Christ, but probably not a Christos
having messianic signification. The Sibylline double acrostic spells
the name ChREISTOS, and Irenaeus (Against heresies, B.I, ch. 15)
tells us that “the name Christ the Son (Uios Chreistos) comprises
twelve letters... Moreover, Chreistus, he [Marcus] says, being a word
of eight letters, indicates the first Ogdoad.”
It is likely that early MSS of the epistles would have spelled the
title Chreistos, not Christos. The latter would have evolved out of the
iotacism that overtook the Greek language at this time. “Chreistos”
and “ChrEstos” would both have been pronounced “ChrIstos,” and
once a messianic connection had been made, would have been the
spelling thereafter. The Gnostics, however, seem here as elsewhere
to have retained many early traditions and usages. Exactly what
“Chreistos” would have meant in early Christianity, however, I do
not know and am trying to discover. It is maddening that the MS
traditions are of little help here, as only rarely are nomina sacra
spelled out. One cannot tell from the written symbols how the words
might actually have been spelled.
Frank
--Bart
To be fair, though, please note the time stamp on the message. Several
hours later the same night, he sent the following message:
Frank,
- Bart
Bart D. Ehrman
James A. Gray Professor
Department of Religious Studies
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
The next night I sent him the following reply, attaching a chapter from
my yet unpublished memoires detailing how I was forced by county
politicians in Upstate New York to give up a nearly twenty-year career as a
teacher and professor at SUNY because of my Atheism and support of
Madalyn Murray O’Hair in a lawsuit to remove “In God We Trust” from
American currency. Not giving up hope that he was still genuinely
interested in understanding Mythicist evidence and arguments, I
recommended for study my article demonstrating that the Twelve
Apostles/Disciples were every bit as unknown to history as was their
master.
Bart,
I’m pleased to hear you are looking at some of the stuff in
Volume I of my collected short works. (Actually, it doesn’t contain
any of my papers for the Jesus Seminar and a bunch of other things
such as my legal writings.) Among the things you might want to
critique is my chapter “The Twelve: Further Fictions From the New
Testament.” As you know, I notoriously deny the historicity not only
of Jesus of Nazareth but also of the Twelve Apostles/Disciples. As I
love to say, the silence of history concerning Jesus is amplified by
the silence concerning the Twelve Apostles. The whole purpose of
the Twelve was to get attention and be noticed, yet history knows no
more of them than of their alleged master.
Six hours later, it appears he had read my story, but not my comments on
‘The Twelve.’
Thanks. Scary!
n Bart
Bart D. Ehrman
James A. Gray Professor
Department of Religious Studies
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Because American Atheist Press was about to publish Dr. Robert Price’s
The Christ-Myth Theory and Its Problems, it seemed desirable to send a
pre-publication copy of the book to Ehrman.
Bart,
The printing of Bob Price’s THE CHRIST-MYTH THEORY
AND ITS PROBLEMS is being delayed. I expect that I will have a
pdf of the book to send him for proofing by the end of the week or
early next week. At that time I will send it to you also, so you can
include it in your critique. Bob sums up a lot of history of the theory
and includes quite a bit of original research as well. It is a rather
definitive statement.
Frank
n B
Bart D. Ehrman
Frank
Several weeks passed and then I received the first-ever request for
evidence concerning Mythicism and Historical-Jesus studies. It was mildly
challenging and had the odor of Church-of-Christ apologetics—apologetics
that for many years has denied not only that Christianity began as a mystery
cult—certainly a justifiable thing to deny—but also that Christianity at no
time had ever absorbed mystery-cult elements.
Frank,
Many thanks,
n Bart
As welcome as the inquiry was, its timing was awkward. I was away
from my library and felt an urgency in supplying the requested information.
For reasons now forgotten, I was expecting his book to be published in
November or December of that year and knew that he would have to
complete his book well ahead of that time. I had to tread water, although as
everything turned out his book came out much later than expected and none
of the information I would eventually supply to him would find a place in
DJE?
Bart,
I think I will be able to find an ancient source for all of the stuff
you have queried when I get back home this coming weekend. If
there are any for which I cannot find a source, I’ll have to eat some
non-Mithraic crow. [The crow was one of the Mithraic icons,
probably the constellation Corvus.]
Frank
A day later, I heard from Ehrman again. For once, he was actually taking
notice of something I had written and was actually expanding the focus of
discussion. I was overjoyed.
Frank,
All best,
n B
Although this note seemed reasonable at the time, after the publication of
DJE? some things are worth noting. For one thing, Ehrman’s reference to
authority is not the sort of citation of authority found in scientific practice.
In science, “authority” is cited not only to avoid having to reinvent the
wheel, but also to give credit or blame for information not the reported
discovery of the instant author. “Cumont, who is no longer regarded as a
reliable source” not only reveals Ehrman’s fixation on authority qua
authority but betrays his ignorance of Cumont’s work apart from his
popular The Mysteries of Mithra. He seems not to understand that Cumont
published most of the primary, factual data upon which most
interpretations of Mithraism depend. While one may argue that Cumont
misinterpreted or misunderstood the significance of the artifacts he
reported, could Beck or anyone else dispute the reality of the “Mithréum de
Sarmizegetusa” whose partial floor plan is depicted on page 280 of Vol. II
of his Textes et Monuments Figurés Relatifs aux Mystéres de Mithra
[1896]?
While it is arguable who had the responsibility to supply the evidence
requested, the final sentence of this note is of interest: “My suspicion is that
everyone thinks it’s right because everyone says so!” Why is it his mere
suspicion? Why doesn’t a famous scholar have a firm, knowledge-based
opinion? Did he himself make any preliminary investigation that turned up
nothing—as I did for a Historical Jesus in my first encounter with
Mythicism—and then decide that there was little point in further searching?
Or was he confident that the claims of the traditional apologists were
correct and simply did what I would have done in such circumstances—put
the burden of proof on the person making an outrageous ontological claim?
It certainly appears that Ehrman had no real knowledge of the primary
sources concerning Mithraism let alone the voluminous literature
investigating possible mystery-religion ties to primitive Christianity. In any
case, I eagerly commenced the search to find answers to his questions.
Bart,
To facilitate this conversation it would be greatly appreciated if
you would respond to all 3 of my e-mail addresses above. That way,
whether I’m at home, at work, or on the road I will be able to
respond in a timely manner. I know it’s a bother, but I hope you
won’t mind doing that.
I have had Roger Beck’s work for several years now but have
never had time to see exactly where he claims to correct Cumont and
Ulansey. I know some of his criticisms but will have to check them
out this weekend.
While the great scholars of the 19th century and early 20th
century certainly made a number of mistakes about all kinds of
things, for the most part they were really smart cookies and it is
always wise to check them out carefully before rejecting their
claims. It is possible, of course, that virgin birth etc. has just been
repeated endlessly without foundation, I think that is not probable. In
fact, I think I have already found an explanation for the virgin birth
part, but I need yet more documentation. I hope I’ll be able to give
you a reasonable report by Sunday night or Monday. I’m having
trouble locating books and manuscripts in my library, which is not
cataloged and pretty much fills up 11 or 12 rooms of my house. …
Frank
Bart,
I regret that there will be little logic in the sequence with which I
deal with your questions. You would really chuckle, if not laugh out
loud, if you could have seen me this weekend running upstairs and
downstairs from library to library and file cabinet to file cabinet
trying to locate books and papers. My whole house is a repository
for books and manuscripts and the tons of correspondence associated
with AAP publishing as well as with my research. In any case, I
have not yet nailed all the questions but have at least some worked
out to my own satisfaction and hopefully to yours as well.
HALOS
Thus, like all solar beings, Mithra was often depicted with halos.
Frank
Bart,
THE EUCHARIST
Frank
Bart,
Sorry again for the delay. Ann’s computer died, … and I haven’t
had any time for fun. In any case, the delay has caused my train of
thought to become derailed and all my plans to organize my reports
have unravelled. Consequently, I shall have to report answers and
partial answers as they come off the piles of books and print-outs.
Before going into virgin births, I want to reprise the quote from
Tertullian and make a few further comments.
Tertullian [De paraescriptione haereticorum, 40:3-4, Geden
translation]:
For well over a century, mythicist scholars have argued that the
“resurrection” of sun gods phenomenologically is simply the rising
of the sun above the celestial equator at the time of the vernal
equinox. “On earth as it is in heaven.” That is why the Christian
resurrection is celebrated in spring around March 21. The “death” of
a sun god occurs, correspondingly, at the time of the autumnal
equinox, when the sun sinks below the celestial equator. Thus, even
without the slightly cryptic comment of Tertullian about mock
resurrection, we would know that Mithra died and was resurrected
by virtue of the simple fact that he was a sun god.
So, Mithra is Apollo, the sun god, and acquires all the
characteristics of that deity.
“There upon the Vatican Hill, where the faithful were ‘absolved
of their sins’ by means of a solemn baptism in blood in the sanctuary
of Attis and Mithra—upon that spot is where Peter is supposed to
have found his end during the Neronian persecution of Christians. It
is the place where the dome of St. Peter’s was erected over the so-
called ‘grave of the Apostle.’ [See my chapter “Of Bones and
Boners: Saint Peter at the Vatican” in Volume I for more information
about this spot.] It is where originally stood the temple not of the
Christian, but rather the pagan, ‘man of rock.’ It is simply Attis
under the name Agdistis, as we have said, a stone-god, one born
from rock, a Peter. [96]
Partial support for Drews’ claims come, of all things, from the
Web-site of the Vatican Museum, which shows an altar dedicated to
Cybele and Attis: “The shrine of the Phrygian goddess Cybele, from
which numerous inscribed altars come, was situated in an
unidentified place near the Vatican Basilica.”
Bart,
I haven’t gotten any “hopped-the-pond” automatic responses, so I
assume you’re receiving these reports. I will tonight, in fact, finally
get to the virgin birth of Mithra. I don’t have it nailed down to my
complete satisfaction, but I’m getting close.
This nicely takes care of the virgin-birth question and points out
further parallels between Mithra and Christ/Jesus, the title “Lord”
and perhaps even an immaculate conception notion anterior to that of
the Virgin Mary Theotokos. Unfortunately, the article doesn’t even
say what language the dedication is written in, although being
Seleucid one would suppose it to have been in Greek. It doesn’t say
exactly where in “western Iran” this temple is, nor, perhaps not
surprising for a popular article, does it give a reference to pursue. I
have e-mailed IranDokht to see if I can get more information on this.
Meanwhile I will continue to search the standard works.
While I must confess that I have not completely been able to give
fully satisfactory answers to your questions, a solid beginning has
been made. It is well to pull back and get a more panoramic view of
our discussion. In some of my writings I try to demonstrate that there
is no good evidence to indicate the historicity of Jesus of Nazareth,
the Twelve Apostles, much of Gospel geography, etc. I point out that
the onus probandi of necessity is on the person who claims the
existence of a thing or process. That is the rule of science, and it
must be the rule of any credible historiography.
Bart,
I guess I need to thank you for your mildly challenging e-mail of
several weeks ago concerning page 64 of Volume I of my Through
Atheist Eyes. I was actually moving away from my emphasis on the
importance of Mithraism in the origins of Christianity. After having
been “encouraged” to look into the foundations of Mithraic studies,
however, I am now beginning to think I did not emphasize the
connection enough. To be sure, I have not had time to nail down all
my claims as solidly as you probably would like, but it seems
increasingly clear to me that all the great scholars going back to
Charles Dupuis in the 1790s weren’t all that far off the main
highway.
I opened the book to the last chapter, chapter 30, “Mithras and
Christ: some iconographical similarities,” by A. Deman Brussels. In
examining the tauroctony from the Heddernheim mythraeum,
Brussels finds evidence for the birth of Mithras at the winter solstice,
sacrifice at the vernal equinox, etc. Brussels then goes on with
numerous illustrations of Christian art to show the structural and
thematic parallels to Mithraic models—including evidence to
support my claim that the 12 Apostles are zodiacal equivalents. I am
going to check out his (?) references to works I don’t own at the
OSU library. (Ohio State has a surprisingly good classics library.)
Bart,
19th of July 374 A.D.; cf. CIL VI 499 = Dessau, No. 4147 from
the same provenance and of the same date. The exact situation of the
Phrygianum in the Vatican city is unknown, but Margherita
Guarducci, Cristo e S. Pietro in un documento preconstantiniano
della Necropoli Vaticana, Roma 1953, 66 holds it to be situated
probably “a sinistra dell’ odierna gradinata fra l’arco delle Campane
e il Camposanto Teutonico.”
385 A.D.
Kamenius is also stated in two inscriptions from Rome (See our
Nos 515; 516), but there he is still magister et pater sacrorum,
whereas at his death he bears the grade of pater patrum.
Sancte: No. 486.
Frank
CONCLUDING DISSONANCE
Earl Doherty
*****
But what precisely is meant by the phrase ‘Jesus was God’? Much of the
problem lies in Ehrman’s semantic woolliness. Later Church Councils
declared Jesus fully a co-equal with God the Father, of the same substance,
two ‘persons’ within the Trinity. I am aware of no scholarship, let alone any
Mythicist, who suggests that this was the view of any segment of earliest
Christianity.
But to say that Jesus was an emanation of God is something else. The
difference between Paul’s Son of God and Philo’s Logos as ‘an emanation
of God’ is largely a matter of personhood. Philo does not personalize his
Logos; he calls it “God’s first-born,” but it is not a distinct person; rather, it
is a kind of radiant force which has certain effects on the world. Paul’s Son
has been carried one step further (though a large one), in that he is a full
hypostasis, a distinct divine personage with an awareness of self and roles
of his own — and capable of being worshiped on his own.
An emanation, however, is not God per se. That is why Philo can
describe him as “begotten of God.” He can be styled a part of the Godhead,
but he is a subordinate part. (I have no desire to sound like a theologian, but
to try to explain as I see it the concepts that lie in the minds of Christian
writers, past and present. They are attempting to describe what they see as a
spiritual reality; I regard it as bearing no relation to any reality at all.) Paul
in 1 Corinthians 15:28 speaks of the Son’s fate once God’s enemies are
vanquished, a passage which exercises theologians because it looks
incompatible with the Trinity. For here Paul says that the Son “will be
subjected” to God, in the apparent sense of being ‘subsumed’ back into
God, who will then become One again — “so that God will be all in all.”
There will only be one ‘person.’
The ‘intermediary Son’ concept
There can be little question that the idea of the Son, Paul’s ‘Christ’ and
spiritual Messiah, arose from the philosophical thinking of the era, which
created for the highest Deity intermediary spiritual forces and subordinate
divine entities to fill certain roles and to be revelatory channels between
‘God’ and humanity. In Judaism, this was the role of personified Wisdom,
though her divinity was relatively innocuous and her ‘person’ perhaps as
much poetic as real. (She may have been a later scribal compromise when
an earlier goddess consort of Yahweh was abandoned). In Greek thinking,
the intermediary force was the Logos, though in varied versions (the
Platonic Logos and Stoic Logos were quite different), and with an
independence and personification less developed than Paul’s.
Thus ‘the Son’ which we find described throughout the epistles is
viewed in the sense of an emanation of God, not God himself. He has a
personification of his own, and he fills certain roles.
1 Corinthians 8:6 – For us there is one God, the Father, from whom
all being comes, toward whom we move; and there is one Lord,
Jesus Christ, through whom all things came to be, and we
through him.
Colossian 1:15-20 – [God] rescued us from the domain of darkness
and brought us away into the kingdom of his dear Son, in whom
our release is secured and our sins forgiven. He is the image
[eikōn] of the invisible God; his is the primacy over all created
things. In him everything in heaven and on earth was created .
. . the whole universe has been created through him and for
him. And he exists before everything, and all things are held
together in him. . . .
Hebrews 1:2-3 – . . . the Son whom he has made heir to the whole
universe, and through whom he created all orders of existence:
the Son who is the effulgence of God’s splendor and the stamp
of God’s very being, and sustains the universe by his word of
power.
All three passages present the Son as the agent of creation (as was
personified Wisdom in Jewish tradition). Two mention his sustaining
power by which the universe subsists. They also see this emanation as
making the ultimate God ‘visible’: he is the “image” of the Father who is
known and communicates with the world through this filial intermediary. In
Colossians, his redemptive role is mentioned: through him sins are forgiven
and humanity has been released from darkness. (About the only thing never
mentioned is the alleged fact of this cosmic Son’s incarnation to earth and
his identity in that life, but perhaps this was considered unimportant.)
Though Ehrman will argue against it, there can hardly be any question
that these epistle writers viewed the Son as a heavenly figure, a part of God
who existed on the spiritual plane. That this was an interpretation of the
man Jesus of Nazareth is a post-Gospel rationalization, not to be found in
the epistles themselves. That some modern scholarship can go further, as we
shall see, and regard the epistolary picture as not indicating a belief in its
Jesus as divine — whether equal or subordinate to God — is a travesty.
Perhaps as the epistles ought to have pointed out, the cosmic Son’s
human incarnation was an important aspect of his identity? Be that as it
may, Ehrman, as demonstrated earlier in this series, has jockeyed and
massaged the evidence — including fabricating some of it — to produce a
dubious witness (indeed, many “independent” ones) prior to the epistles,
one which supposedly represented an oral tradition phase which later fed
into the Gospels. This alleged tradition, he says, reflected the Synoptic
presentation of Jesus as anything but cosmic — as apparently nothing other
than human.
But about that day or that hour [the arrival of the End] no one
knows, not even the angels in heaven, not even the Son; only the
Father.
Here, “the Son” implies a singular spiritual aspect of God (thus needing
capitalization, which all translations that I know of give it), inhabiting
heaven like the angels. It is not even sure that Jesus is intended to be
referring to himself here, just as it hardly seems that he himself is supposed
to be the messiah whom he prophesies impostors in the future will be
claiming to be. Mark seems to prefer that Jesus think of and refer to himself
as the Son of Man, but even this tradition has grown out of a previous
expression in the Q tradition wherein such a figure is an apocalyptic one,
expected from heaven and thus possessing at least some form of divinity.
Mark’s divinity of Jesus
But then Mark throws off the covers in 14:61–2 before the High Priest’s
questioning: “Are you the Messiah, the Son of the Blessed One?” The latter,
of course, means God, and Jesus answers: “I am.” Not only is this reference
to “the Son” hardly to be put into Ehrman’s category of a human
particularly close to God, the High Priest declares this claim to be
blasphemy, for which Jesus needs to be condemned to death. It was hardly
blasphemy to announce oneself as the messiah, nor even the apocalyptic
Son of Man; and certainly not to call oneself a “son of God” in Ehrman’s
sense. It could only be blasphemy if Jesus was declaring himself to be a
divine part of God.
We might also wonder at God’s extreme reaction to the crucifixion, both
in prodigies of nature and in his abandonment of his Chosen People by
splitting the veil of the Temple, if this was only a man he felt a close
relationship with. And the centurion’s reaction would have been an ironic
understatement if all Mark wanted him to say was: “Truly, this man was one
whom the Jewish God felt particularly close to!”
Besides, what was to be the point of Mark’s whole story by including the
Passion? Jesus as God’s prophet is one thing: “Repent, for the kingdom of
God is at hand!” Mark’s ministry — though short on actual teachings, let
alone memorable ones — might fit a “son of God” of the Ehrman variety.
But a trial, execution and rising from his tomb? Something foretold in
scripture (as Jesus constantly tells his disciples), whose purpose was a
“redemption for many” [Mk. 10:45]? It is difficult to think that Mark would
have created such a tale simply in terms of an individual whom he thought
of as merely one among many who had been “sons of God.”
But one thing is clear: it does not mean what mythicists typically
claim it means. It does not portray Jesus in the guise of a pagan
dying and rising god, even if that is what, on a superficial reading, it
may appear to be about. [DJE? 233]
One wonders how it can be “clear” that it does not portray Jesus as a
dying and rising god, while at the same time it “appears” to be just that on
“superficial reading.” This alerts us that the “superficial” text is going to
need some spin doctoring to overcome that plain reading and render its true
meaning “clear.” Nor do mythicists need to overplay the “pagan dying and
rising god” claim; Judaism was capable of coming up with its own version
which entailed a distinctive character of its own.
Ehrman lays out the entire passage as follows (the first line in
parentheses is not regarded as part of the hymn):
The words in square brackets in verses 6 and 7 are my own, and I have
placed brackets around “even the death of the cross” in verse 8 since most
scholars, including Ehrman, regard this as a Pauline addition. In Philippians
the hymn is presented in prose, but it seems to have had a chiastic structure:
the second half being a mirror image of the first half in terms of poetic lines
and meter.
Christ was in the “form of God,” (but) that does not mean that he
was God. [DJE? 235]
I am going to assume that by “he was God” Ehrman would allow for the
meaning of “he was a part of God,” in the sense of an emanation, though he
never makes this clear, or that it is not to be equated with Council decisions
in later centuries.
Ehrman opts for the latter understanding. But how was a human being to
“grab” at equality with God? Why would an early Christian hymnist praise
the man Jesus for not grabbing at such equality? Why would such an idea
even have been conceivable, let alone formulated so soon after the man’s
death? Even being exalted upon resurrection would hardly extend to having
this man think he could grab equal status with God.
But if Christ Jesus is a heavenly emanation of God, he is subordinate to
him, and thus not his equal — just as the Logos was not to be equated with
God or considered an equal. It would be natural for a hymnist to praise this
‘first-begotten’ hypostasis of God for not striving to become God’s equal,
especially in light of him being willing to go in the opposite direction: he
reduced his status by assuming the form/nature of a slave/servant obedient
to God’s wishes — obedient even to death.
Ehrman is assuredly right in saying that if Jesus were already God there
was no higher to go, so he must not have already been equal to God. But
this inequality does not necessarily spell being human, for a spiritual Son
and emanation is by definition less than an equal, something Ehrman has
not taken into account. The occasional translation does assume a heavenly
equality and understands the ‘retain’ idea, such as the Translator’s New
Testament: “he did not consider that he must cling to equality with God.”
But this seems more a faith-based assumption dependent on Trinitarian
orthodoxy than allowing that such a meaning could be contained in the
words themselves. (The NEB offers as an alternative translation: “yet he did
not prize his equality with God.” If the hymnist did have such a meaning in
mind, it may be that for the purposes of his literary creation he did not
bother with the niceties of whether an emanation was exactly equal or not.)
Jesus’ exaltation
The second half of the hymn has sparked even greater debate. As a result
of his obedience to God in submitting to death, this figure — who so far in
the hymn has not been named — is exalted. But when Ehrman carries over
his “man like Adam” interpretation into the exaltation phase of the hymn,
he is led into further problematic exegesis. (Ehrman also suggests that this
second half presents an “adoptionist” scenario, that here the man Jesus is
being adopted as God’s son. But there is nothing in the text to suggest that;
there is no allusion to Psalm 2:7. The Son is merely given new power and
prestige.)
Let’s repeat verses 9–11 here for easy reference:
The interpretation of verses 9-11 has always been critical. What is the
“name above every name”? The plain reading is that it is “Jesus.” The
word ‘name’ in both verses is the same: onoma. This descending-ascending
figure, who has pointedly not been identified by any name in the hymn
before, is now given a name, and at that name, Jesus, all in heaven, earth,
and Sheol bow their knee to him. With that understanding, the case for
Mythicism has been clinched, for it tells us that no ‘Jesus’ lived on earth
with that name before the resurrection.
But scholarship sees one way out: the ‘name’ given to the figure in verse
9 is not ‘Jesus,’ it is something else. And with that other name, the exalted
entity who was allegedly already named Jesus receives his new homage.
And what is that other “name”? There is only one candidate available. It is
‘Lord.’ But how much sense does this make?
Beyond belief
Ehrman goes so far as to admit:
Earl Doherty
As for the first objection, I have pointed out previously that the concept
of resurrection enjoyed diverse cultural interpretations in the ancient world,
and consequently the language used in that context could be expected to be
diverse as well. Ehrman also points out that the records of such deities are
centuries older than Christianity (I am not sure if that works in his favor),
and claims that the language itself can be ambiguous. Since Ehrman does
not quote anything to demonstrate that ambiguity, we have to wonder if this
is simply his preferred reading of whatever the sources quoted by
Mettinger..
No borrowing in sight?
Mettinger does not use his case for reviving the dying and rising gods to
explain the Christian faith in Jesus. But his grounds for not doing so are
hardly conclusive of anything. I have regularly maintained that we don’t
need every detail to conform to a source of influence to legitimately
postulate a borrowing or derivation. Syncretism is the process of taking
certain ideas from one area of thought and combining them with ideas from
another area and creating a new synthesis. The Hellenistic gods may
ultimately represent cyclical processes in nature, but just because Jesus died
only once does not rule out a degree of inspiration from pagan prototypes. (I
daresay that devotees of the Attis cult did not view his castration as
something that recurred every year—it certainly couldn’t recur for the self-
castrated Galli! They, too, could be flexible with their sources.) Nor does
the uniqueness of the idea that Jesus died as a vicarious atonement for sin
rule out syncretism.
As for the claim that there is no evidence anyone in Palestine
worshipped a dying and rising god, this would not mean that no one would
be familiar with the cults. Jerusalem was not exactly the backwater of the
empire; the region, from Alexandria to Antioch, enjoyed a heavy Greek
presence and influence.
On the other hand, we might say that there is indeed such evidence
available. The epistles, when not read with Gospel-colored glasses, present
just such a picture in Palestine. Paul sums it up in his gospel of a dying and
rising Christ in 1 Corinthians 15:3–4; and in Romans 6:1–6 he encapsulates
the principal features of his soteriology: through initiation and ritual the
devotee enters into union with the god; he enjoys a rebirth and the benefits
of the experiences they share, including resurrection to the kingdom of God.
That’s all Greek to me.
If we allow ourselves to recognize the debt which Paul owes to pagan
concepts, it must mean that the latter were in the Palestinian air at the time.
Pauline “firstfruits”
This, Ehrman contends, is how Paul viewed the importance of Jesus’
resurrection, as the “firstfruits” of the general resurrection. But Paul, like
the epistles as a whole, does not view Jesus’ rising in Ehrman’s apocalyptic
terms. He has no dimension of a recent Jesus rising in flesh on earth as a
prelude to the same sort of resurrection Jews looked for. (If he did, he
would never have crafted his argument as he does in 1 Corinthians 15:35–
49, failing to introduce an incarnated Jesus with a human body into his
pattern, a pattern it would have destroyed.) As shown earlier, all the epistles
see Jesus’ rising—from wherever it took place—as in spirit only, to God’s
heaven. Critical scholarship now recognizes this (all but Ehrman,
apparently).
By calling Jesus’ resurrection the “firstfruits,” Paul is not placing his
resurrection in the present time, as the first in a general resurrection he
believes is just around the corner. That resurrection, occurring at a timeless
point in the heavenly world, can serve the same purpose in view of the fact
that it has been revealed in the present time, through the discovery in
scripture of the Son and his acts of salvation. This revelation by God is
what has triggered the onset of the End-time and the imminence of the
general resurrection, making the revealed resurrection of Jesus the
“firstfruits” of the coming harvest.
Jesus’ acts—and indeed Jesus himself, the “secret of Christ”—had been
kept hidden for long generations, the benefits of his acts stored in a
heavenly bank account until, in the time of Paul and other apostles visited
by the spirit, God’s revelation in scripture had opened that account for
withdrawals, with believers being issued the PIN number. This system
allows the Son’s death and resurrection to have taken place in the heavenly
world at any time—or in an essentially timeless setting—which is why the
epistle writers are never able to supply a time and place in their countless
references to those acts.
Such a revelation by God through scripture is clearly stated in Romans
[147] [148]
16:25–27, and implied in 1 Corinthians 15:12–16 where Paul
declares rhetorically that, if apostles like himself are falsely preaching that
Jesus rose, they stand “in contradiction to God,” he being the source (in
scripture) of the revelation that Jesus rose from death. Moreover, if Christ’s
resurrection had just happened, Paul would not have described the present
time and its progression toward the kingdom’s arrival the way he does in
[149]
Romans 8:22–3 and elsewhere, making not even an allusion to
Christ’s recent life, let alone allowing it to have played any role in that
progression.
It was to take a bit of time for some Christians to come to the conviction
that in order to guarantee human resurrection, Christ actually (or “truly,” as
Ignatius or his forger was to put it) needed to have lived, died, and
resurrected on earth and in real human flesh. The first century epistles (and
some of the second) still lack that need and conviction.
Ehrman relies heavily on Smith, and quotes this from his 1977 article:
“All the deities that have been identified as belonging to the class
of dying and rising deities can be subsumed under the two larger
classes of disappearing deities or dying deities. In the first case the
deities return but have not died; in the second case the gods die but
do not return. There is no unambiguous instance in the history of
religions of a dying and rising deity.” [DJE? 227]
Smith’s first error is his failure, as I see it, to grasp the point of
an “ideal type,” a basic textbook definition/description of some
phenomenon under study. . . . Smith, finding that there are
significant differences between the so-called dying-and-rising-god
myths, abandons any hope of a genuine dying-and-rising-god
paradigm. For Smith, the various myths of Osiris, Attis, Adonis, and
the others, do not all conform to type exactly; thus they are not
sufficiently alike to fit into the same box—so let’s throw out the box!
Without everything in common, Smith sees nothing in common. . .
It is only in later texts, long after Ovid and after the rise of
Christianity, that one finds any suggestion that Adonis came back to
life after his death. Smith argues that this later form of the tradition
may in fact have been influenced by Christianity and its claim that a
human had been raised from the dead. In other words, the Adonis
myth did not influence Christian views of Jesus but rather the other
way around.” [DJE? 228]
And so the apologetic specter of the mysteries borrowing from
Christianity rears its dreary head yet again. It is hard to know whether
Ehrman seriously believes this, or whether he is simply catering to his
uninformed readers’ ready acceptance of this popular tactic. On the Adonis
question, Gunter Wagner floats the same idea. To that, I responded in my
Web-site review of his book:
Conclusion
In sum, historicist scholars have carried Christian Gospel-based concepts
to the mystery cults and set them against the latter’s presentation of
‘resurrection’ and other features; then they ‘expose’ them as not properly
conforming, which then ‘proves’ that any resemblance is illusory and that
all comparison, along with any suggestion of derivation, is invalid. Quite a
methodology!
As I say in my website review of Wagner:
Thus the entire case presented by Ehrman, Wagner, and Smith, preceded
by earlier scholars like H. A. Kennedy and Arthur Darby Nock, is built on
smoke and mirrors. Its purpose can only be to conjure up an argument, no
matter how shaky or deceptive, to disassociate Christianity’s initial
mysticism from any connection with the pagan mysteries and root it instead
in a safe Jewish soil.
Indeed, scholarship since the mid-twentieth century has in its general
study been entirely oriented toward the same end and purpose, to
characterize Christianity as essentially if not wholly a child of Israel and
bury out of sight the bloody umbilical cord of pre-natal nutrition from
pagan influences. This strategy has given scholars the false confidence that
they have exploded the problematic mystery cult connection, in much the
same way that they assume a false confidence that the idea of Jesus
Mythicism has been laid to rest.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Will the Real Jesus Please Stand Up?
Is the ‘Jesus of History’ any more real than the ‘Jesus of Faith’?
[150]
David Fitzgerald
Christianity has had a good, long run, but we are long past the point
where it’s reasonable to be agnostic about the so-called ‘Jesus of Faith.’ It is
ridiculous to pretend that the lack of historical corroboration of the
spectacular Gospel events — let alone the New Testament’s own
fundamental contradictions — aren’t a fatal problem for Jesus the divine
Son of God.
For example:
· Why is Paul — and every other Christian writer from the first
generation of Christianity — so silent on any details of Jesus’
life? Why do early writers display so much ignorance of Jesus’
teachings and miracles?
We could pose similar thorny questions all day and never run out of
them. It’s embarrassing to have to dignify any of the obvious mythological
elements of the Gospels, and yet the better part of 2.1 billion people seem
unaware of how ludicrous any of them are. We don’t even have to rule out
whether or not miracles even can occur, or point out that stories, delusions
and lies are common while verified miracles are few if any; we merely have
to ask: if they did happen, why didn’t anyone else notice them? Christians
are perfectly free to put their faith in whichever messiah they please, though
it will take more than blind faith and selective hearing to convince the rest
of us that their Christ is anything more than a Jesus of their own making.
But what about the real Jesus?
Apologists love to parrot the old lie that “no serious historians reject the
historicity of Christ,” but fail to realize (or deliberately neglect to mention)
that the ‘Historical Jesus’ that the majority of historians do accept is at best
no more than just another first-century wandering preacher and founder of a
fringe cult that eventually became Christianity — in other words, a Jesus
that completely debunks their own.
For your average Atheist activist, all this should be more than enough to
settle the matter. But the truth is, the issue isn’t even that cut and dry. What
about this ‘Historical Jesus’ at the core of all this legendary accretion? Can
we actually know what the real Jesus of Nazareth really said and did?
Over a decade ago, after reading Ken Smith’s hilarious and brilliant
[151]
Ken’s Guide to the Bible, I became curious to know the answers to
questions like these. (Very) long story (very) short: I began researching the
historical evidence for Jesus, a process of pulling a thread that unraveled the
[152]
whole sweater, as far as I was concerned. The result was my book
Nailed: Ten Christian Myths That Show Jesus Never Existed at All. And I
really mean it; I’m convinced there couldn’t even have been an ordinary
guy behind our familiar Jesus of Nazareth. No, really.
The H Word
Isn’t there an Atheist’s Jesus? You might think so, from how vehemently
some of my fellow heretics defend him. I’ve long since gotten used to their
usual charges: this doesn’t matter; this is all old stuff, this was long since
discredited by all reputable scholars. Charitable critics call it just minority
opinion; the less so call it nothing more than historical revisionist nonsense,
fringe pseudo-scholarship, junk history, crackpottery, the Atheist equivalent
of creationism, etc. Robert Price, as usual, answered this crowd best when
he asked: “the Jesus Myth theory has been debunked? When did that
happen? The truth is, the arguments of the Mythicist camp have never been
rebutted — they’ve been ignored, declared to be mistaken, or simply
irrelevant; in short, they’ve only ever been, in a word, Harrumphed.”
In fact, ironically enough, comparing Jesus-myth theory with
creationism is exactly 100% backwards. Consider: Evolutionary theory first
began to be taken up when higher education was completely under the
thumb of Christianity. Contrary to popular belief, it did not begin with
Darwin. His bombshell was the mass-extinction event, but the cracks had
started accumulating in Creationism’s official story long before him.
Discoveries in biology, zoology, geology and other fields of science all built
up a steady pressure on beloved, long-accepted biblical ‘facts’ of the Flood
of Noah, the Garden of Eden, the Firmament, and the like, until the contrary
evidence reached such a critical mass that finally — however much it
displeased the clergy and their flocks — no intellectually honest academic
could deny it. And then the great paradigm shift began.
Not that I’m comparing the Jesus-Myth idea to a concept as earthshaking
as Natural Selection, but consider the parallels for a moment. Most
historians aren’t biblical historians; so when the question of Jesus’
historicity comes up, it’s only natural that they’ll turn to the majority
opinion of bible scholars. But who are the majority of biblical scholars?
Biblical history has always been an apologetic undertaking in the service of
Christianity. Even today it remains perhaps the only field of science still
overtly dominated by believers. So to begin with, how many of them do you
suppose are open to entertaining the idea that the lord and savior they
depend on for their salvation and salaries might never have existed?
So of course this is minority opinion — and likely always will be as long
as biblical studies continue. As theologian Wilhelm Wrede cautioned in the
nineteenth century, facts are sometimes the most radical critics of all. Every
single advance in the history of biblical scholarship has begun as heresy. In
fact, it’s gotten to the point where now, secular biblical historians are the
only ones who are actually making progress in the field. The majority is too
busy circling the wagons to protect its doctrines and dogma from dangerous
new knowledge.
Even among secular biblical scholars, it is difficult to find one who
doesn’t come out of a religious background. Rabbi Jon D. Levensen, one of
today’s most prominent Jewish biblical scholars, notes, “It is a rare scholar
in the field whose past does not include an intense Christian or Jewish
[153]
commitment.” What’s more, religious scholar Timothy Fitzgerald (no
[154]
relation) points out in The Ideology of Religious Studies that
theological assumptions are a pervasive difficulty in the field, not merely
among practicing believers, but for the formerly religious as well: “even in
the work of scholars who are explicitly non-theological, half-disguised
theological presuppositions persistently distort the analytical pitch.”
But the problem of bias aside, the old paradigm of Jesus studies has long
been showing worrisome cracks of its own. Incidentally, in his devastating
[155]
The End of Biblical Studies, Hector Avalos has convincingly
demonstrated that cracks are widespread throughout the entire field. First of
all, it is a misnomer to even refer to the ‘Historical Jesus’ as if there ever
was any such clearly defined thing — nor it is correct to think that there is
only one.
The link between Jesus’ message and his death is crucial, and
historical studies of Jesus’ life can be evaluated to how well they
establish that link. This in fact is a common weakness in many
portrayals of the historical Jesus: they often sound completely
plausible in their reconstruction of what Jesus said and did, but they
can’t make sense of his death. If, for example, Jesus is to be
understood as a Jewish rabbi who simply taught that everyone
should love God and be good to one another, why did the Romans
crucify him? [Jesus: Apocalyptic Prophet of the New Millennium:
208]
Ehrman adds that for most theories, their proposed connections between
Jesus’ life and his death are at times rather shaky and unconvincing. But to
be fair, the problem may go deeper than just poor reconstructions. After all,
the original source for all of them, the Gospels, also fail to make a credible
link between Jesus’ life and death — and disagree with each other on just
what led to Jesus’ death.
Incidentally, the list above is not the last word on revisionist Jesuses;
there are even more reasonably plausible ‘Historical Jesuses’ to consider
before you finally reach all the hopelessly crackpot Jesus theories
moldering away at the bottom of the barrel. But this multiplicity of
convincing possibilities is precisely the problem: the various scholarly
reconstructions of Jesus cancel each other out. Each sounds good until you
hear the next one. Price makes this very clear:
What one Jesus reconstruction leaves aside, the next one takes
up and makes its cornerstone. Jesus simply wears too many hats in
the Gospels — exorcist, healer, king, prophet, sage, rabbi, demigod,
and so on. The Jesus Christ of the New Testament is a composite
figure…The historical Jesus (if there was one) might well have been
a messianic king, or a progressive Pharisee, or a Galilean shaman, or
a magus, or a Hellenistic sage. But he cannot very well have been all
of them at the same time. [Deconstructing Jesus: 15–16]
The Jesus Seminar’s John Dominic Crossan has observed this very
problem and has frankly complained that the plethora of historical Jesus
reconstructions has turned into a circus. In his The Historical Jesus: The
[163]
Life of a Mediterranean Jewish Peasant , he puts it bluntly:
The upshot of all this is simply that all of the secular reconstructions of
the ‘Historical Jesus’ remain speculative. No one can claim to have
cornered the market. And there is a good reason for that — our problematic
primary sources for Jesus.
The evidence is clear; there were many different Jesuses and Christs
being preached in the first century (and even into the early second century,
when the Didakhê was written). No single individual Jesus made an impact
on history, but many different ones made an impact on theology — at least
on the cultic fringe. The ‘Stealth Messiah’ approach to the problem simply
fails to make any sense of the evidence.
As Price and others before him observed — and as I’ll argue in Jesus:
Mything in Action — Jesus appears to be an effect, not a cause, of
Christianity. Paul and the rest of the first generation of Christians searched
the Septuagint translation of Hebrew scriptures to create a Mystery Faith for
the Jews, complete with pagan rituals like a Lord’s Supper, Gnostic terms in
his letters, and a personal savior god to rival those in their Egyptian,
Persian, Hellenic, and Roman neighbors’ long-standing traditions.
Written generations later, the entire Gospel of Mark — the original
gospel all the rest were based on — is one great parable to conceal the
secret, sacred truths of this mystery faith, the Mystery of the Kingdom of
God. Mark has Jesus give this clue to the reader of his Gospel:
This exclusive secrecy makes no sense at all for a savior who came to
save the whole world, but it makes perfect sense if Christianity began as a
mystery faith. Like the pagan mysteries, the truths of Mark’s mystery of the
Kingdom of God are being concealed behind parables, only explained to
insiders. ‘Mark’ is not reporting history; he is creating a framework for
passing on a sacred mystery to a chosen few and no one else.
Though there’s simply no way to prove that no real Jesus ever existed
behind what Price aptly calls the Stained-Glass Curtain, the closer you look
for him the harder he is to see. When we search for what we think of as new
innovations brought about by Jesus, invariably we find the same ideas have
already come from some other source. He was a placeholder for all the
values bestowed by all the other savior gods; he taught all the things Greek
philosophers and Jewish Rabbis taught; he performed the same miracles,
healings and resurrections the pagan magicians and exorcists did; in other
words Jesus Christ was not a real person, but a synthesis of every cherished
and passionate notion the ancient world came up with — noble truths,
gentle wisdom, beloved fables, ancient attitudes, internal contradictions,
scientific absurdities, intolerable attitudes and all.
We are past the tipping point: it’s no longer reasonable to assume that
there had to have been a single historic individual who began Christianity.
In fact, as we’ve seen, the evidence points away from such a conclusion.
What we see instead is a historical record completely devoid of
corroboration for the Gospels. We see a Darwinian theological environment
teeming with rival Jesuses, Christs, gospels, and house cults competing
along the religious fringe of the Roman Empire — and languishing there for
three centuries. We see indications that the first generation of Christianity
began as a Jewish version of the Mystery Faiths, and that all the confused,
contradictory ‘biographical’ information for Jesus stems from a deliberate
allegory. A single founding figure is not just unnecessary to explain all this,
it is unwarranted.
***
Frank R. Zindler
— Isaac Newton
[170]
— Bart D. Ehrman
— Frank R. Zindler
There are yet two other Mythicists who — doughty and colorful though
they may be — might yet receive Ehrman’s partial exemption from the
charge of complete lack of qualifications.
But there also is George A. Wells, the author of many books including
his 1975 Did Jesus Exist? Wells, unfortunately, is merely an emeritus
professor of German at the University of London specializing in modern
German intellectual history. “[A]lthough an outsider to New Testament
studies, he speaks the lingo of the field and has read deeply in its
scholarship.” It is not clear whether or not Ehrman considers Professor
Wells qualified or not to write about the historical Jesus — even though he
[181]
has “read deeply in its scholarship.”
I. EHRMAN’S QUALIFICATIONS
So much for the qualifications of the Mythicists. But what of the subject
of this essay — the qualifications of Ehrman himself? We already have seen
that he clearly does consider himself qualified because he was “trained as a
scholar of the New Testament and Early Christianity.” More importantly,
perhaps, he is to be considered qualified because “for thirty years I have
written extensively on the historical Jesus…” (Of course, G.A. Wells has
written on that subject even longer, but that apparently should not redound
to his credit as a fully qualified scholar. Come to think of it, I too have been
writing on the subject for more than thirty years. Oh, well.)
We may wonder at this point: do these facts alone prove that Ehrman is
qualified to write about Christian origins and the ‘historical Jesus of
Nazareth’? I do not wish to be as dismissive of Ehrman as he initially was
of me several years ago when we began what became a serious e-mail
correspondence. This is not the place to take revenge for the bruising of an
enlarged and fragile ego. I ask this question neither derisively nor flippantly.
The field of Biblical Studies is undergoing a ‘paradigm shift’ even though
[182]
Ehrman is not aware of the fact. Regardless of what may have been
considered qualifications in the framework of the paradigm now dissolving,
new qualifications will be needed by those working within the new
paradigm — a paradigm that will allow the study of Christian origins to
become a genuinely scientific enterprise. Will Ehrman be qualified to work
in the new Science of Christian Origins?
[183]
According to the brief biography of Ehrman in Wikipedia,
What does Ehrman think are the necessary qualifications one must
possess in order to study the ‘Historical Jesus’ and Christian origins?
Clearly, he must suppose that one should be the graduate of a Christian
seminary or a university having a New Testament Studies graduate
program. That would pretty much restrict would-be students of Christian
origins to studying at institutions where no one questioning the historicity
of Jesus of Nazareth could hold a job. In fact, this probably would rule out
questioning of the Old Testament Patriarchs, Kings Saul, David, and
Solomon, Zoroaster, Lao-Tzu, Confucius, Gautama Buddha, and — as
[187]
shocking as it may seem — Muhammad.
After reminding us in case we might have forgotten that “the view that
Jesus existed is held by virtually every expert on the planet,” Ehrman
explains that
Ehrman realizes that “this is not a piece of evidence, but if nothing else,
it should give one pause.” After having just asserted that all “serious
historians of the early Christian movement” who have “spent all the years
needed to attain these qualifications” believe in a historical Jesus —
asserting by implication that all Mythicists are neither “serious” nor
possessed of his required qualifications — he proceeds to analogize the
Mythicist position with that of creationism:
By around the year 1980, I had been writing and debating about the
Christian Bible for nearly fifteen years. I was comfortable studying the
canonical scriptures in the original Greek, Hebrew, and Aramaic, as well as
[191]
the Roman Catholic Vulgate Bible in Latin. To be sure, I could not
read those languages with the ease and fluency with which I could read the
major modern European languages. Even so, I had no difficulty at all in
dealing with those languages and I regularly employed my knowledge of
them in resolving controversies concerning the biblical texts. I thought I
knew a lot about the bibles of Christianity — certainly more than most
seminary graduates were likely to know. After all, from the time I had
received my bachelor’s degree in biology and psychology from the
University of Michigan I had realized that to study the origins of
Christianity one had to be exhaustive in one’s approach and method. As in
science, one would have to form hypotheses and theories that were
consistent with everything that was known. One would need to know not
only everything possible about the first two Christian centuries; even more
importantly, one needed to know what was known by the first tradents of
that culture. What would their education have included? What literature
would they have known about? What were their superstitions and what did
they consider to be common sense? What did they know about the world?
What did they think they knew about their world? By about the year 1980, I
had been hard at work during my free time during the years that I was a
professor of biology and geology at Fulton-Montgomery Community
College (SUNY) trying to learn how to think like a first-century Pagan or
Jew. So, I thought I knew a lot about the ‘Historical Jesus.’ Then, a
seemingly unimportant event occurred that forever proved me to be wrong
about that and changed my scholarly life forever.
It was around the year 1980. I was at a convention of American Atheists,
Inc. — the Atheist civil-rights organization founded by Madalyn Murray
O’Hair in 1963 after her triumph in the U.S. Supreme Court where it was
found that forced-prayer in public schools was unconstitutional. In a speech
to the members, Dr. O’Hair detonated the equivalent of a small nuclear
device. She told her Atheist audience that she had begun work on a book
she was going to publish under the title of Jesus Christ Superfraud. I was
aghast. O’Hair was about to make American Atheists a laughingstock — a
joke among the cognoscenti who, like me, had devoted an immense amount
[192]
of time to the study of the New Testament and the Historical Jesus.
What should I do? I spoke with her after her speech and asked her for
more proof that Jesus had never existed. I was too distressed to be able
reliably to quote her exact words afterward, but it was something to the
effect that one can’t prove a universal negative but that she was going to
show that all the ‘evidence’ of the Historical Jesus wasn’t evidence at all;
essentially, there is no hard evidence whatever to show that Jesus had ever
existed. I wrote down a brief list of references she recommended and began
studying them as soon as I got home from the convention.
I was scandalized, and I immediately read the references given to me and
then began to check out all the claims in the fine library of The Ohio State
University. One by one, all my previously imagined evidences for the
historicity of Jesus of Nazareth dissolved away. No contemporary records
of Jesus existed. No physical evidence existed attesting to his life. The
ancient Jews never heard of him or of Nazareth. The earliest Pagan
accounts of Jesus were either provable frauds or were too late to be
eyewitness accounts. At best, they were documenting the existence of
Christianity. No evidence of importance had ever been produced by biblical
archaeologists. There was nothing new in Christianity; all had been
recycled from Old-Testament, Pagan, or Mystery-cult sources. The Pauline
Epistles knew nothing of any Jesus who had been executed less than three
decades before their composition. The gospels could not be accepted as
biography or history either one. Practically everything in early Christianity,
not just the Apocalypse it seemed, was redolent of the scent of astrology.
I was stunned — far more stunned than I had just been scandalized. To
my shock, nearly everything in early Christianity was open to dispute.
Where did Christianity begin? What proof is there for each possible answer?
When did Christianity begin? Evidence? Did, in fact, Christianity have a
discreet beginning, or did it gradually emerge like Hinduism or the Greek
and Egyptian religions? How did Christianity begin? Did it begin as an
esoteric mystery cult with exoteric propaganda? Are the gospels remnants
of the exoteric propaganda after the esoteric cult meanings were lost? Did
the crucifixion take place on earth, or was it an astral phenomenon? What
relation, if any, was there between the chi-cross of Plato’s Timaeus and the
chi-cross of early Christianity? Why were two fishes, not one, among the
earliest symbols of Christianity? Why did Jesus transform two fishes and
five loaves? Was this an allusion to the two fishes of the constellation Pisces
and the five visible planets? Was there numerological significance to their
totaling seven — not only the number of days in the Jewish week but the
number of initiation grades in Mithraism?
Earlier Mythicists, like their modern counterparts, often disagreed
dramatically about how to account for the origins of Christianity without a
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historical Christ. But all of them, often in very different ways, showed
the inadequacy of the supposed evidences enlisted to prove the historicity of
Jesus. All took the scientific point of view concerning the burden of proof.
The onus probandi rests upon the person asserting the existence of a thing
or process. Science always assumes the existential negative. If you want me
to believe you are harboring a unicorn in your upstairs pasture, you must
produce the evidence to show it. I don’t have to try to disprove the claim.
Bring me some hair or hoof-parings with some DNA. I’ll test the evidence,
but don’t make me go out to collect it.
I shall have a lot to say about burden of proof in another chapter, but for
now I will just note that a large part of Did Jesus Exist? — 101 pages — is
devoted not to presenting evidence for the historicity of Jesus; it is aimed at
refuting the hypotheses of Mythicists concerning how Christianity must
have formed. Only a slightly larger number of pages — 107 pages — are
formally devoted to presenting evidence supporting the historicity of any
Jesus (or Christ). Why so many pages tilting against Mythicist windmills
(other than the fact that it is fun to do and helps to sell books)? Ehrman does
not seem to understand that even if he could show conclusively that all his
Mythicist opponents were wrong in their several theories, he still would
need to produce compelling evidence to show that Jesus and the Holy
Family had once lived at the place now called Nazareth. Unfortunately,
Ehrman’s book too closely imitates the structure of creationist books that
present little or no evidence for the biblical creation myths but devote
chapter after chapter to exposing imagined flaws in evolutionary theory.
Proving Darwin one hundred percent wrong, however, cannot produce even
a millionth of a percent-significant piece of evidence to show that the earth
was created in the month of October in the year 4,004 BCE, that humans are
completely unrelated to the great apes, or that the entire planet was drowned
by a flood in the year 2,348 BCE — without leaving any water marks in the
pyramids at Giza! So too with Ehrman. All modern Mythicists could be
wrong, but that would not prove Ehrman right. Even though Ehrman
presents the traditional arguments for the historicity of some Jesus or other,
he seems to perceive their insufficiency and clearly expends his best efforts
on his critiques of Mythicists and Mythicism.
But let me return to my investigations of the claims of Madalyn Murray
O’Hair.
Despite the undeniable fact that the old Mythicist literature proved for
the most part to be of high scholarly quality, there were some provocative
books of dubious value. Within a few months, it seemed quite clear that
Jesus of Nazareth was a mythical figure. Nevertheless, I had to read the
scant scholarly literature that had attempted to demonstrate his historicity. It
was really dismaying to see that hundreds — nay, thousands — of New
Testament scholars and historians must just have been willing to accept the
opinion of unspecified ‘experts.’ Virtually none of them had ever looked to
see for themselves what evidence there might be to show that Jesus had
ever existed.
How could this be? How could it have happened that all the experts in a
field had come to believe in something for which there was practically no
evidence at all? The answer — although almost impossible to discover —
proved to be a no-brainer: the humanities are not sciences. There is no
science of Christian origins, only subdivisions of theology, Christian
apologetics, and a peculiarly uncritical form of historiography. Because
Jesus studies are not science there is no reliable database in which to anchor
hypotheses and theories. The wheel has had to be reinvented again and
again.
Unlike the case in science, knowledge has not been automatically
cumulative, and much knowledge seems to have been lost. For example,
Albert Schweitzer in the second edition of his The Quest of the Historical
Jesus gives a superficial critique of Arthur Drews’ Die Christusmythe, but
makes no mention of Drews’ Das Markusevangelium als Zeugnis gegen die
Geschichtlichkeit Jesu (The Gospel of Mark as Witness Against the
Historicity of Jesus), or his Der Sternhimmel in der Dichtung und Religion
der alten Völker und des Christentums: Eine Einführung in die
Astralmythologie (The Starry Sky in the Poetry and Religion of Ancient
Peoples and Christianity: An Introduction to Astral Mythology). That’s
because they were written nearly twenty years after Schweitzer’s book. I
have yet to find even a single Mythicist who has heard of these important
works, and of course they are completely unsuspected and unknown to
historicists who know only Schweitzer’s work — and probably only his
first edition at that. They never were answered or really refuted as far as I
can determine. They fell off the edge of the New Testament Studies Earth.
It does not appear likely that Ehrman read anything of the older
Mythicist literature outside that mentioned by Schweitzer. Indeed, one must
wonder if he read any of those sources either — simply relying upon
Schweitzer’s short critiques. Just as the second law of thermodynamics tells
us that useable energy is lost every time energy is converted from one form
to another, so too information has been lost as it has been transmitted from
one generation of scholars to another.
As I read through the mainstream literature relating to Christian origins
and the historicity of Jesus of Nazareth, I discovered that the disputes of
biblical scholars almost never have come to a resolution. Why should this
be? It is because the various disputants rarely align their data and arguments
to the same point of reference. Rarely do they engage each other on a
common ground. As I wrote in my “Prolegomenon to a Science of Christian
Origins,”
It is often claimed, for example, that the work of Arthur Drews was
largely refuted and discredited. I do not, however, agree. I would
argue instead that the few polemics published against him did not
fully engage his database but rather used separate data bases that
were never tied in to the one used by Drews. After Drews died,
mainline scholars agreed he had been refuted and quickly he was
forgotten. Such has been the fate of most Christ-myth theorists for
the last two centuries. I would argue that in almost all cases, Christ-
myth disputes have been the equivalent of shadowboxing. The
disputants rarely become objectively engaged with each other.
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Rather, they tilt against each other’s shadows.
B. Mathematical Skills
Although my formal training in mathematics never went beyond
calculus-based statistics and symbolic logic, I have always known that
mathematical methods not only are fundamental for the advancement of any
science, but are of great utility as well in what might properly be considered
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the humanities. Whenever possible, I try to imagine the mathematical
implications of claims or data sets. Sometimes this can lead to amusing
discoveries.
Consider, for example, the tale of the Gadarene Swine as found in the
prototypic pig-drowning gospel, Mark. In verses 5:1–13, the best (fourth
century) manuscripts — Codex Sinaiticus and Codex Vaticanus — have the
event taking place near Gerasa, not Gadara, and the latest have staged the
event at Gergesa. Now Gerasa was located about 31 miles from the shore of
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the ‘Sea’ of Galilee. Those poor pigs had to run a course five miles as
the Devil flies longer than a marathon in order to find a place to drown! The
demonized swine “ran violently down a steep place into the sea, (they were
about two thousand;) and were choked in the sea.”
Now as realistic as this all may seem, this report has mathematical
implications that are astonishingly funny. Let us assume that to be “steep”
for the purpose of violent running a slope must be at least 45 degrees. If that
be so, then that slope would form the hypotenuse of a right triangle having a
base 31 miles long, the sea shore at one end of the hypotenuse, and Gerasa
at the other end.
PROBLEM: What is the elevation of Gerasa above the surface of the
Sea of Galilee?
SOLUTION: In a 45-degree right triangle, the legs are equal. Therefore,
Gerasa would have to be 31 miles above the level of the lake — close to six
times higher than Mt. Everest above sea level!
Did anyone in ancient times think about this? Later manuscripts changed
the setting to Gadara, about five miles from the seashore, with a computed
elevation a bit lower than Mt. Everest. Ultimately, the mass sui-cide was
discovered to have occurred at a place called Gergesa, and Codex Sinaiticus
was ‘corrected’ to read Gergesa instead of Gerasa. The location of Gergesa
— like that of most New Testament towns — is not known, but it has been
equated to the remains of Chorsia, located just a few city blocks east of the
lake shore. The results of all this geographic revisionism? An immense
increase in the verisimilitude of a report of demonic possession.
While mathematics may, from time to time, provide innocent amusement
for the scientific student of Christian origins, it is about to become the
energy source that will power the shift away from the traditional, theology-
bound paradigm for Jesus studies toward a truly scientific paradigm for the
study of Christian origins. The harbinger who brings the ‘Good News’ of
mathematics to the world of Jesus Studies is a young scholar criticized by
Bart Ehrman, Dr. Richard C. Carrier.
Early in 2012, Carrier published what I think will become one of the
most important books in the field of Jesus studies for the next twenty years
at least. Indeed, it may transform the practice of historiography generally.
The book is titled Proving History: Bayes’s Theorem and the Quest for the
Historical Jesus [Amherst, NY, Prometheus Books]. A blurb on the dust
jacket says much of what needs to be said of this book:
I would add to this merely the point that Bayes’s Theorem can be used to
weight probabilities and then reweigh them in the light of often seemingly
indecisive new evidence. Too often, attempts to apply rigorous
mathematical techniques to fields such as historiography that are
characterized by the fuzziness of their data become little more than
exercises in the ‘garbage in — garbage out’ process so properly rejected by
humanists and scientists alike. Carrier shows how, by using a fortiori
principles of reasoning, non-numerical evaluations of propositions can be
carried out to allow one to select the most probable of competing
hypotheses.
Has Ehrman read Carrier’s book? I would guess he hasn’t. Will he read
it? For the sake of protecting the integrity of his spotless scholarly
reputation, I think he will. Eventually.
The reason for my optimism in this regard derives from my recent
examination of the doctoral dissertation for which he was accorded magna
cum laude honors by Princeton Theological Seminary. Published in 1986
with the title Didymus the Blind and the Text of the Gospels (Atlanta,
Scholars press), the dissertation attempts to analyze quotations from the
gospels appearing in the commentaries of that fourth century Alexandrian
Father in order to focus “on three kinds of issues: (1) Methodological: How
can the textual affinities of Didymus’s Gospel quotations and allusions best
be determined? (2) Textual: What are these affinities? (3) Historical: What
does Didymus’s Gospel text reveal about the transmission of the NT in
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Alexandria?”
My optimism derives in particular from his comment that “The scientific
study of Didymus’s text of the NT — in this case, of the four Gospels —
has become possible only within the past several years.” I view this casual
comment as indicative of the fact that there, at the beginning of his
professional career, he consciously valued a scientific approach to biblical
studies. Moreover, I was delighted to see that a major amount of his study
was mathematical — comparing the readings of Didymus’s text with each
of the major manuscript types and computing percentages of agreement and
disagreement in order to infer genetic relationships not only between
Didymus and other traditions, but among traditions generally.
Unfortunately, his mathematical methods were very elementary: no analysis
of variance (ANOVA) was performed, no standard deviations were
calculated for manuscripts of each text family, etc. It is very likely that there
is much more information to be gleaned from his data by someone with the
time to carry out the needed mathematical winnowing. It is likely that if
Ehrman had used even the most elementary formal statistical techniques
[210]
such as ANOVA, his advisor Bruce M. Metzger would have been so
dazzled that he would have seen to it that Ehrman would have received
summa, not just magna cum laude honors.
1. Greek
The centrality of Greek for Jesus studies can scarcely be exaggerated.
Not only were all the documents of the canonical New Testament composed
[228]
in Greek, virtually the entirety of the apocryphal literature up until
Mediaeval times was written in Greek — the most important Nag Hammadi
Coptic documents for the most part are derived from Greek Vorlagen. Greek
was the language of the Septuagint versions of the Hebrew scriptures cited
by the New Testament authors. Indeed, Christianity itself largely appears to
have been a Hellenistic confection decked out with Jewish flavoring and
frosting.
Greek was the language of the Apostolic Fathers and the earliest Church
Fathers, the earliest heresiarchs, the ancient mystery religions, and Homer
— whose Odyssey finds reflections in the Gospel of Mark according to the
[229]
eminent scholar Dennis R. MacDonald. Greek is the language of
[230]
‘Aesop’ — whose fable “The Fisherman and the Flute” was adapted
by an author of the so-called Q-Document to produce the famous line in
Matthew and Luke, “I have piped and ye have not danced.” Greek is the
language of important ancient geographers such as Strabo [ca. 63 BCE–ca
21 CE] and historians such as Flavius Josephus [37–ca. 95 CE] whose
writings seem to have been in need of ‘improvement’ by ancient Christians
[231]
and Baptists alike.
Very early in my study of the non-historical Jesus I was confronted with
claims of astral mystery-cult origins of Christianity. This quickly led me to
study not only the ancient Greek astronomer Ptolemy, but his even more
important predecessor Hipparchus of Rhodes [ca. 190–ca. 120 BCE] who
[232]
discovered the precession of the equinoxes and his Cilician or Tarsian
predecessor Aratus [ca. 315–240 BCE], whose Phaenomena verse 5 is
quoted by the author of Acts 17:28 (“For in Him we live and move and
have our being, as some of your own poets have said, ‘We are also his
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offspring.’”) In fact, that same verse begins with a quotation from the
Hymn to Zeus of the Stoic philosopher Cleanthes, the pupil of Zeno the
founder of the Stoic School: “For in him we live and move and have our
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being.” The same verse also quotes the Cretica attributed to the half-
legendary Epimenides (ca. 600 BCE):
“They fashioned a tomb for you, O holy and high one — The
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Cretans, always liars, evil beasts, idle bellies! But you are not
dead; you live and abide forever, For in you we live and move and
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have our being.”
A working knowledge of Greek (as well as Latin and Hebrew) is crucial
for studying the material remains surviving from antiquity — epitaphs,
inscriptions, coins, artworks, etc., and for understanding the context of
archaeological discoveries. But perhaps most of all, Greek is needed to read
the main philosophers whose ideas dominated earliest Christian thinking.
If one is to pursue an anthropological — that is to say, scientific —
investigation of Christian origins it is necessary to learn how to think like
early Christians. It is necessary to study the philosophers whose
Weltanschauung (perhaps ‘paradigm’ might be a more appropriate term
here) informed the conscious and unconscious framework in which proto-
Christians thought, spoke, and wrote. Pythagoras’ notion of
metempsychosis can be seen in the gospels where it is reported that Jesus
was thought by some to be the reincarnation of Elijah or John the Baptist.
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But perhaps even most important of all the philosophers that must be
read by any student of Christian origins is Plato. The psychophysical
universe of Plato’s Timaeus is probably the theater on whose stage the entire
New Testament drama is acted out, and the Platonist/Stoic Philo of
Alexandria [20 BCE–50 CE] bequeathed the Logos of John’s gospel to
some early Christian group.
As if this all were not enough reason to know how to read Greek, there is
the need to use Greek as a tool with which to carry out both text-critical and
higher critical studies of the New Testament writings and manuscripts.
Greek manuscripts must be compared in order to form a theory of the
evolution of the New Testament texts and to discover the many
interpolations and deletions that have been made for theopolitical purposes.
I might conclude that no important original research can be done without
a working command of Greek, although important work can be done with
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secondary sources in modern languages. But unless one is extremely
lucky in finding sources that are essentially without error or blinding bias,
there is the danger that important facts have been overlooked and that errors
[239]
are being repeated.
2. Latin
Latin is of importance not only because it, along with Syriac, appears to
have been the second or third language in which earliest Christians
communicated, but also because a fair number of apocryphal gospels and
Christian miscellanea were composed in it and important Church Fathers
such as Tertullian and Augustine wrote in Latin. It was the lingua franca of
the European scholarly world up until the end of the eighteenth century and
an immense amount of information concerning lost books, manuscripts,
artifacts, and other aspects concerning the evolution of Christianity almost
surely lies waiting to be rediscovered in Latin manuscripts and books in the
libraries of Europe.
Perhaps surprisingly to most readers, Latin is of greatest importance not
because it is the language of the Vulgate Bible, but because it is the
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language of Plautus, Fronto, Horace, Tacitus, Cicero, Statius, Ovid,
Apuleius, Seneca, and Vergil. Vergil: author of the famous “Fourth
Eclogue” announcing the birth of the miraculous child and the beginning of
[241]
a new era — the Age of Saturn. Publius Vergilius Maro: composer of
the Aeneid, the magnificent propaganda gospel of his patron Augustus
Caesar.
3. Indo-Iranian Languages
Long before I became a Mythicist I had learned of the immense
influence of Indian and Persian thought in the early evolution of
Christianity but I supposed that influence had somehow been incorporated
by syncretism some while after the time of Jesus. It never occurred to me
that those influences even indirectly (say, via Philo or Plato or Pythagoras)
could have been initial catalysts in the formation of the various cults we
might now describe as proto-Christian. Even so, my high school efforts to
teach myself Sanskrit proved to be of great value in understanding the
position of Christianity in the cultic landscape of the early Christian
centuries. Although I never gained full mastery of the language, I learned
enough to be able to follow technical arguments concerning comparative
religions and comparative mythologies when primary sources were quoted
and now I see that to really learn the nature and extent of Indic influence on
Christian origins one really should be able to have a good working
knowledge of the language. For several centuries it has been suggested that
the title ‘Christ’ is not really derived from the Greek chriō and does not
mean ‘anointed,’ but actually, by means of unspecified phonetic mutations,
it is related to the Sanskrit name Krishna (krṣ ṇ a,
̣ ‘black’). (It is intriguing
to note that just as Christ is the second member of the Christian Trinity,
Krishna is the second member of the Hindu trinity!)
It is known that Brahman and Buddhist missionaries visited the
Mediterranean world in the days of Philo of Alexandria and long before,
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and it is even claimed that Pythagoras studied in India. The stage
certainly would have been set for Indian influence upon nascent
Christianity. More than that, however, there is a reasonable possibility that
Mithraism and the Magi also were influenced by Indian as well as Persian
ideas. In trying to sort out the complex relations between Pythagoras, Plato,
Mithraism, Zoroastrianism, Buddhism, Judaism (Pharisaism) and Hinduism,
a working knowledge of Sanskrit is needed but is not sufficient. (To unravel
Buddhist influences, knowledge of a Prakrit such as Pali is also useful.) Old
Persian, Avestan, Pehlevi, and modern Farsi are also needed — particularly
in order to read the epigraphic materials reported in Iranian scholarly
journals and Web-sites, as well as to understand modern Iranian
commentaries and descriptions relating to those materials — especially the
coins and inscriptions. Palestine and Asia Minor were long ruled by Persia,
and one must expect a strong Persian influence upon Israelite religions.
Whether or not that influence came into Christianity via proto-Judaism,
Greek philosophy, or directly via missionaries is a problem for which an
answer is urgently needed.
It was clear to me long ago that there were strong similarities between
the proto-Christian mysteries hinted at in the Pauline literature (as well as in
the gospels and the literature of the Gnostics and other earliest Christians)
and the Greco-Roman Mystery religions — especially Mithraism. Although
Mithraism as we know it seems to have developed shortly after the
discovery of the precession of the equinoxes by Hipparchus [d. ca. 120
BCE], Mithra, the eponymous focus of the mysteries, goes back to the
ancient Zoroastrian Avesta. Clearly, a working knowledge of many Indo-
Iranian languages are needed to evaluate the many claims asserting Indian
and Persian influences in Christian origins, and they are basic for any
serious comparative studies of mythologies and religions.
4. Semitic Languages
Hebrew is a major language of the Dead Sea Scrolls, the Jewish
scriptures, the Mishna, ancient inscriptions, and coins. Modern Hebrew is a
language in which much important archaeological research is published that
never is translated into English. Christianity is alleged to have arisen from
Judaism, and so anyone wishing to test that hypothesis perforce must be
able to get along in Hebrew. The Jesus biography is largely comprised of
‘Old Testament’ elements and both the Greek Septuagint and the Hebrew
scriptures must be explored thoroughly if one is to determine the extent to
which the Jesus ‘biography’ comprises anything new beyond its inheritance
from the Jewish scriptures.
Because the Samaritan religion and its scriptures are closely related
genetically to the Hebrew bible and the Israelite religions, it is necessary to
be able to work with Samaritan forms of Hebrew, Aramaic, and even Arabic
in order to study the evolution of the biblical texts. Most intriguingly,
[243]
according to Arthur Drews’ intriguing little book Die Petruslegende,
there is more than a little evidence to suggest a close genetic relationship
between the Christian Saint Peter, the Samaritan Simon Magus of Acts 8:9–
24, and the Samaritan version of Hercules, Melkart. That things Samaritan
lay at the very taproot of the proto-Christian tree seems clear from the fact
that the second-century church father Irenaeus [130–202 CE] identifies
Simon Magus as the “master and progenitor of all heresy” — thus asserting
[244]
a Samaritan origin for most of the forms of Christianity of his day!
Other Semitic languages I have found necessary in the course of my
investigations of religion in general and Christianity in particular include
Assyro-Babylonian or Akkadian, Phoenician, Ugaritic, Aramaic, Syriac,
Arabic, and Ethiopic. Assyro-Babylonian cuneiform tablets are of immense
importance for understanding not only the evolutionary origins of the major
myths of the Old Testament, but also in order to investigate the claim that
there was an ancient Babylonian mystery play that closely resembled the
passion narrative of the canonical gospels. Phoenician has been useful for
comparative linguistic studies relating to purportedly genuine or false
inscriptions and artifacts relating to the Old Testament.
Aramaic is needed to read the Targumim and the commentaries on the
Mishna known as the Babylonian Talmud and the Talmud of Jerusalem. It
also is needed in order to evaluate claims that Jesus not only existed but that
his mother tongue was Aramaic and that there are Aramaic echoes in the
texts of the gospels and Acts. The closely related Syriac is the language of
Ephrem the Syrian, who wrote polemics against Marcion and Mani and a
commentary on Tatian’s Diatessaron. Most importantly, however, it is the
language of the extremely important Codex Sinaiticus Syriacus, the
manuscript in which there is no virgin birth of Jesus in Matthew’s
genealogy: “…and Jacob begat Joseph, and Joseph begat Jesus…” (It would
seem, however, that Ehrman disagrees with my assessment of both the
significance and importance of this particular document.)
Quite unexpectedly, Arabic proved to be of great value in my religious
studies. I had studied Arabic by ‘total immersion’ one summer at Yale,
intending to find employment in Saudi Arabia. I was offered the post of
Editor-in-Chief of the Saudi Geological Survey at Jedda, but before the
contract could reach me the job was snapped up by someone who better
understood the cryptomonetary mechanisms with which business of all
kinds is transacted in that country. When in like manner a post teaching
human neuroanatomy at Faisal Medical School in Riyadh slipped from my
grasp, I abandoned all Arabian plans for employment.
Despite this dashing of all hope for handsomely rewarding employment,
my study of Arabic was not in vain. My Arabic studies proved invaluable
for understanding comparative and historical linguistics of the Semitic
languages in general, including Ugaritic and the newly discovered Eblaite.
Then too, the language was useful in studying the Qur’an not only for its
own sake but also for reconstructing the types of Christianity and Judaism
that were catalysts in the development of Islam. Then too, when it became
necessary to study the Coptic translations of the canonical New Testament, I
discovered that many of the important manuscripts had glosses in Arabic
that were important in their own right. I regret that in later years my
command of Arabic has decayed to the point where I can decode Arabic
documents only with great effort.
There is one more Semitic language that I have found to be potentially of
immense significance for students of Christian origins: Ethiopic, or Ge‘ez.
Ethiopia seems to have been the Ultima Thule of earliest Christian
missionary expansion, and relict forms of Christian scriptures and beliefs
have survived there to this very day. Ethiopia lay beyond the reach of the
book burners who shaped the canon of the so-called Great Church, and so
Ethiopic Christianity and its scriptures seem to be what a biologist would
[245]
call “living fossils.” The canon of the Ethiopic Orthodox Church
comprises 81 books, as compared to the 66 that make up the bibles of
Protestant Christians. The Ethiopic Book of Enoch is of immense value in
understanding the astrological aspects of Christian origins. It is with deep
dismay that I resign myself to the now-apparent fact that I shall die without
ever having made any headway in the study of this critically important
language.
5. Slavic Languages
It might be supposed that Slavic languages would not be needed in order
to do New Testament studies. However, repeatedly I have found my
knowledge of Slavic linguistics to be of utility, not only to read the critical
general works of the Communist-era Russian authors so summarily
dismissed by Ehrman, but also to read the archaeological literature written
in Russian and Serbo-Croatian. Finally, in order to study the interesting
Christian interpolations in so-called Slavonic Josephus, written in a dialect
of Old Russian distinct from Old Church Slavonic (Old Bulgarian), it was
necessary to gain at least a rudimentary understanding of that extinct
language as well.
6. Other Languages
Bart Ehrman lists Coptic as a useful language for Jesus studies, and I can
only emphasize his correctness in this regard. Just recently, he published a
valuable book with coauthor Zlatko Pleše, The Apocryphal Gospels: Texts
and Translations. Pleše contributed the texts and translations for the Coptic
materials and Ehrman supplied the Greek and Latin. All of these texts have
already proven to be valuable for certain statistical studies I am carrying
out. It has been necessary also to obtain the Coptic New Testament in both
its Sahidic and Bohairic versions. At the 2009 meeting of the Society of
Biblical Literature in New Orleans, Christian Askeland, then a PhD
candidate at the University of Cambridge, showed photographs of a crudely
[246]
constructed Coptic document containing the ending of the Gospel of
John. The manuscript clearly ended at the end of chapter twenty! Was this
proof of the theory held for over a century by a number of scholars that the
twenty-first chapter of John’s gospel was a later addition to the text? Was
there a Greek Vorlage lacking a twenty-first chapter somewhere in the text
transmission history underlying this document?
Askeland did not think this was the case. His conclusion was that “The
most likely explanation for the low quality of the papyrus, the rapid cursive
hand, and the frequent rate of errors is that this manuscript was the product
of an exercise in scriptural memory.” It seems to me, however, that even if
Askeland is correct, the question still presses: Was this an exercise in
memorizing just the end of chapter twenty, or an exercise in memorizing the
end of John’s gospel? Not only is Coptic language skill needed to resolve
such issues, papyrological and palaeographic knowledge is also required.
Finally, although of apparently minor importance but needing to be
explored more fully, there is archaeological and epigraphic literature written
in Romanian and Turkish. Considering the importance of Asia Minor in the
earliest history of Christianity, it is highly likely that Turkish-language
descriptions and discussions exist pertaining to archaeological sites,
artifacts and inscriptions that are of importance for both Old and New
Testament studies.
THE SUMMING UP
Having thus summarized the skills and knowledge bases that I personally
have discovered to be requisite for studying Christian origins scientifically,
I am quite daunted. Some of the requirements I fulfill not at all, and a
majority of the skills that I do possess should have been greatly improved
and strengthened. I can only take heart in the knowledge — knowledge as
certain as any can be in a social science — that I have labored in a new
paradigm that will eventually supplant the discipline of Historical Jesus
Studies. The new science of Christian origins will be the product of
interdisciplinary teams of scholars, not just isolated amateurs such as I. Bart
Ehrman is clearly correct to claim that I am not fully qualified to write
about Christian origins. Lamentably, at the age of seventy-three there isn’t a
lot more — try as I shall — that I can do to achieve full qualification.
Moreover, it seems obvious that progress in the study of Christian origins
will result from a sort of multidisciplinary cross-fertilization effected by
teams in which members can teach each other to think ‘outside the box’ of
each particular discipline’s paradigm. It’s too late for me. But Bart D.
Ehrman is still young and growing, and the title question of this essay
remains: Is Bart Ehrman qualified to write about Christian origins? Is he
fully qualified? Does he need outside help?
CHAPTER NINE
Bart Ehrman and the Art of Rhetorical Fallacy
Frank R. Zindler
Bart D. Ehrman is a very good writer. His style is always clear, easily
understood, and engaging. He is, after all, a New York Times best-seller
author, and his recent Did Jesus Exist? The Historical Argument for Jesus of
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Nazareth (DJE?) seems likely to become another publishing triumph.
Felicity of style, however, may often pose potential danger to unwary
readers. A style that is too engaging, too glib, can often carry readers over
hidden crevasses in logic and vast evidential voids. It is the task of this
chapter to discover if such dangers have been hidden in the arguments that
Ehrman uses to persuade his readers that ‘Jesus of Nazareth’ once roamed
the hills of Galilee and shed his blood on Calvary.
Few of the fallacies for which I shall search will be fallacies of formal
logic, although arguments drawn out over many pages — even throughout
an entire book — sometimes can conceal even a formal fallacy. Rather, I
mostly shall be looking for what I like to call fallacies of rhetoric. Such
fallacies can sometimes be devilish to detect and, as a consequence, are the
mainstay of religious apologists of all stripes. Although most of this chapter
will be devoted to such ‘informal’ types of fallacy, I wish to begin with an
examination of a formal fallacy that Ehrman has incorporated into the
macrostructure of DJE?
If p then q.
| q. |
Therefore, p.
This is, of course, fallacious reasoning. A street might not be dry for
many reasons. Street urchins may have opened all the fire hydrants in order
to cool off in the summer’s heat. A milk truck may have exploded, or little
Dutch girls may just have finished scrubbing it. So too it is with the
creationists’ attempts to prove Genesis by refuting Darwin. Every
evolutionist who ever lived might be wrong, but that would no more
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establish the truth of any one of the four creation myths in the
Christian bible than it would prove that the Moon Goddess made us or that
Old Man Coyote created men and women from the hairs of his right and left
arm pits, respectively.
Sad to say, the fallacy of Affirming the Consequent makes up the
overarching structure of Ehrman’s book. He acts as though he can prove the
historicity of Jesus if he can show that all mythicist theories of Christian
origins are wrong. Ehrman’s implicit reasoning seems to be the following:
Of the nine chapters of Did Jesus Exist?, only four (chapters 2, 3, 4, &
5–107 pages) ostensibly are devoted to providing evidence for the
historicity of a Jesus — although not necessarily the Jesus of Nazareth
advertized in the book’s subtitle. Three chapters (chapters 1, 6, & 7–101
pages) attempt to discredit mythicist claims and theories, and two chapters
(chapters 8 & 9–64 pages) fantasize about the ‘real’ historical Jesus.
If the purpose of the book were really to present “the historical argument
for Jesus of Nazareth,” why would there be any chapters about Mythicists at
all? Given the historical circumstances surrounding Ehrman’s decision to
write the book, however, it was inevitable that some mention of Mythicists
and their theories would have to be made. I, for example, had been having
an e-mail discussion with him for about two years, continuously requesting
that he share with me whatever evidence he might have to support the
historicity of Jesus of Nazareth. As a courtesy, I sent him copies of my The
Jesus the Jews Never Knew, the four volumes of my Through Atheist Eyes:
Scenes From a World That Won’t Reason, and a few articles and a lecture.
He was provided with a copy of René Salms’ The Myth of Nazareth: The
Invented Town of Jesus, and Robert M. Price’s The Christ-Myth Theory and
Its Problems. Astonishingly, during our entire dialogue up until shortly
before it broke off, Ehrman never provided any evidence at all to show why
Jesus of anywhere at all had ever lived. Finally, after being pestered for two
years he wrote something to the effect of “for all the standard reasons. I’m
sure you know what they are.”
Despite the fact that Ehrman was provided with a great amount of
evidence indicating that there was no evidence to support the historicity of
Jesus of Nazareth, he ignored almost all of it. Then, providing no
substantial or even quasi-objective evidence for a Jesus of Nazareth
involved in the genesis of Christianity, he devoted much space and energy
to refutation of Mythicist attempts to explain how Christianity could have
begun without a historical Jesus. Ehrman never provided the evidence
requested.
It turns out, however, that I have taken Ehrman’s subtitle too seriously,
supposing that the purpose of DJE? was to demonstrate what needed to be
proved, viz., that Jesus of Nazareth once existed. Ehrman sets the record
straight on page 173:
Who could have known? Only careful readers who got past the first 172
pages of DJE?
Obvious Fallacies
Everyone that I know who has read DJE? has been struck by Ehrman’s
blatant use of the three most fundamental fallacies of informal logic —
fallacies that every beginning student of logic or philosophy learns to
recognize. These are the argumentum ad hominem fallacy, where one
attacks the arguer instead of the argument; the appeal to authority
(argumentum ad verecundiam); and the three-million-Frenchmen-can’t-be-
wrong fallacy (argumentum ad populum). It is really shocking to see a
hitherto admired scholar descend to the tactical level of a religious apologist
— especially when the scholar in question has become an Atheist. Having
little ambition to capture and classify such easy literary prey, I invite my
own readers to buy a copy of DJE? and see how many of these fallacies
they can identify in the first 34 pages.
What’s wrong with this attribution? In the e-mails and literature that I
provided to Ehrman — literature that he claims to have read — I make
much noise over the fact that ‘Nazareth’ was completely unknown to
Josephus, who fortified a town less than two miles from present-day
Nazareth and he mentions 45 cities and villages in the tiny territory of
Galilee. Clearly, if Josephus never, ever mentioned Nazareth, he cannot
have mentioned Jesus of Nazareth. As I pointed out to Ehrman, if it could
be shown that the Land of Oz never existed, the Wizard of Oz would also
be a fiction. He knew that I had compared Nazareth to Oz and Jesus to the
Wizard. If indeed it had been true that Josephus had in fact authentically
mentioned Nazareth, my whole argument against the historicity of Jesus
would collapse by virtue of the fact that Jesus of Nazareth is probably the
only Jesus whose existence can be tested in a scientifically meaningful way.
A perhaps even more revealing error of attribution is to be found on
pages 16–17 of DJE? Ehrman writes:
Proof by Proclamation
Another rhetorical fallacy that is hard to pin down when it has been
stretched across the space of an entire book is the fallacy I like to call proof
by proclamation. In my little spoof “Bart Ehrman and the Emperor’s New
Clothes” at the end of this book, I quip that “Ehrman is seeking evidence
for the existence of Jesus of Nazareth. Mythicists are seeking evidence for
the existence of Ehrman’s evidence.” Having tried but failed to find
convincing evidence in DJE? supporting the historicity of Jesus of
Nazareth, I think it is now fair to claim that Ehrman has repeatedly tried to
prove his history simply by saying that it’s so — proof by proclamation.
Here are some examples of Ehrman whistling past the graveyard in which
all historical Jesuses have been buried.
The reality is that whatever else you may think about Jesus, he
certainly did exist. [DJE? 4]
It is striking that virtually everyone who has spent all the years
needed to attain these qualifications is convinced that Jesus of
Nazareth was a real historical figure. [DJE? 5]
For now I want to stress the most foundational point of all: even
though some views of Jesus could loosely be labeled myths (in the
sense that mythicists use the term: these views are not history but
imaginative creation), Jesus himself was not a myth. He really
existed. [DJE? 14]
Before countering the claims of the mythicists, I will set out the
evidence that has persuaded everyone else, amateur and professional
scholars alike, that Jesus really did exist. [DJE? 34]
…and my claim is that once one understands more fully what the
Gospels are and where they came from, they provide powerful
evidence indeed that there really was a historical Jesus who lived in
Roman Palestine and who was crucified under Pontius Pilate. [DJE?
70]
What I think is that Jesus really existed but that the Jesus who
really existed was not the person most Christians today believe in…
For now I want to continue to mount the case that whatever else you
may want to say about Jesus, you can say with a high degree of
certainty that he was a historical figure. [DJE? 143–44]
Finally, Ehrman ends his little book — a book that actually is amazingly
long, considering the fact that not enough real evidence exists in it to fill a
pamphlet — with a proclamation that is actually a book-length non
sequitur:
Just how amazing this final declaration truly is can be understood only
when one reads Ehrman’s catalog of evidences we do not have with which
to demonstrate the quondam existence of the most important man who ever
lived:
In the face of the crippling fact that there is no evidence of any kind —
physical, archaeological, or literary — that two thousand years of searching
has been able to find to indicate that the Docetists were wrong and Jesus
was real, Ehrman thinks he has been able to prove that “Jesus did exist,
whether we like it or not.” It is interesting that he does not end his book
claiming that “Jesus of Nazareth did exist.” That was, of course, the Jesus
specifically promised in the subtitle of DJE? Perhaps he secretly realizes
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that René Salm’s archaeological analysis shows conclusively that
Nazareth was not inhabited at the turn of the era and Ehrman understands
that if there was no Nazareth of Jesus there could not have been a Nazareth
of Jesus!
On the other hand, Ehrman is a master debater and may be aware of a
forensic trick that when handled well can be quite effective. The trick
involves mentioning one’s opponent’s best points repeatedly, interspersed
with irrelevant arguments and confident periodic comments implying that
the opponent’s points have been refuted.
Concealed Fallacies
A skilled rhetorician is able to practice the art of rhetorical fallacy so
subtly that readers are not likely to notice them unless they are logicians or
have reason a priori to be suspicious of the soundness of the book they are
reading. Usually, the fallacies thus committed are concealed by being only
implied, mixed with several other fallacies, and distributed over a space of
text in such a way as to avoid drawing attention to the fallacies by stating
them too baldly. Ehrman’s skill in the art of rhetorical fallacy can be seen at
the very beginning of Did Jesus Exist?, in the very first paragraph of his
introduction. Let us examine this paragraph and see what all is hidden in it.
The paragraph reads:
For the past several years I have been planning to write a book
about how Jesus became God. How is it that a scarcely known,
itinerant preacher from the rural backwaters of a remote part of the
[Roman] empire, a Jewish prophet who predicted that the end of the
world as we know it was soon to come, who angered the powerful
religious and civic leaders of Judea and as a result was crucified for
sedition against the state — how is it that within a century of his
death, people were calling this little-known Jewish peasant God?
Saying in fact that he was a divine being who existed before the
world began, that he had created the universe, and that he was equal
with God Almighty himself? How did Jesus come to be deified,
worshipped as the Lord and Creator of all? [DJE? 1].
“…and that he was equal with God Almighty himself ?” Exactly which
god was the first to be equated with Jesus? The Demiurge? Yahweh? The
ineffable supreme god of the highest Gnostic heaven? Inquiring minds will
want to know.
“How did Jesus come to be deified, worshipped as the Lord and Creator
of all?” Are we talking specifically about Jesus of Nazareth, or a Jesus of
not-Nazareth? Will we trace the evolutionary path not only from Ehrman’s
country bumpkin to the god of Orthodoxy, but also show how that hayseed
became the gods of Marcion, the Docetists, the Nazarenes, and the Gnostics
as well? It is stunning to see how much there is that Ehrman takes for
granted as self-evidently true and not in need of proof. That is the case, of
course, because Ehrman is still locked inside the traditional Historical-Jesus
paradigm. He knoweth not how much he knoweth not.
What I think is that Jesus really existed but that the Jesus who
really existed was not the person most Christians today believe in. I
will get to that latter point toward the end of this book. For now I
want to continue to mount the case that whatever else you may want
to say about Jesus, you can say with a high degree of certainty that
he was a historical figure. In this chapter I will wrap up my
discussion of the historical evidence by stressing just two points in
particular. These two points are not the whole case for the historical
Jesus. A lot of other evidence that we have already considered leads
in precisely the same direction. But these two points are especially
key. I think each of them shows beyond a shadow of reasonable
doubt that Jesus must have existed as a Palestinian Jew who was
crucified by the Romans. The first point reverts to Paul, but now we
look not at what Paul said about Jesus but at whom Paul knew. Paul
was personally acquainted with Jesus’s closest disciple, Peter, and
Jesus’s own brother, James. [DJE? 143]
The very last sentence contains the entire argument: We know that Jesus
— a Palestinian Jew who was crucified by the Romans — existed because
‘Paul’ said he had visited with his brother James and his disciple ‘Peter’
[Gal 1:18–19]. Now, how compelling an argument is that? Is it more or less
believable because Paul solemnly swears, “Before God, I am not lying”
[Gal 1:20]?
To prove the existence of a Jesus of [fill in the blank] for whom, Ehrman
admits, no objective evidence whatsoever exists, he invokes the alleged
witness of an equally unknown ‘Paul’ who — we must suppose — had
hallucinations of the Risen Jesus but nonetheless is to be considered a
reliable witness. This Paul assures us, not only that he received various
messages from ‘the Lord,’ but also had met someone named Cephas in
Jerusalem — as well as a certain James, “the brother of the Lord” [Gal
1:18-20]. The ignotum-per-ignotius aspects of this argument are too
complex to discuss in an integrated analysis, and so I must simply
enumerate the appealing unknowns that lurk within this paragraph.
There is no objective evidence that ‘Paul’ ever lived. There are no
genuine relics, no contemporary records. How do we know that Paul was a
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historical figure? How can we be sure he is not a literary invention? In
the face of this uncertainty, how can we use him in any way as evidence to
argue that ‘Jesus’ was something more than a literary creation? According
to the Panarion of Epiphanius, in the Ebionite Ascents of James it was
claimed that Paul’s parents were Pagans and that he was a proselyte and
was circumcised in order to marry a priest’s daughter. When he was not
successful, however, he turned against Jewish customs. Will the real
Brother of the Lord please stand up? What evidence can Ehrman adduce to
show that the conflicting canonical accounts of Paul are any more accurate
than that of the Ebionites? If Paul was actually a Pagan, what does that do
to the reliability of Acts and the so-called Pauline Epistles?
We know that at least some of the New Testament letters attributed to
Paul are forgeries or at least falsely attributed to his authorship. How can
we be sure that the Dutch Radical Critics at the turn of the twentieth century
were not right — all of the Pauline epistles are pseudonymous? If Paul
didn’t write any of the letters attributed to him, who exactly was Paul? Can
that question be answered without recourse to ignotum-per-ignotius
argumentation? Can testable hypotheses be formulated to investigate the
question?
Why should we ‘believe’ the stories told by the author of the so-called
authentic Pauline epistles any more than those told by the other authors —
for example, the author of Hebrews? Why should we believe any of them?
When was Galatians written? Is all of the present text original? Has
anything been interpolated? Is Galatians the only document in the New
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Testament that has not been altered over the course of time? What if
Galatians was composed much later than the traditional date (ca. 58 CE)?
Wouldn’t that completely vitiate Ehrman’s argument? Some Dutch Radical
Critics have strongly challenged the traditional dating of this letter.
Assuming that Paul existed, how can we be sure that “Paul was
personally acquainted with Jesus’s closest disciple, Peter”? How can
Ehrman know that “Cephas was, of course, Simon Peter” when explicating
the I-swear-to-God-I’m-not-lying claim in Galatians 1:18 that “after three
years I [Paul] went up to Jerusalem to consult with Cephas”? How can he
know they are the same ‘rock’? How can we know that neither one of them
refers to ‘the rock’ Mithras?
Is Ehrman aware of the manuscript irregularities concerning the use of
the names ‘Cephas’ and ‘Peter’ in the first two chapters of Galatians? The
name Cephas (Aramaic, ‘Rock’) occurs three times in these chapters: Gal
1:18 (“… I did go up to Jerusalem to get to know Cephas”); Gal 2:9 (“And
when James, Cephas, and John, who seemed to be pillars, perceived the
grace…”); and Gal 2:11 (“but when Peter [Cephas in best MSS] was come
to Antioch, I withstood him to the face…”). The name Peter (Greek,
‘Rock’) appears twice in most manuscripts: Gal 2:7 and 2:8. These two
verses are rather odd and have a complicated history in the manuscripts.
Before considering the Greek text, it is of interest to contrast the various
bewildering attempts to render them in English.
The King James Version: “7 But contrariwise, when they saw that the
gospel of the uncircumcision was committed unto me, as the gospel of the
circumcision was unto Peter; 8 (For he that wrought effectually in Peter to
the apostleship of the circumcision, the same was mighty in me toward the
Gentiles:)”
The New English Bible: “but on the contrary acknowledged that I had
been entrusted with the Gospel for Gentiles as surely as Peter had been
entrusted with the Gospel for Jews.”
The Oxford New International Version: “7 On the contrary, they saw that
I had been entrusted with the task of preaching the gospel to the Gentiles,
just as Peter had been to the Jews. 8 For God, who was at work in the
ministry of Peter as an apostle to the Jews, was also at work in my ministry
as an apostle to the Gentiles.
The Anchor Bible translation of J. Louis Martyn: “7. On the contrary,
they saw clearly that I had been entrusted by God with the gospel as it is
directed to those who are not circumcised, just as Peter had been entrusted
with the gospel to those who are circumcised. 8. For he who was at work in
Peter, creating an apostolate to those who are circumcised, was also at work
in me, sending me to the Gentiles.” Martyn comments, “However
syntactically disjointed it may be, the long and complex sentence of vv 6–
10 is consistently focused on the leaders of the Jerusalem church.” He then
goes on to discuss the grammatical complexities of the sentence.
The Hermeneia commentary on Galatians [Philadelphia: Fortress Press,
1979], written by the highly respected Hans Dieter Betz, does not present a
connected translation as such but rather comments on the Greek text. The
extent of the ignotius invoked by Ehrman in using the Paul of Galatians as
evidence of a historical Jesus begins to be visible in Betz’s comments on the
“long and difficult sentence” of present interest:
Interesting is also the fact that non-Pauline language is used for the
description of the content of the insight. Erich Dinkler emphasized
that the notions of the “gospel of the uncircumcision” as well as the
“gospel of the circumcision” are not Paul’s language and that these
concepts contradict his statement in Gal 1:6–7. Surprising is also the
name “Peter,” instead of the usual “Cephas,” in this passage. Karl
Holl and Adalbert Merx proposed a solution of the problem of the
name by textual emendation, assuming that “Peter” was inserted by
later redactors for whom this was the standard name. Ernst Barnikol
thought of a later gloss which intended to put Peter and Paul on an
equal level. Holl assumed that “Peter” was the name of the
missionary, while “Cephas” was the name of the apostle at
Jerusalem. Others expressed doubt that the two names refer to the
same person. John Chapman argued that Paul formulated Gal 2:7
under the influence of Matt 16:16–19” [96–97; footnote reference
[261]
numbers deleted from text].
Who were the brethren? Were they merely fellow believers? Hardly.
That they were higher officials likely to hold titles of some sort — including
‘Brothers of the Lord’ — is seen by the fact that they appear to be
considered ‘elders’ [presbyteroi] and the office of Presbyter still survives in
various churches to this day. Moreover, common sense indicates that Paul
would not be making so much effort just to confer with untitled believers.
In fact, in verse 21:16 we read that “There went with us also certain of the
disciples [tōn mathētōn] of Caesarea, and brought with them one Mnason of
Cyprus, an old disciple [mathētē], with whom we should lodge.” Who were
these disciples? Certainly they were not ‘The Twelve.’ It is not even clear
that in this case the term ‘disciple’ is even a title. It may simply mean
believers who are still undergoing initiation. In any case, disciples are far
below the station of brethren.
Another instructive passage to consider is Acts 12:17.
Acts 12:17 But he [Peter] beckoning unto them with the hand
to hold their peace, declared unto them how the Lord had brought
him out of the prison. And he said, Go shew these things unto James
and to the brethren [tois adelphois]. And he departed, and went into
another place.
Acts 15:7 And when there had been much disputing, Peter rose
up [D* adds “in spirit,” 614 & 2412 add “in holy spirit, ” and P45
interpolates part of verse 2 here] and said unto them, Men and
brethren [Andres, Adelphoi]
Acts 15:13 And after they had held their peace, James
answered, saying, Men and brethren [Andres, Adelphoi], hearken
unto me…
Are ‘brothers’ a group separate from ‘men’? Possibly. On the other hand,
both Peter and James are speaking to their fellow leaders of the cult, and
one might expect a homogeneous, fraternal assemblage being addressed —
a brotherhood. It is likely this is not only an assemblage of Brothers of the
Lord Jesus, but simultaneously of Brothers of the Lord Yahweh. This can be
seen in the fact that in all these episodes involving interactions with the
leadership, Jesus is rarely if ever mentioned. Prayers are offered “to the
Lord,” “the Lord” gets Peter out of jail, etc. Is this not ‘the Lord’ [ho
Kyrios] of the Septuagint? Is this not more easily understood to be Lord
Yahweh? If so, once again it would appear that “James the brother of the
Lord” was not the physical brother of a physical Jesus of Nazareth. Rather,
he was the spiritual brother of Lord Jesus the avatar of Yahweh.
And so, despite the ample amount of speculation larded into what I have
written above concerning ‘the brother of the Lord,’ the discussion shows
once again that Ehrman could not have chosen a worse ‘key datum’ than the
notion that James was a biological brother of some Jesus-or-other of
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Somewhere-or-other. The deeper one investigates the relevant texts,
the more unknown and uncertain the meanings come to appear. Ignotum per
ignotius per ignotius per ignotius.
Seeming to be Pillars
The problems Ehrman is presented with by his key verses in Galatians
are not over even yet. In Gal 2:9 we learn that James ‘the brother of the
Lord’ has another title as well — a title he shares with Cephas and John:
“And when James, Cephas, and John, who seemed to be pillars (styloi),
perceived the grace…” Now, whatever ‘pillar’ may mean — I shall add to
the speculation about this anon — one thing is clear: it is a title of religious
office. Clearly, the story indicates that James held some sort of high office
along with Cephas and John. Why couldn’t he also hold a second office —
Brother of the Lord?
While there has long been speculation concerning the meaning of the
term pillar, there is another aspect of this verse that seems to me to be really
bizarre but is never discussed. The three “seemed to be (dokountes, a plural
present participle) pillars.” If Paul had actually visited them in Jerusalem,
wouldn’t he have known they were pillars? If ‘pillar’ was an office in a
mystery cult, of course, ‘Paul’ or his inventor might not have been able to
be sure. If Paul himself was not historical, the unknown author of the
Galatians tale would have had to speculate about the situation Paul would
have encountered in Jerusalem.
While we cannot be sure what it meant to say that James and Cephas and
John “seemed to be pillars,” we can be sure that actual pillars were
associated with most of the religions of the Mediterranean world.
According to 1 Kings 7:21, in Solomon’s temple — apparently modeled
after the temple to Hercules at Tyre — there were two great pillars. One of
them bore the name Boaz (‘strength’), the other was named Yachin (i.e., ‘he
erects,’ ‘he founds,’ ‘he upholds’). According to Arthur Drews, Hercules
bearing pillars was a favorite symbol in antiquity for arduous, oppressive
labor. He reminds us also that the Tyrian Hercules Baal-Khon was not only
a god of battle, but was also a mediator and savior of the Syro-Phoenician
cultural world who maintains the universe upright against the monster
Typhon. Drews cites an image of Hercules bearing two crossed pillars —
reproduced here as Fig. 1: Hercules as Crucifer — and relates this to
Christianity:
HERCULES AS CRUCIFER
Maffei
Figure 1, copied from Plate CXXVII in Volume I, Part II of
L’Antiquité Expliquée, by Bernard de Montfaucon (1729). According
to de Montfaucon, the figure was engraved upon an ancient
gemstone in the possession of a certain “M. le Cavalier Maffei,
gentilhomme du Pape,” a famous antiquarian of his time.
***
Drews notes that many ancient temples were built with great free-
standing pillars beside or before them, and that Lucian of Samosata (De
Dea Syria) tells us that Syrian temples to Dionysus had two such pillars that
actually were giant phalli. Drews opines that the tall steeples of Christian
churches are the end-point of pillar evolution.
If Christianity began as an astral mystery cult, pillars might be expected
to be important esoteric symbols, perhaps including the axial pole of the
universe. It should be remembered that the famous ICHTHYS double
acrostic in the Sibylline Oracles (‘Jesus Christ, God’s Son, Savior’) actually
contains a sixth word — stauros. Although this word almost always is
translated ‘cross,’ its original meaning was ‘pole.’ Thus, according to one of
the earliest of Christian ‘scriptures,’ James and John and Cephas weren’t
the only pillars: Jesus was one too!
After this divagation about the term ‘pillar,’ we must remind ourselves
that it has not been for the purpose of proving a hypothesis contrary to
Ehrman’s historicity hypothesis, but rather to show that there are grounds
for considering the “key data” to be ambiguous and uncertain, and thus, to
see that Ehrman’s reliance on the Galatians pericope involves the addition
of further uncertainty to his reasoning. Instead of providing firm answers, it
raises yet more questions and is far from producing airtight evidence for
any brother of a flesh-and-blood Jesus of Nazareth. Once again, it shows
that Ehrman is employing the fallacy of ignotum per ignotius.
Paul also knew that Jesus was crucified. Before the Christian
movement, there were no Jews who thought the messiah was going
to suffer. Quite the contrary. The crucified Jesus was not invented,
therefore, to provide some kind of mythical fulfillment of Jewish
expectation. The single greatest obstacle Christians had when trying
to convert Jews was precisely their claim that Jesus had been
executed. They would not have made that part up. They had to deal
with it and devise a special, previously unheard of theology to
account for it. And so what they invented was not a person named
Jesus but rather the idea of a suffering messiah. That invention has
become so much a part of the standard lingo that Christians today
assume it was all part of the original plan of God as mapped out in
the Old Testament. But in fact the idea of a suffering messiah cannot
be found there. It had to be created. And the reason it had to be
created is that Jesus — the one Christians considered to be the
messiah — was known by everyone everywhere to have been
crucified. He couldn’t be killed if he didn’t live. [DJE? 173]
Uniting the beginning of this paragraph with its ending, we have the
premise and conclusion of a would-be syllogism:
Onus Probandi
Any argument for a historical Jesus of Nazareth must be compatible with
and subject to the rules of science. Ehrman’s DJE?, however, is not
compatible with science in one crucial, fundamental aspect. It falls afoul of
the scientific rules concerning burden of proof — the so-called onus
probandi. Ehrman develops a rhetorical fallacy for which there is yet no
name — the fallacy of bypassing scientific rules of evidence and claiming
that someone who does argue scientifically is somehow misguided. Ehrman
criticizes the New Testament scholar Robert M. Price:
Frank R. Zindler
“And taking bread, giving thanks, he broke it and gave it to them, saying,
‘This is my body that is given for you. Do this in my remembrance.’ And the
cup likewise after supper, saying, ‘This cup is the new covenant in my blood
that is poured out for you. But behold, the hand of the one who betrays me
is with me on the table’.”
Frank R. Zindler
It is striking that virtually everyone who has spent all the years
needed to attain these qualifications is convinced that Jesus of
Nazareth was a real historical figure. [DJE? 5]
Now, simply stating the obvious fact that the vast majority of New
Testament specialists are historicists is not evidence for the concealed
proposition “Jesus of Nazareth once lived in Roman Palestine and was
crucified by Pontius Pilate.” That is a statement in need of proof—proof for
which Mythicists seek in vain in the pages of Ehrman’s book.
That leaves us with only one passage in the entire book where Ehrman
uses the name ‘Jesus of Nazareth’ as an integral part of his argument. This
is found in his discussion of methodology to separate the miraculous Jesus
from the mundane Jesus.
We are left, therefore, with a book that isn’t really intended to prove the
existence of a god-man who came from a place called Nazareth. Ehrman
has hedged his bets and is attempting to prove the existence of any Jesus
who can be pressed into service to explain a unitary origin of Christianity.
One may fairly ask at this point, “Why should this initiating stimulator
have been named Jesus either? Wasn’t he named Jesus because the Aramaic
equivalent (yeshua‘ ) means ‘Savior’? In Septuagint Greek, the word
IESOUS can also represent the name Joshua. Maybe we should be looking
for a Joshua instead of a Savior?
But why, exactly, would Ehrman suppose that Jesus is the first name of
his putative character, rather than a title or epithet? He knows that Christ is
a title, not a name. Why not Jesus? Moreover, wasn’t ‘Jesus’ the ultimate
name bestowed upon Paul’s “Christ Jesus” in the so-called Kenosis Hymn
[Philippians 2:5–11]?
Wherefore God also hath highly exalted him [Christ Jesus], and
given him a name which is above every name: that at the name of
Jesus every knee should bow, of things in heaven, and things in
earth, and things under the earth.
Isn’t Jesus here a name of magical power given to a being who was
referred to as “Christ” before he was titled Jesus? Isn’t that why we still
find occasional references to Christ Jesus instead of Jesus Christ?
Is it not the case that if — as the consensus of historicist scholarly
opinion holds — unlike Hinduism and traditional Egyptian, Greek, and
Roman religions, Christianity began at a single point in time and was
initiated by a single person, couldn’t that person have been named Ichabod
as well as Savior? Couldn’t the name of Savior have been given to him after
his death? If we no longer have to think of Christianity having been
founded by Jesus of Nazareth, couldn’t it have been founded by someone
named anything at all?
The unfulfilled promise of Ehrman’s subtitle would not be unexpected
by anyone who has read his earlier books — none of which has much to say
about a character named Jesus of Nazareth. As a glaring example, we may
consider his Jesus: apocalyptic prophet of the new millennium [New York:
Oxford University Press, 1999]. ‘Jesus of Nazareth’ appears only four times
in 274 pages of very small print.
In the Preface, Ehrman tells us “I really don’t have a lot to say to
scholars who have already spent a good portion of their lives delving into
the complex world of first-century Palestine and the place that Jesus of
Nazareth occupied within it.”
The second sentence in chapter one tells us that the peculiar Christian
delusion that the world was about to end “can be traced all the way back to
the beginning, to the teachings of Jesus of Nazareth.”
‘Jesus of Nazareth’ puts in an amusing appearance in the first sentence
of chapter six, where Ehrman reminds us that “We have spent a good deal
of time looking at the historical sources that can inform us about Jesus of
Nazareth.” “A good deal of time?” “Historical sources?” The only places
where Jesus of Nazareth has been mentioned at this point are the two places
at the beginning of the book — in sentences having nothing whatsoever to
do with historical sources for anything!
Fourth and finally, we learn on page 98 that “Jesus is said to have come
from Nazareth in all four Gospels… and is sometimes actually called “Jesus
of Nazareth” in other ancient sources (e.g., Acts 3:6).” Unfortunately, there
are some problems with this claim.
First of all, even the King James Version does not place ‘Jesus of
Nazareth’ in that verse of Acts. It has “In the name of Jesus Christ of
Nazareth rise up and walk.” Since the name there is being used for magical
purposes, the distinction between ‘Jesus Christ of Nazareth’ and mere
‘Jesus of Nazareth’ almost certainly would have been crucial! Uttering the
words ‘Jesus of Nazareth’ would have healed a man lame since birth about
as well as saying hocus-pocus.
The second problem is really quite shocking in its implications regarding
the quality of Ehrman’s scholarship when writing books for popular
consumption. It appears that he did not check any Greek version of Acts
3:6. No Greek manuscript is known in which the city name Nazareth is
found in that verse. Instead, all known manuscripts have an epithet that
might be rendered something like the Nazorean in English. Such an error or
misrepresentation might be expected in an apologetic work by Lee Strobel
or Josh McDowell, but it is utterly unexpected in a book written by the
author of the excellent Loeb Classical Library edition of the Apostolic
Fathers.
In Did Jesus Exist? Ehrman claims to have presented evidence for the
existence of Jesus of Nazareth. Mythicists in the rebuttals of this volume,
however, seek evidence for the existence of Ehrman’s evidence.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Archaeology, Bart Ehrman, and the Nazareth of
‘Jesus’
René Salm
[292]
I. DJE? & the New Skepticism
When I first learned that Dr. Ehrman was writing a book combating
the Mythicist position, I was elated and knew in advance that this was a
‘win’ for Mythicists, regardless of what the good doctor might write. After
all, his book would finally bring Jesus Mythicism before a general
readership. Ehrman’s book — slim though it may be in substance — has
[293]
also opened the door for other efforts attacking Mythicism. This is all
laudable from a Mythicist perspective, for Ehrman, Casey, Hoffmann and
others are — through their generally vociferous, often emotional, and
always poorly argued denunciations — firmly placing Jesus Mythicism on
the radar screen of scholarship. It’s about time.
A scant few years ago the word ‘Mythicist’ was unknown to everyone,
including biblical scholars. We have now turned a page. Though mainstream
scholars may by and large continue to ignore the Mythicist position — that
Jesus of Nazareth was an invention — the position now demands address.
This is the fundamental significance of Ehrman’s book, not what he writes.
After all, Did Jesus Exist? has all the earmarks of being lightweight both
in content and argument. It is a book to be read with the TV on or while
cooking dinner. In fact, I think this was definitely Ehrman’s (and/or his
editor’s) intention. It does not have the scholar and the seminar room in
mind, but the “millions of people [who] have acquired their ‘knowledge’
about early Christianity — about Jesus, Mary Magdalene, the emperor
Constantine, the Council of Nicaea — from Dan Brown,” author of The Da
Vinci Code [DJE? 4]. The great fear is that skeptical claims “are seeping
into the popular consciousness at an alarming rate” [DJE? 6–7].
Thus DJE? properly locates itself not in academe but in America’s
increasingly hot culture wars. This explains the immediate and vociferous
reactions from both traditional and skeptical sides of the issue. We cannot
suppose that those reactions constitute validation that Ehrman’s opus in any
way marks a signal advance in learning. The hundreds of Mythicist rebuttals
are something of a celebration — they are celebrating the coming of age of
Jesus Mythicism.
But Ehrman is not writing for Jesus Mythicists whom he caricatures from
the start as “conspiracy theorists” resisting “a traditional view [which] is
thoroughly persuasive” [DJE? 5]. Rather, his goal is to inoculate the general
reader against the dangerous new heresy of Jesus Mythicism. It is a pre-
emptive strike, hopefully carried out before Mythicism has a chance to gain
a firm foothold in the culture. Unfortunately for him, Ehrman is too late.
DJE? seeks to influence rather than to inform. Thus it is at heart a book
of propaganda. Propaganda is the perfect word, for Ehrman skews, ignores,
caricatures, and uses all the rhetorical tools of the publicist who cares far
more for appearance than for rigorous argument. But rhetoric is not the
problem with DJE? — every good writer uses it, and Ehrman is a good
writer. The main problem with his book is its astonishing lack of rigorous
argument. Instead, the reader is time and time again regaled with a cheap
appeal to authority. But in our time — when every scintilla of data regarding
Jesus of Nazareth is subject to the most careful scrutiny and often to strident
disagreement — authority is hardly enough, even if it comes in the form of
pronouncements from the James A. Gray Distinguished Professor of
Religious Studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. And,
after 339 breezy pages, we read the ultimate pronouncement in DJE?’s final
sentence: “Jesus did exist, whether we like it or not.” Ironically, like the
book which preceded it, the affirmation is surprisingly empty and carries
absolutely no weight.
Mohandas Gandhi famously said, “First they ignore you, then they
ridicule you, then they fight you, then you win.” In the first reactions to
DJE?, one Mythicist pundit opined that “Ehrman’s book presents the
paradigm shift from Ignore to Ridicule. As such, it is an important
milestone.” I doubt this book qualifies as a milestone, or that it is even
important. Yet DJE? proves that we have progressed beyond the “ignore”
stage. Traces of ridicule are readily available, as when Ehrman often
invokes majority opinion against Mythicism:
For Mythicists there are three great errors in this citation: (1) that Jesus
existed; (2) that he was “ineluctably Jewish”; and (3) that there is historical
information about him in the Gospels. The first point is the thrust of DJE?.
Yet Ehrman demonstrates that he is not well read in Mythicist literature —
apparently he has merely scanned the most recent crop of books from
Acharya S. to G. A. Wells. He indeed grapples with the thesis that ‘Christ’
was a spiritual entity (Doherty et al.), but is woefully unaware of other
issues important to Mythicists, such as the critical distinction between
‘Jesus’ and ‘Christ’ (Ehrman tiresomely equates these, e.g., page 52); the
priority of Greek Chrestos (meaning ‘good’) over Christos (meaning
‘anointed’); not to mention provocative theories that identify Chrestos with
the ‘prophet,’ ‘soothsayer’ (chrestes) of the Delphic mysteries, and ‘Jesus’
with John the Baptist (Ory, Price) or with the Teacher of Righteousness
(Eisenman, others). All of these, for Ehrman, are unknown, unexplored, or
off the table. They are not within the purview of respectable discussion. But
they are important to Jesus Mythicism with the result that, for him,
Mythicism is itself largely off the table. From DJE? one can say that
Ehrman treats a subject that he neither knows nor likes, with the result that
he does so neither rigorously nor even seriously.
Though the ‘meat’ of the Mythicist position may still be off the table,
and though Ehrman treats Mythicism with a good dose of haughtiness, I am
optimistic that his book marks a somewhat more advanced level than
Gandhi’s second stage, Ridicule. For if Ehrman were simply ridiculing
Mythicism then he wouldn’t have bothered to write a whole book about it
— which was not a joy, as he states on page 6: “I need to admit that I write
this book with some fear and trepidation.”
The real reason Ehrman wrote the book has already been noted — it
stems from alarm over the recent progress of Jesus Mythicism. Yet, Jesus
Mythicism is not new. After all, Albert Schweitzer dedicated a chapter to
rationalism, skepticism, and Mythicism in his expanded (German) version
of the Quest (Geschichte der Leben-Jesu-Forschung, 1913). However, the
tradition — to which Schweitzer very much belonged — has always been
able to marginalize Mythicist voices. If I am not mistaken, for the first time
the tradition has blinked. One century after Schweitzer’s book the gathering
forces of skepticism are demonstrating unparalleled vigor, numbers, and the
remarkable and perhaps unprecedented ability to advance their agenda
despite a most uneven playing field.
And the playing field — lest any one doubt — is unevenly biased against
the Mythicist. While Ehrman is handsomely paid for the books he writes,
has no trouble finding a publisher, and is a lauded luminary in the field of
New Testament studies, Mythicists are unfunded, may lose their academic
positions because of their views, and often must research and write for free
and in their spare time. Saying that Mythicists are not professionally
engaged academics — as Ehrman does repeatedly in his book — is simply
unfair, for a Mythicist may possess all the customary credentials yet still be
unable to find work in academe. A case in point is Dr. Robert Price, a
scholar who possesses not one but two doctoral degrees in the field of
religion. Thus it is not the lack of credentials that ultimately bars Mythicists
from the guild — it is their views.
Personally speaking, I long ago perceived this state of affairs and knew
that — given my radical views — pursuit of a doctorate in religious studies
was essentially a waste of time. I can give two reasons: (1) no job would
await me upon completion of my coursework; and (2) for years of university
study I would subject myself to cant and to the narrow-minded mores
typical of religious institutions. Rather than embark on such a stifling and
expensive road, I determined to do the necessary learning on my own,
taking occasional classes in language and history at the local university. To
the academic who would say that it is not possible to get the equivalent of a
PhD in religious studies outside the classroom, I would simply respond that
it is not desirable to get such a PhD inside the classroom.
The credentialed often hurl the term ‘amateur’ at the Mythicist.
However, I for one am proud of such standing and consider it an
indiscretion to mingle truth with a paycheck. Amateur is a most laudable
qualification for the student of religion. Indeed, there may be no finer
endorsement.
At the same time, seething discontent within the field of Biblical Studies
(including both Old and New Testaments) is producing a flood of literature
decidedly favoring skeptical views. Many academics are straining against
the bit which the tradition has long placed in their mouths. The tenor of our
age favors this New Skepticism in two important ways. Firstly, recent years
have seen Christianity stumble repeatedly, as one ethical compromise after
another diminishes its former respect and drives away the faithful. Secondly,
the uneducated public has shown itself finally able to cast aside traditional
views inculcated over the millennia. Skepticism regarding Jesus is no longer
the province of fringe would-be academics. It has infected the population at
large, thanks to a steady stream of best-selling books and movies which not
long ago would have been considered sacrilegious.
All this demonstrates that the time is ripe for Jesus Mythicism. It is a
product of our age. That recognition, too, is causing alarm in the Christian
tradition. The result is that ridicule is no longer an appropriate nor
satisfactory response. Now at the beginning of the third Christian
millennium, we are entering Gandhi’s third stage: Engagement (‘fight’). The
fact that a leading scholar like Bart Ehrman has written a book called Did
Jesus Exist? witnesses to the new reality: Mythicism is finally being taken
seriously.
Well — up to a point... Ehrman’s book is not serious and certainly it is
not scholarly. He still has one foot planted in the Ridicule stage, while the
other tentatively seeks a foothold in unfamiliar territory that was, until his
tome, outside polite discussion. Ehrman’s book does not satisfactorily
engage with Mythicist issues. An immediate deluge of Mythicist rebuttals
on the Internet (some extensive, such as those of Earl Doherty and Richard
Carrier) immediately revealed how shallow and wanting are many of his
positions.
Now, I have little doubt that Ehrman could have written a more scholarly
tome had he wished to address Mythicism in more depth and, it should be
said, with more respect. Had he done so, however, he would have lost his
vast intended readership which is not other savants, but the largely
uneducated public. Mythicists were hoping for a serious treatment
validating the serious nature of their proposition. But Ehrman withholds
such validation. He seems never to have intended that DJE? be part of the
scholarly conversation but that it be part of America’s cultural conversation.
The upshot is that Ehrman’s book could have been written equally poorly
by just about any freelance writer. The fact that it was written by a scholar
of Ehrman’s stature is one more symptom that, as regards ‘the historical
Jesus,’ academe has dropped the ball. Let me spell out the fundamental
lesson learned from the last two hundred years of biblical scholarship: in its
First Quest, its Second Quest, and now its Third Quest, academe has not
been able to seriously grapple with the question of ‘the historical Jesus.’ Its
repeated failure reflects an erroneous goal, and more success will surely
attend the emerging quest for ‘the ahistorical Jesus’
At this time, we still cannot rely primarily upon scholarship for that
Fourth Quest. Valuable and significant advances are being made today by
the disenfranchised outside the guild. At the same time, the most
courageous within academe are trying to break out of the imposed
straitjacket of tradition and of religious conservatism. These two camps —
radical outsiders and rebellious insiders — are edging towards fragile
cooperation. The coming years may not see a breakthrough so much as a
realignment of forces behind the lines as it were. In fact, there is evidence
that such a realignment is already taking place.
Centuries ago the Church burned heretics. When that was no longer
possible it excommunicated them. That was once a serious penalty which
amounted to loss of livelihood and social ostracism, but today
excommunication carries little weight. With the secular trends of the last
centuries the Beast of the Church has thus slowly been de-fanged. The arc
of history is clearly bending away from the tradition.
Nonetheless, Jesus Mythicists should not become complacent nor unduly
optimistic, for we are speaking of a struggle that is centuries old and that
cannot be resolved overnight. It is sobering to read old assessments of the
imminent demise of Christianity, such as the following by the much
maligned Theosophist and Jesus Mythicist Helena Blavatsky:
A Jesus Skit
_____________
Co-Ed B: Yes...
[Both frantically open their Bibles to the Book of Joshua looking for
where he rises from the dead.]
Professor: ...After three days Joshua rose from the dead, and he
appeared to many, many people.
Co-Ed A: Oh, yeah... [Both frantically turn to the New Testament and
find the story of the Transfiguration in Mark chapter 9.]
Co-Ed B: Wait a minute. My Bible says Elijah and Moses were there...
And Peter. “And they were exceedingly afraid.”
Co-Ed B: Didn’t the prof say there’ll be a quiz at the end of this class?
Together: OH MY GOD!!
____________
I was amazed to read the italicized words above. In her IAA report
communicated to me [See again Figure 1, next page], Alexandre had
mentioned nothing about coins from “Hellenistic, Hasmonaean, Early
Roman” times. Had such critically important coin evidence been found in
her excavation, she surely would have included it in her official report. It is
also interesting that the official report has never been published, despite the
regular dust-off “Alexandre, forthcoming” — we are now almost fifteen
years after the original excavation and her report has still not appeared!
My first response to this coin anomaly was an article that appeared in
American Atheist [Jan. 2009:10–13]. I cite the pertinent paragraphs:
So, Pfann et al. are here alleging that the two critical sentences from their
former 61-page report were a verbatim quotation from “Dr. Alexandre
herself.” A glance above at Citation #4, however, shows that the sentences
under examination lack quotation marks and are simply part of their prose.
If it were indeed a quotation it would be a curious one for several reasons:
(1) Dr. Alexandre would be referring to herself in the third person; (2) Pfann
and Rapuano would have embedded two of her verbatim sentences into their
prose without signaling that to the reader; and (3) they would have done so
without any acknowledgment of attribution. Hmm... Presumably, then, in
this whole boondoggle regarding the Nazareth coins we are to believe the
following sequence of events:
Finally, Ehrman enters the fray, decidedly aligns himself with the
tradition, and adds a disturbing new twist. The following passage occurs
directly after Ehrman’s over-the-top statement of “Many compelling pieces”
of Jesus-era evidence being found at Nazareth [DJE? 195]. He writes:
On page 196 of his book Ehrman defers on several issues to Ken Dark
and the latter’s “thoroughly negative review” of my book [BAIAS
[306]
2008:140–146]. I have dealt with Prof. Dark’s comments elsewhere.
There is nothing in his review which impacts the material record from the
Nazareth basin at the turn of the era. Unfortunately, the material record
seems less interesting to Ehrman than hearsay and the robust veneration of
credentials.
The business about “hydrology” that Ehrman mentions [DJE? 196] is
borrowed from Dark’s weak review of my book (which also appeared in
BAIAS 2008). It is a straw man who, apparently, gives Ehrman the
opportunity to engage in invective: “Salm has misunderstood both the
hydrology (how the water systems worked) and the topography (the layout)
of Nazareth.”
I deal with the topographical aspects of the Nazareth argument later in
this chapter. As for the hydrology, I may understand it better than Dark and
Ehrman aver, yet it is quite irrelevant. Hydrology has absolutely no bearing
on the existence or non-existence of a settlement at the turn of the era. No
one has argued that it does — except a certain entrepreneurially gifted
owner of a souvenir shop in Nazareth by the name of Elias Shama. His shop
is near Mary’s Well and is called “Cactus” — at least it was a few years ago
(whether or not it still exists I do not know). Shama claims that a Roman
bath house exists directly under his shop, a bath house which he dates to the
turn of the era. His claim has attracted an enormous number of tourists to
his shop, though archaeologists — including Ms. Alexandre herself — have
dated those waterworks to at least one millennium after the turn of the era
[MON 133]. Nevertheless, Mr. Shama’s outlandish claims have received
much publicity on the Internet and in traditionalist print outlets such as
conservative religious journals and tourist releases geared toward Christian
pilgrims to the Holy Land.
The preceding discussion refers to the first of the seven points with
which I began this rebuttal of Ehrman’s section on Nazareth archaeology.
Point two refers to the 25 CE+ dating of the earliest oil lamps at Nazareth.
This — together with the 50+ CE dating for all the post-Iron Age tombs at
Nazareth (point 3) — forms the backbone of my thesis that the settlement of
Nazareth could not have existed at the turn of the era. Ehrman does not once
mention the oil lamp evidence, perhaps because it is summarily damning to
the tradition’s case. After all, what possible rebuttal is there to the scholarly
verdict that the earliest oil lamps excavated in the Nazareth basin date no
earlier than 25 CE [MON 170]? I say “scholarly verdict” because that dating
is not mine but is the professional conclusion of oil lamp specialists as noted
in my book. This being the case, how then is it possible to envisage a village
existing in Hellenistic times and at the turn of the era when every single oil
lamp recovered from the basin (scores have been found in over one century
of digging) dates to the common era?
Bow-spouted in form (mislabeled “Herodian”), the earliest Nazareth oil
lamps were still being produced as late as the Bar Kochba rebellion. They
can be no earlier than 25 CE, but that is a charitably early dating for any of
them. In all likelihood these lamps were manufactured between the two
Jewish revolts — the same time that the settlement of Nazareth came into
being (MON 207).
Though Ehrman conveniently ignores the oil lamp evidence, he devotes
more than a page to the Nazareth tombs. Point three in the seven point
template above notes that all the post-Iron Age tombs at Nazareth date later
than 50 CE. These tombs are of the well-known kokh type (also called
loculus tombs) which consist of single-burial shafts radiating from a central
chamber [MON 158ff ]. Ehrman does not contest this point. He merely notes
that kokh tombs were expensive and speculates, therefore, that in the first
century the poor Nazarenes used shallow burials which have not been
found. His is a convenient argument from silence, for there is no evidence
for such shallow burials at Nazareth.
We can summarize the foregoing Nazareth discussion as follows:
(1) The lack of demonstrable material evidence from ca. 700 BCE to
ca. 100 CE. Ehrman rejects this but provides no evidence for settlement
before 70 CE. He simply asserts the existence of “many compelling pieces
of archaeological evidence” from the time of Jesus. This bold but bald-faced
untruth ranks with other egregious misstatements by reputable
archaeologists documented in my book.
(2) The 25 CE+ dating of the earliest oil lamps at Nazareth. Ehrman
does not even mention oil lamps.
(3) The 50 CE+ dating of all the post-Iron Age tombs at Nazareth.
Ehrman grudgingly accepts this dating of kokh tombs, a dating which has
forced the tradition to revise its model of Nazareth’s beginnings (see below).
Burden of Proof
After all, neither you nor I can prove that Santa Claus doesn’t
exist. We can go to the North Pole, can dig up there (under water and
ice!) all we want, and can find absolutely no evidence for his gift-
packing facility nor for his team of flying reindeer. But to a believer,
we can’t prove those don’t exist. All the believer has to say is, “Well,
you didn’t look in the right places,” “He’s hiding,” or even “He’s
invisible.” Unfortunately, common myths involving Jesus are every
bit as weird [DJE? 12].
This is just common sense. When one looks for something and doesn’t
find it, one doesn’t say: “Well, I don’t see it — but I think it’s there.” Such a
statement would be absurd, yet it is precisely the situation that obtains with
a turn-of-the-era Nazareth. People have been looking for over one hundred
years and there is not a shred of material evidence for human habitation at
the “time of Jesus.” My exhaustive review of all the evidence shows that
only two artifacts — both stone vessels — could date to the turn of the era.
However, such vessels continued in production as late as the Bar Kokhba
revolt (135 CE). Hence their presence in the Nazareth assemblage is as
diagnostic of human presence in the second century CE as it is for before 70
CE.
Thus, Ehrman and the tradition have even lost the argument from silence.
All that remains to them is rhetoric. Presently, the following illogic obtains:
(a) no evidence is forthcoming from Nazareth at the turn of the era; (b) all
the evidence is demonstrably later; yet (c) the tradition insists these
evidentiary results do not invalidate the supposition that Nazareth existed at
the time of “Jesus.” This is the irrational last stand of a faltering tradition.
As long as skeptics are placed in the position of needing to prove
anything and everything to traditionalists they are playing by the wrong
rules and have already lost the fight — for traditionalists can simply refuse
to be convinced, even if in doing so they must resort to quaint irrationality
(‘faith’). Indeed, evidence and reason have never had much influence over
the pious Christian. The antidote is simple: common sense.
The burden of proof should reside on the shoulders of the one who takes
a position contrary to common sense. In the case of Nazareth, this means
that it resides squarely on the shoulders of the tradition which insists on the
existence of a village at the turn of the era — but does so without evidence.
Common sense, unfortunately, draws little water for the person of faith.
Faith constitutes a curious blind spot in our human psychology, a mental
drunkenness in which jettisoning reason is altogether laudable — ‘for the
glory of God.’ Somehow, the abdication of reason for ‘God’ is validation of
one’s commitment:
For the word of the cross is folly to those who are perishing, but
to us who are being saved it is the power of God. For it is written, “I
will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and the cleverness of the clever
I will thwart.”
Where is the wise man? Where is the scribe? Where is the
debater of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the
world? For since, in the wisdom of God, the world did not know God
through wisdom, it pleased God through the folly of what we preach
to save those who believe. For Jews demand signs and Greeks seek
wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews
and folly to Gentiles, but to those who are called, both Jews and
Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. For the
foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is
stronger than men. [1 Cor. 1:18–25]
A. Mary and her future husband Joseph were neighbors living on the
steep slope above Nazareth at the turn of the era;
B. Mary received a visitation from the Archangel Gabriel telling her that
she would conceive a child;
C. Mary wed Joseph and gave birth to Jesus;
D. Jesus, Mary, and Joseph lived at Joseph’s home (the Church of St.
Joseph 100 m north of the Church of the Annunciation);
E. Several generations later Nazareth ‘moved’ from the hillside to the
valley floor;
F. In the second century CE tombs were constructed where Mary and
Joseph used to live.
For those who have read my book, this is a return to the “mobile
Nazareth” hypothesis of Clemens Kopp, a Catholic priest who, in the mid-
20th century attempted to accommodate the gospel version of Nazareth to
the incoming scientific evidence. In fact, Kopp had claimed that the
settlement moved twice [MON 65–60]. What we have above is the only
scenario remaining to the tradition, for none other will accommodate both
the exigencies of scripture and the material evidence revealed in my work.
Recognizing this, Ken Dark — and now Ehrman — insinuate that Nazareth
moved and that tombs from a later time do not prove there was no village
earlier. This is the double negative alluded to earlier. Ehrman writes:
I have already shown that archaeology can indeed show the absence of
settlement. However, Ehrman seizes upon the fact that no one has dug on
the valley floor — which is where he supposes the settlement existed later.
He writes:
In other words, from the ample evidence (which all dates to CE times) on
the hillside, we can with certainty infer a dating for the settlement on the
valley floor. It’s a no-brainer, for the people who lived on the valley floor
are obviously the same ones who worked the agricultural installations and
built the tombs on the hillside. Thus, the dating of the ample material on the
hillside (numbering hundreds of objects and 20+ tombs) is quite diagnostic
and conclusive and requires us to date the settlement to CE times.
But Ehrman is asking us to believe in the previous existence of a village
without material evidence for its existence. This may be acceptable for
believers, but it will not be for scientists. Secondly, Ehrman quite ignores
the elephant in the room: the embarrassing siting of the tombs — they are
precisely in the Venerated Area itself! He conveniently does not address this
issue, but the scenario above with points A to F is the logical outcome of his
thinking.
I urge Ehrman and other traditionalists to carefully consider the
consequences of their argument and whether this is really the direction in
which they wish to go, for it is a non-starter with several unforeseen
complications.
First of all, one must propose that Nazareth moved in the century after
Jesus. The natural question is: Why? No one has proposed a reason.
Secondly, and more importantly, if the tombs are dated after the time
of Jesus (as both Dark and Ehrman agree) then all the artifacts found in
them must also be dated after the time of Jesus. In the case of Nazareth, we
are here referring to the lion’s share of material evidence, for most of the oil
lamps and pottery were found in kokh tombs.
What this means is that the tradition is in a Catch-22: if it dates the
tombs later than Jesus, then it must also date the evidence later. On the
other hand, if it defies science and dates the tombs earlier, then it will be
dating tombs in Mary’s house precisely to the time in which she
allegedly lived.
Ehrman’s arguments, however, are not seeking a logical solution. They
are essentially ad hominem and rhetorical — scoring points based upon
authority and playing upon the ignorance of the average layperson in these
rather arcane matters. Nevertheless — to those who care — the material
evidence must eventually speak, and it can only be a matter of time before
Ehrman’s arguments fall of their own weight.
Two mutually-intertwined elements now inform the Nazareth discussion:
(a) the hillside location of the ancient settlement; and (b) the tombs under
the Church of the Annunciation. The tombs are hardly mentioned at all by
the tradition — they are simply too embarrassing. As mentioned, they are
also lethal to ongoing Christian pilgrimage at the site. Thus, it is
understandable that Israeli tourist interests have aligned with Christian
evangelical interests to smother any scintilla of truth which threatens the
Nazareth revenue stream.
The hillside location of the village and the tombs are intertwined
elements because tombs are incompatible with settlement in their immediate
vicinity. Not less than two dozen Roman-era tombs have been discovered on
the hillside of Nazareth. The work of H. P. Kuhnen shows that those tombs
all post-date 50 CE. This creates two complications for the tradition. One is
raw dating — if the tombs postdate Jesus, how then can the village predate
him? Ehrman parries this threat: “Based on archaeological evidence,
especially the tombs found in the area, Salm claims that the town came to be
reinhabited sometime between the two Jewish revolts... [The kokh tombs]
were not in use in Galilee the middle [sic] of the first century and thus do
not date to the days of Jesus. And so the town did not exist then” [DJE?
194]. Ehrman then asks, ‘how does this prove that Nazareth did not exist
before the tombs were constructed?’ His ultimate recourse is the argument
of silence discussed above — somehow the settlement existed even though
we have no evidence for it.
The slope of the Nazareth hill is quite steep (averaging a 14% grade in
the Venerated Area). Topography mitigates against settlement on the
hillside, especially when the relatively flat valley floor beckons. Tombs
confirm the location of the village on the valley floor beginning in the
second century CE.
Whether or not other villages in Roman Galilee were situated on the
sides of steep hills (as Dark asserts) is quite beside the point — there is no
evidence at all of such a siting at Nazareth. In addition, no one has found
terracing in the Franciscan area of Nazareth which would permit structures.
Nor has domestic evidence suggesting houses (such as hearths) been found
on the hillside, despite many generations of digging.
The above points A to F constitute the evolving traditionalist scenario,
lately implied by Ken Dark and now by Bart Ehrman. It is immediately
invalidated by the documented evidence itself. According to that evidence
(in Bagatti’s book and in the primary archaeological reports from Nazareth)
all the pottery, oil lamps, etc. discovered on the hillside date after the time
of Jesus. How then, are we to suppose that a village first existed on the
hillside if it left absolutely no evidence there? After all, the hillside
Venerated Area is precisely where Bagatti excavated and where generations
of Christians have dug. The fact that they unearthed not one shard dating
with certainty before 100 CE [MON 205] alone disposes of the “early
Nazareth located on the hillside” thesis. For — to any reasonable person —
it is inconceivable that the Nazarenes lived on the hillside, worked
agricultural installations there, yet did not leave any evidence there of their
presence.
We now come to one final bizarre complication of Ehrman’s rhetoric:
Ehrman is here confusing the elements of his own thesis. Both he and I
agree that there was no village on the valley floor in the time of Jesus. He
claims that the village was on the hillside (and then it moved to the valley
floor — see above).
The major difference between Ehrman’s position and mine is this: he
claims there was a village on the hillside in the time of Jesus, whereas I
deny this. So, Ehrman’s inveighing against “insurmountable problems” for
my thesis is mere rhetoric and quite misplaced, for I never claimed a village
on the valley floor in the time of ‘Jesus.’
Furthermore — and this is the bizarre twist — Ehrman is counting on
evidence being found on the valley floor in the future, evidence which dates
to the time of Jesus — all the while arguing that the settlement was actually
on the hillside! Remember — Jesus, Mary, and Joseph lived on the
hillside... So it is that the tradition twists itself into increasingly complicated
knots in its efforts to avoid the plain truth: there was no Nazareth in the time
of ‘Jesus.’ The village came into existence between the two Jewish revolts
and was located on the valley floor. The Nazarenes constructed tombs on
the hillside in II CE and thereafter, and they also worked agricultural
installations on the hillside. This scenario is not only simpler than the points
A to F above, but it is also plain as can be.
I call his bluff and challenge the tradition at this late stage to jettison its
beloved epithet “Jesus of Nazareth,” perhaps in favor of ‘Jesus of
Somewhere Else.’ Let the tradition engage in what is tantamount to open
heart surgery and call it “irrelevant.” I invite the Christian world to change
all its Bibles to read “Jesus of Somewhere Else” or perhaps “Jesus of
______” (a blank can be inserted at all the requisite places of the New
Testament and in the millions of books about Jesus)! Ehrman blusters as if
this is a small thing. I suggest, however, that it amounts to another
revolution in Christianity no less epochal than the Reformation itself.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Mark’s ‘Jesus from Nazareth
of the Galilee’
(Iēsous apo Nazaret tēs Galilaias)
Frank R. Zindler
For many years I have argued that the place called Nazareth was
unknown to the authors of the Gospel of Mark. It is true that the toponym
can be found in verse 9 of the first chapter of that gospel: “And it came to
pass in those days, that Jesus came from Nazareth of Galilee, and was
baptized of John in Jodan.” However, I have argued that that verse —
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wholly or in part — was an interpolation into the text. Unfortunately, I
have been able to publish my evidence for this only partially and in popular
works not intended for use by scholars. Now, however, thanks to René
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Salm’s book The Myth of Nazareth, The Invented Town of Jesus and
the paradigm-shifting publication of Richard Carrier’s Proving History:
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Bayes’s Theorem and the Quest for the Historical Jesus it has become
possible to reargue my case in a more scientific and hopefully convincing
way.
In order to evaluate my hypothesis more scientifically, a mathematical
investigation of the relevant textual data is desirable. For that purpose, this
chapter presents the relevant data I have collected that are required in order
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to perform a Bayesian as well as frequentist statistical analysis of the
problems presented by Mark 1:9. The need for this is more urgent than ever
before, as I have recently come to the opinion that the toponym ’Nazareth’
was created out of the need to provide a physical home for a Jesus of flesh
and blood, in order to counter Docetist arguments that Jesus only seemed to
have a body and a physical nature. As part of that larger hypothesis, it is
important to know if the author of the oldest Christian gospel knew of
Nazareth or whether it was the invention of the birth legends of Matthew
and Luke.
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In the Greek text of the Gospel of Mark, the name Jesus (Iēsous) is
written with the definite article 72 times — not counting the occurrences in
the long and short endings added to the text found in the best witnesses. The
name is found only seven times without the article. Of these occurrences,
four [1:24; 5:7; 10:47a; 10:47b] have Jesus in the vocative case where a
definite article could not be used. In two more cases [1:1; 16:6], Jesus is
part of a compound name or title (Jesus Christ; Jesus the Nazarene) where
it is not Markan style to use the definite article with the first part of a
compound name or title. (Incidentally, Mark 1:1 is the only occurrence of
the compound name Jesus Christ to be found in the entire Gospel.)
That leaves only one case out of seven [Mark 1:9] where the definite
article is suspiciously absent. It is the only case out of 73 cases where the
definite article would be grammatically or stylistically possible to use with
Jesus that the article is absent. Does this result from an early interpolation
into the text? The article is absent in critical editions of the Greek text of
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Mark’s gospel, and Bart Ehrman argues that it is simply the result of
scribal error. He appears to accept the claim that this is contrary to Markan
style but rejects the claim that this is an interpolation. Rather, he argues, this
is probably a scribal error.
Criticizing my popular essay “Where Jesus Never Walked,” Ehrman
comments that “…Zindler maintains that that verse [Mark 1:9] was not
originally part of Mark; it was inserted by a later scribe.” Sarcastically, he
adds “Here again we see history being done according to convenience. If a
text says precisely what you think it could not have said, then all you need
to do is claim that originally it must have said something else9” [191].
Ehrman makes it look as though my critique of Mark 1:9 is purely ad
hoc, if not downright disgraceful from a scholarly perspective. That
certainly is the impression readers are left with if they read only the main
text and don’t follow up by reading the end-note referenced at the end of the
passage quoted above. If one turns to end note 9 on page 356, however, one
is startled to read the comment that “I do not mean to say that Zindler does
not cite evidence for his view,” and Ehrman goes on to criticize my
argument that the name ‘Jesus’ in Mark 1:9 is written without the Greek
definite article (i.e., simply Jesus instead of the Jesus), in violation of the
style of ‘Mark,’ who uses the article wherever it is grammatically or
stylistically possible. (Elsewhere I shall examine the possibility that ‘Mark’
here is remembering the literal meaning of ‘Jesus’ (‘Savior’) and is actually
using the word as a title as he also appears to do with ‘the Peter’ and ‘the
Iscariote.’
Leaving aside for the moment the question of the validity or not of his
critique of my grammatical evidence — evidence implied not to exist
according to his main text — it is hard to understand how he could have
claimed that I was guilty of doing history “according to convenience,” and
that “all you need to do is claim that originally it must have said something
else.” This seems both unfair and untrue.
Let us now look at Ehrman’s technical criticism of my allegedly ad hoc
claim that Mark 1:9 appears at least in part to be an interpolation. First, he
notes that “(a) there are two other places in Mark where the name Jesus
does not have the article,” not realizing that there are actually seven cases
where the article is absent! (He should have known of these other
occurrences because in an e-mail of October 14, 2010, I had told him of
other inarticulate occurrences of ‘Jesus’ that had to be excluded for
grammatical or stylistic reasons.) I have already shown above that there are
good reasons why six of those cases are not relevant or suspect. Then he
argues that “(b) if the problem with the entire verse is that the name Jesus
does not have the article, then if we posit a scribal change to the text, the
more likely explanation is that a scribe inadvertently left out the article.”
[emphasis added]. We shall evaluate that likelihood presently, but can only
wonder how it is that a scholar who has done so much to expose “Orthodox
Corruption of Scripture” and forgery in the New Testament would not
assign a higher probability to the likelihood of interpolations into the text of
the earliest gospel.
The pièce de resistance of Ehrman’s argument, however, is point (c):
“there is not a single stitch of manuscript evidence to support his claim that
the verse was interpolated into the Gospel. This latter point is worth
stressing since it is the reason that no serious scholar of the textual tradition
of Mark thinks that the verse is an interpolation.” [356] Apart from the
implied ad hominem that I am not a “serious scholar,” this reveals that
Ehrman has never read the writings of William Benjamin Smith — a
mathematician, physicist, philologer, poet, and Renaissance polymath
whose early works (e.g., Der Vorchristliche Jesus of 1906) were critiqued at
length by Albert Schweitzer in the Second Edition of his Quest of the
Historical Jesus. Since Schweitzer does not discuss the problem of Mark
1:9, Ehrman would not know what Smith had had to say about it — unless
he took the time to read Smith himself instead of merely relying on
Schweitzer’s epitome. In his magisterial Ecce Deus of 1912, in a section
dealing with the origin of the terms ‘Nazoraios,’ ‘Nazara,’ and ‘Nazareth,’
Smith wrote:
Mark 1:14 Now after that John was put in prison, Jesus came
into Galilee, preaching the gospel of the kingdom of God.
Mark 1:15 And saying, The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom
of God is at hand: repent ye, and believe the gospel.
What has happened between the Baptist’s interaction with Jesus and
now? Why was he put in prison (“delivered up”)? It is taken for granted that
already, before verse 15, readers know all about the story of John the
Baptist! Things get even stranger, however, when we later learn all about
John the Baptist in a flashback in chapter 6. Before analyzing that pericope,
however, it may be noted that verse 14b would make a very fine beginning
for the original gospel:
Mark 1:1 The beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son
of God… 14b Jesus came into Galilee, preaching the gospel of the
kingdom of God, and saying, The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom
of God is at hand…
6:12. And they went out, and preached that men should repent.
13. And they cast out many devils, and anointed with oil many that
were sick, and healed them.
We then launch into the gory story of Herod’s beheading of John the
Baptist and the plot outline for Richard Strauss’s opera Salome:
6:14. And king Herod heard of him [why not ‘them’ ?]; (for his
name [Jesus, not The Twelve] was spread abroad;) and he said, That
John the Baptist was risen from the dead, and therefore mighty
works do shew forth themselves in him. … 16. But when Herod
heard thereof, he said, It is John, whom I beheaded: he is risen from
the dead.
6:29. And when his [John’s] disciples heard of it, they came
and took up his corpse, and laid it in a tomb.
The very next verse, then resumes the pericope of the disciples/apostles
who had been sent out by Jesus:
6:30. And the apostles gathered themselves together unto Jesus,
and told him all things, both what they had done, and what they had
taught.
6:12. And they went out, and preached that men should repent.
13. And they cast out many devils, and anointed with oil many that
were sick, and healed them. 6:30. And the apostles gathered
themselves together unto Jesus, and told him all things, both what
they had done, and what they had taught.
‘The word Iēsous in Mark 1:9 is not preceded by the Greek definite
article because of a scribal error (not because of interpolation of part or all
of the verse).’
‘The verse contains the only occurrence in Mark of ‘Jesus’ without the
definite article where grammatically and stylistically it could have been
used. The verse also contains the only occurrence in Mark of the word
‘Nazareth’ instead of Nazarene/Nazorean. The name ‘Jesus’ occurs 72
times with the article. It is inarticulate 6 times for grammatical or stylistic
reasons. Nazarene/Nazorean is used 4 times instead of Nazareth.’
b = (background evidence, being the frequentist estimation of the
probabilities of the likelihood of this particular occurrence of ‘Jesus’ being
inarticulate in the same verse containing the only occurrence of ‘Nazareth’
instead of the related words Nazarene or Nazorean, which occur 4 times in
Mark)
P(h|b) = (the probability that our hypothesis would be true given only
our background knowledge) = 1/73 = 0.0137.
(2) How many verses in Mark contain the word Iēsous without an
article in at least one manuscript? [There are 11 such verses.]
(3a) How many verses have Iēsous without the article where the article
would be possible and the article is present in most manuscripts? [There are
5 such verses.]
(3b) How many verses lack the article where it would be possible and
the article is lacking in most manuscripts? [There is just 1 such verse, Mk
1:9.]
(4) How many verses contain the article but lack Iēsous where Iēsous
is present in most manuscripts? [There are 24 such verses.]
(5) How many verses lack both Iēsous and the article where the two
are present in most manuscripts? [There are 21 such verses.]
(6) How many verses have added inarticulate Iēsous where it is lacking
in most manuscripts? [There are only 2 such verses]
(7) How many verses have added both the article and Iēsous where
both are lacking in most manuscripts? [There are 34 such verses]
D.M. Murdock
And he went and dwelt in a city called Nazareth, that what was
spoken by the prophets might be fulfilled, “He shall be called a
Nazarene.”
Here we see the words ‘Nazaret’ and ‘Nazoraios,’ the latter usually
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rendered Nazarene or Nazorean in English. The Greek New Testament
word Nazōraios is defined by Strong’s Concordance of the Bible (G3480)
as:
Moreover, it has been pointed out that, if the intent was to designate a
resident of a city, the proper demonym would be Nazarethenos,
Nazarethanos or Nazarethaios, rather than Nazoraios, Nazorean or
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Nazarene. These latter designations would be appropriate for a noun
from the Hebrew root words naziyr (H5139), also transliterated nazir, and
nazar (H5144), meaning ‘dedicate,’ ‘consecrate,’ or ‘separate’ in a religious
fashion.
No ‘Jesus of Nazareth’
The various New Testament references to “Nazareth, where he had been
brought up” [Lk 4:16] are obviously designed to explain the supposed
prophecy that the awaited deliverer would be styled ‘Nazoraios,’
‘Nazarene,’ or ‘Nazarite.’ Appearing a mere dozen times in the New
Testament, the word for “Nazareth,” which is also written Nazará (Strong’s
G3478), is defined as:
Nazareth = “the guarded one”: 1) the ordinary residence and home
town of Christ
The relevant Greek here is ēlthen Iēsous apo Nazaret tēs Galilaias,
which could be rendered “came Jesus from Nazareth of Galilee.” In this
case, however, the phrase is not a moniker or demonym; rather, “in those
days he came from Nazareth to the Jordan” refers to a journey at that time.
In Luke’s gospel, Jesus is never even associated with Nazareth in the
same verse in which the city-name appears; hence, no phrase “Jesus of
Nazareth” appears in that book either. We do find, however, at Luke 24:19 a
reference to Iēsou tou Nazōraiou, or “(of) Jesus the Nazoraios.”
In John 1:45 we read “Iēsoun ton huion tou Iōsēph ton apo Nazaret.” or
“Jesus the son of Joseph the one from Nazareth.” The grammar makes it
clear it is the son who is from Nazareth, not Joseph, but, again, there is no
direct “Jesus of Nazareth” designation.
Furthermore, in this passage John specifically states that this “Jesus the
son of Joseph the one from Nazareth” had been prophesied by Moses and
the prophets, when in reality we find no such specific ‘prophecy’ in the
Bible. What we do discover are many ‘messianic blueprints’ that could be
cobbled together and elaborated upon to create such a figure in the New
Testament.
Concerning this passage, Eisenman comments:
Following this passage in John, at 1:46 we read the famous line “Can
anything good come out of Nazareth?” Perhaps not, if it was only a
necropolis at the time John’s gospel was written, sometime during the
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second century.
When Christ is on the cross in John 19:19, he is designated “Jesus the
Nazoraios,” not “Jesus of Nazareth,” the sign reading: Iēsous ho Nazōraios
ho basileus tōn Ioudaiōn — “Jesus the Nazoraios, King of the Jews.”
Nazoraios or Nazarene — as referring to a cult and not an ethnic
designation — is also indicated when Paul is deemed the “ringleader of the
Nazoraioi” in the book of Acts [24:5], specifically said there to be a sect,
not a demonym, appropriate since neither the apostle nor any of his
followers was said to be from Nazareth. The argument could be made, of
course, that by this time followers of ‘Jesus of Nazareth’ were called
‘Nazarenes,’ even though they did not come from there. However, again,
the term here is not the demonym Nazarenos, but the same word defined by
Strong’s as ‘Nazarite,’ the sect/cult in the Old Testament.
Essentially the same word Naziraioi was used by Josephus [Ant. 4.4.4;
19.6.1], while before 77 AD/CE, Pliny [Nat. Hist. 5] discussed the Nazerini,
whom he dates to the first century BCE.
The closest we get to the phrase “Jesus of Nazareth” in the New
Testament is also in Acts [10:38], a book that, according to scientific
inspection, does not emerge clearly in the literary/historical record until
long after the purported events: To wit, we find no trace of this text until the
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last quarter of the second century. In Acts, Jesus is referred to as
Iēsoun ton apo Nazaret, or “Jesus the one from Nazareth.”
Thus, only once do we find in the New Testament a comparable
designation as “Jesus of Nazareth” — in Acts, not the gospels — and the
rest of the time he is either “a prophet from Nazareth” or “Jesus the
Nazarene,” etc. This fact remains largely unknown because translations
consistently render “Jesus the Nazarene” as “Jesus of Nazareth.”
In addition, in citing the later word used for ‘Christians’ by rabbinical
Jews, Nozrim, Eisenman remarks:
The conclusion appears to be that the ‘historical’ Jesus from a city called
‘Nazareth’ in reality consists of messianic blueprints designed to make of
the awaited savior a Nazarite or consecrated member of an evidently
important religious order. In other words, the gospel writers created an
allegorical or midrashic ‘Nazareth’ in which to place their fictional messiah,
who was to be consecrated to God as a Nazarite, from the womb and for
life.
The apostles who were before us had these names for him:
‘Jesus, the Nazorean, Messiah,’ that is, ‘Jesus, the Nazorean, the
Christ.’ The last name is ‘Christ,’ the first is ‘Jesus,’ that in the
middle is ‘“the Nazarene.’ ‘Messiah’ has two meanings, both ‘the
Christ’ and ‘the measured.’ ‘Jesus’ in Hebrew is ‘the redemption.’
‘Nazara’ is ‘the truth.’ ‘The Nazarene,’ then, is ‘the truth.’ ‘Christ’
has been measured. ‘The Nazarene’ and ‘Jesus’ are they who have
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been measured.
Earl Doherty
*****
I guess Ehrman hasn’t read Paul and the other epistles lately, which
constitute the only early record extant. Perhaps he’s forgotten Paul’s gospel
as laid out in 1 Corinthians 15:3–4: that Christ died, was buried, and rose to
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life on the third day. Perhaps he’s lost sight of Romans 6:1–6 as well,
in which believers were baptized into his death, lay buried with him, and
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will as a consequence be one with him in a resurrection like his. So
far, it’s pretty much all dying and rising, something which provided
salvation, a very un-Jewish concept especially in regard to the expected
messiah. And there are a host of other references throughout Paul and the
other epistle writers to Jesus’ suffering and death (though never in any
recognizable correspondence to the Gospel story), and to his rising.
Would this be “calling (Jesus) the Jewish messiah”? Obviously, there is
an anomaly here between what, according to Ehrman, “Paul first heard”
about Jesus from the earliest Christians, and what his stated set of beliefs
about him are in his surviving letters. How does Ehrman deal with that
anomaly?
An “offensive” doctrine
Christ as a “curse”
Ehrman links this ancient view with the Roman method of execution by
crucifixion, thinking to cast light on why Paul was offended. But it would
have been useful if anywhere in his letters Paul had actually spelled out that
he had been offended by hearing that an historical man ‘cursed for being
hanged on a tree’ was thought of as the messiah. It would have been useful
had he anywhere even intimated that it was information like this which he
had learned from the people he persecuted. Certainly he makes no such
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connection in Galatians 3:13. Neither does the writer of 1 Peter in
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2:22–24 who speaks of Christ hanged on a tree while giving us, by
way of ‘biography’ about that event, simply a paraphrase of verses from
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Isaiah 53. That was his apparent source of such a biography.
Ehrman now has to face that anomaly head-on. He has postulated that
before his conversion, Paul found offensive the idea that a crucified man
was the messiah, but this was “before changing his mind and becoming a
follower of Jesus.” And what a change of mind! Ehrman has embroiled
himself in all sorts of contradictions here. The Jewish followers of Jesus
whom he was persecuting were, by Ehrman’s measure, traditional Jews
innocent of blasphemy who did not regard Jesus as divine, just the messiah.
One wonders, then, what this “church of God” who believed a crucified
man was the messiah thought this unorthodox messiah had been good for.
Had he overthrown the Romans? Had he elevated the Jews to supremacy?
Had he inaugurated the Kingdom?
How could any group of Jews possibly have imagined that, quite unlike
their traditional expectations and regardless of what scripture had led them
to expect, it had really been God’s plan to send his messiah to earth on a
preliminary visit: to be ignominiously killed, but with the promise of
coming again, and then he would fulfill the expectations that the messiah
was famed for. Nor would those Jews have thought the reason for his death
on the first visit was to redeem the world’s sins, since Ehrman assures us
that, contrary to the atonement doctrine later Christians were to adopt (they
read it into passages like Isaiah 53), traditional Jewish outlook contained no
such concept.
But wait a minute. What, then, was Paul ‘converted’ to? The belief that a
human man who was not a part of God had been the messiah? That he was
not a dying and rising savior, but simply “a person chosen by God to
mediate his will on earth”? The former would have been a pagan idea, and
Ehrman tells us that this was a group governed entirely by Jewish
principles. Another pagan idea would have been the concept of the believers
joining themselves with the savior, becoming a ‘part’ of him and he of
them, so presumably Ehrman has ruled this out as well.
An impossible contradiction
The problem is, most of Paul’s beliefs, as far as we can see, were the
direct opposite of what he had allegedly learned from the Judean church he
converted to. His Christ did die and rise. He saved through his death and
resurrection. Romans 6:1–6 speaks of joining with the Son, being “baptized
into union with Christ Jesus,” of being “buried with him,” of “becoming
one with him in a resurrection like his.” Paul’s Christ was a part of God; as
I’ve said before, to claim otherwise is to perform extreme violence on the
texts (or ignore them altogether), as with 1 Corinthians 8:6, or Colossians
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1:15–20.
Is Ehrman saying that Paul was converted to the non-blasphemous
variety of faith, and then subsequently did another about-face and
betrayed all the principles of the church he had converted to, adopting a
blasphemy it would have roundly condemned? Where is the evidence of
such a conflict with and divorce from the ‘church of God in Judea,’
especially if the latter were in any way connected to the Jerusalem pillars as
is often suggested? (In fact, Paul declares in 1 Corinthians 15:11 that he and
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the latter proclaim the same thing.) Where is the record, even an
implication, of this double conversion by Paul?
Indeed, such a thing has to be ruled out. In Galatians 1:23, Paul declares
that
But Paul’s gospel of a dying and rising part of God was, according to
Ehrman, precisely not the faith of the Judaean church he persecuted. Yet
that church, according to Paul, remarked that he now did preach their faith.
This is an unresolvable contradiction. Moreover, would Paul, in the course
of his supposed second about-face, switch from a focus that was entirely on
a human man to one which focused exclusively on a heavenly deity with no
reference to or interest in its human predecessor? That lack of interest has
become so profound that he dismisses the human man entirely, portrays the
faith movement as impelled by God and the Spirit, makes no room for a
recently incarnated Jesus in the course of salvation history, and takes for
himself the role of inaugurating the new covenant in parallel with Moses’
dispensation of the old.
That’s not a ‘change of mind.’ It’s a brain transplant.
And no one called him on any of it!
[The Son of Man] shall never pass away or perish from before
the face of the earth. But those who have led the world astray shall
be bound with chains; and their ruinous congregation shall be
imprisoned; all their deeds shall vanish from before the face of the
earth. Thenceforth nothing that is corruptible shall be found; for that
Son of Man has appeared and has seated himself upon the throne of
his glory; and all evil shall disappear from before his face (1 Enoch
69). [162]
The Jewish sect represented in 1 Enoch (in the section known as the
“Similitudes of Enoch,” probably from some time in the first century) has
envisioned for itself a spiritual messiah who is a cosmic figure and powerful
angelic being residing entirely in heaven and whose arrival they await on
the day of judgment; with this Messiah/Son of Man/Elect One the righteous
on earth identify themselves, and from him they receive certain future
guarantees. (None of 1 Enoch contains the concept of a sacrificial messiah,
or a death and rising for him.)
Why not, then, another Jewish sect which has envisioned out of scripture
a figure they see as God’s own Son, in the spirit of the Logos or personified
Wisdom; only this one also underwent a sacrifice at the hands of evil
angels, but came back to life as a guarantee of eternal life for the devotees
who have joined themselves with him through faith and ritual? All the
concepts of the time were available to create such a perceived ‘revelation’
of a hitherto hidden truth. Like the “Similitudes of Enoch,” this was a
transformation of the traditional idea of an earthly messiah into a spiritual
and Platonically-based version, one taking on a dimension of divinity.
He, too, would be a judge and establisher of the Kingdom. And when he
came into contact with an imagined sage who had preached in Galilee and
came to be identified with a different group’s expectation of a similar End-
time figure they called the Son of Man — though this one, too, had no death
and rising dimension — a fusion took place. The heavenly Son fell to earth
to join with his composite partner to create, under Mark’s hand, a powerful
symbol of an entire religious trend: Jesus, ultimately of Nazareth.
I hardly need to point out that no such thing is witnessed in the early
traditions that are contained in the epistles. Even if Ehrman has postulated
(on dubious grounds) oral traditions, including Aramaic ones, which he
claims go back to immediately following Jesus’ death, he can hardly claim
that “all” early traditions make Jesus out to be a peasant from rural Galilee.
Even if the epistolary view of Christ were claimed to be a subsequent
development, we would hardly see in such a wide range of documents and
writers, only a decade or two after his death, an utter absence of any sign of
its supposed predecessor.
Then there is this declaration:
Ehrman now asks the question that many historicists consider something
of a slam-dunk. Would any first century Jew make up the idea of a crucified
messiah — meaning out of nothing, out of no historical event, as Mythicists
claim? But once again, Ehrman is doing his thinking from inside the box.
What if the question, asked from outside the box, were:
Frank R. Zindler
ABSTRACT
Chapter Five of Bart Ehrman’s Did Jesus Exist? is titled “Two Key Data
for the Historicity of Jesus.” The first datum concerns the alleged fact that
the Apostle Paul “was personally acquainted with Jesus’s closest disciple,
Peter, and Jesus’s own brother, James.” The datum that concerns us here,
however, is the second one dealing with the problem of “The Crucified
Messiah.” As Ehrman explains,
Ehrman then tries to show that all these attempts to explain away the
crucifixion of the Christian Messiah is a compelling proof of the existence
of Jesus:
I shall deal with the logical and evidentiary problems of this argument
elsewhere. For the purpose of this chapter, however, we shall merely
indulge in an exercise of ‘thinking outside the box’ and see where the train
of thought pulls us.
What if some Jews did expect their Messiah to ‘suffer’ à la Isaiah 53?
What if a Messiah had in fact been killed — but that that messiah had not
been Jesus of Nazareth? Several minutes of searching on the Internet does
in fact yield reason to think Ehrman is wrong in his claim that no Jews
[361]
expected their Messiah to suffer. Israel Knohl has shown that several
documents belatedly published from the Dead Sea Scrolls show not only
that the Qumran community expected a Messiah would have to suffer à la
Isaiah 53, one of its leaders — a certain Menahem (the ‘Paraclete’) —
actually seems to have arrogated that prophetic experience to himself!
Knohl identifies him as the leader of the Essenes who wrote of himself in
Suffering-Servant terms and appears to have been killed in the uprising after
the death of Herod the Great in 4 BCE.
But let us hop back onto the train of thought to see where else it might
take us. What if it wasn’t sometime before the year 32? What if it wasn’t a
very small group of Jews? What if the story didn’t begin in Jerusalem?
What if it wasn’t originally a messiah that had been crucified? What if the
crucifixion didn’t take place on ‘Golgotha’ — or anywhere else on earth?
What if proto-Christians worshiped a ‘Christ’ before they worshiped a
‘Jesus’? Indeed, if they had worshiped a Jesus before they worshiped a
Christ, wouldn’t we be talking about Jesianity rather than Christianity?
(What are we to make, in this connection of Epiphanius’ claim that before
[362]
believers were called Christians at Antioch they were called Jessaeans,
in honor of David’s father Jesse? What if most or all of Ehrman’s unproved
assumptions should prove to be false? This chapter will focus mostly on just
one of these questions — the possibility that something other than a
messiah had originally been meant by the title ‘Christ.’ I shall deal with the
other questions elsewhere.
The hypotheses that something other than a messiah might have been
meant by the title ‘Christ’ or that the character might not have been
‘crucified’ on earth are greatly illuminated by some seemingly trivial facts
about the phonetic evolution of the Modern Greek language. It is not much
of an exaggeration to say that Modern Greek differs as much from Classical
Greek as Modern Italian differs from its parent language, a form of Latin.
Due to various drastic phonetic changes, Modern Greek upon first hearing
is virtually unintelligible to scholars even if they might be thoroughly
comfortable when dealing with Classical Greek.
Although some odd changes occurred in pronunciation of the ancient
consonants, the most significant changes of relevance to this discussion are
the pervasive changes in pronunciation of the ancient vowels and
diphthongs — some of the latter even becoming consonants! For example,
au (originally pronounced as in gown) came to be pronounced av or af. The
diphthong eu (originally pronounced as in few) came to be pronounced ev or
ef.
As important as such changes might appear to be, they are of minor
significance as compared to the pervasive shift in vocalization known as
iotacism or itacism that completely transformed the pronunciation of the
Greek language during the first few centuries of the Common Era. As might
be inferred from the fact that the term contains the word iota — the Greek
vowel originally pronounced i or ī as in hit or heat — iotacism describes the
convergent transformation of various vowels and diphthongs that ended up
with all of them being pronounced like iota. Thus, ēta (η, ē, originally
pronounced as in hay), upsilon (υ, y, originally pronounced like French u or
German ü), oi (οι, originally pronounced as in boil), ui (υι, originally
pronounced as in French lui), and ei (ει, originally pronounced as in gray)
all came to be pronounced ee as in feed.
How does all this pertain to the crucifixion of Ehrman’s Messiah? It
could not relate more fundamentally. It would appear that the Messiah of
Christian belief was the creation of the impersonal agency of itacism. It
seems likely that the christos that became the Christ who became the
Messiah was originally the title of some other being — a title that was
spelled and pronounced differently. What might that name or title have
been? Let us consider all the possibilities.
We may hypothesize five words that might have been transformed into
christos by iotacism: chrēstos, chrystos, chreistos, chroistos, and chruistos.
A quick check of the great, unabridged Greek-English Lexicon of Liddell &
[363]
Scott turns up no entries for chreistos, but it does reveal the verb
chrei-oō [‘have force, prevail’] from which one might imagine deriving the
word chrēstos and then christos. A search for chroistos discovers nothing
very close, only the verb chro-īzō [‘touch, touch the skin of a body, lie with
a woman’], and nothing at all resembling chruistos is to be found. No
chrystos as such is to be found either, but one is tantalized to find the verb
chrysoō [‘make golden,’ ‘gild’]. (If one independently could show that
‘Christ’ was the deity depicted as Helios with the solar chariot in the
Vatican necropolis mosaic this etymology might be worth reconsidering.)
With the word chrēstos, however, we seem to hit the jackpot.
Under the heading chrēstos itself we find that the word as an adjective
can mean ‘useful,’ ‘good of its kind,’ ‘serviceable,’ ‘valiant,’ ‘true,’
‘auspicious’ — of victims and omens, ‘good’ — in a moral sense as
opposite of bad or evil, “of the gods, propitious, merciful, bestowing health
or wealth,” “of a man, strong, able in body for sexual intercourse.” As the
noun chrēstotēs, we have ‘goodness,’ ‘honesty,’ ‘uprightness.’ Also as a
noun, we have the intriguing word chrēstōr, which we are told can mean the
same thing as mantis — a seer, prophet, or oracle.
But there is more. We have the related noun chrēstēs (also written
chreistēs), which we are told means “one who gives or expounds oracles,
prophet, soothsayer.” There also are verbs: chrēsteuomai, ‘be kind or
merciful’; chrēizō, ‘deliver an oracle,’ ‘foretell’; and chrēstēriazō, ‘give
oracles, prophesy.’
But the greatest surprise is yet to come — one that makes reading
unabridged Greek dictionaries worth one’s time. Under the heading chrēsis
we have the seemingly unimportant meaning “employment, use made of a
thing; in concrete sense, example of a word or use.” Although it is difficult
to perceive any relevance here to our christos problem, we are startled all
the more to see that this word could be abbreviated with the chrismon —
the chi-rho cross of early Christianity — in two third-century papyri from
Oxyrhynchus [Anon. Oxy. 1611, 56; An. Ox. 2. 452]!
What can we make of this odd fact? I long have known that the chi-rho
cross was used as a symbol for the time-god Chronos in a copy of
Aristotle’s Constitution of the City of Athens discovered at
[364]
Herculaneum/Pompeii.
Given the relationship between Chronos and the mystery religions,
especially Mithraism, and the evidence supporting the notion that
Christianity originated as New Age cults observing the passage of the
vernal equinox from the zodiacal sign of Aries into Pisces, it has always
seemed to me that the chi-rho symbol was the severed umbilical cord left
over from the birth of Christianity from an astral mystery cult — a cult that
was watching and measuring the departure of the Heavenly Lamb and the
coming of the Two Fishes. (Unlike the bumper-sticker usage of modern
fundamentalist Christians, ancient Christians used two fishes or dolphins to
symbolize their religion. Could one fish have been Jesus, the other his
zodiacal twin Thomas as in ancient Gnostic belief?)
In addition to the link between time-god Chronos and the symbol for the
new-age religion that would come to be known as Christianity, there is a
tantalizing further possible connection we might hypothesize. Kronos, one
of the Titans and father of Zeus, for unclear reasons came to be associated
with the Golden Age and, as such, he likely became amalgamated at least
partially with Chronos — especially by Latin speakers who would
pronounce Cronus and Chronus the same way. The fact that Kronos (as
distinct from Chronos) was associated with the Golden Age awaited by the
Roman poet Virgil and his Augustan readers, and the fact that Kronos was
associated with the deity Saturn — the equivalent of the Hebrew deity
Yahweh — makes this discovery even more exciting.
But chrēsis? ‘Employment’? ‘Use made of a thing’? ‘Example of a word
or use’? I confess that this confounds all my expectations and theories. In
any case, we have a lot of words in the chrēstēs/chreistēs family whose
meanings seem relatable to the title of a divine character who might have
metamorphosed into a Christos — who in turn could be transformed into a
Hebrew Messiah. If that is in fact what happened, the first Christians would
not have been concerned with a Jewish Messiah.
There can be little question here that the ‘Christ’ of the Gnostic Marcus
is actually a ‘Chreist’ spelled with eight letters in Greek and cannot
represent an anointed ‘Messiah’ of Israel who, for lack of a diphthong, is
spelled with seven letters. Although the forms of Gnosticism of which we
have detailed information are, because of their intricate and obviously
evolved features, unlikely to be older than the proto-Orthodoxy we read into
the Apostolic Fathers and Ante-Nicene Fathers, it seems almost certain that
Gnosticism as a method rather than a body of doctrines is considerably
older — probably deriving from Pythagorean mysticism and Platonic works
such as the Timaeus. For the proto-Gnostics who first claimed the Christian
identity, therefore, it would seem highly probable that both their Chreist and
their Jesus were, if not perhaps originally numerologically derived
characters, at least they were theoretically apprehended beings discovered
by acts of pure reason. Clearly, they would have held no doctrine that their
Chreist had had an earthly origin in Roman Palestine. Still less could they
have believed their Iesous had been born in “a one-dog town” [DJE? 189]
called Nazareth or Nazara.
If one should dispute the idea that proto-Orthodoxy was derived from a
Docetic type of proto-Gnosticism, but rather that the course of evolution ran
in the opposite direction, we should have to apply ‘Ehrman’s Method’ and
consider the question: Is it not easier to derive a Jesus of Nazareth living
in a specific place at a specific time from a celestial being who at some
unspecified time came to earth at some unspecified place, took human
form and then substance — in short, was reified — than to derive the
multitudinous Docetic, Gnostic, Separationist, and other early forms of
Christianity from a real man who had lived completely unnoticed just a
few decades earlier?
Just exactly how might a bumpkin from a one-dog town such as Ehrman
imagines ‘Nazareth’ to have been, become transformed into a Tetrad, an
Ogdoad, and a Decad in a few decades? Was it before or after the alleged
martyrdom of St. Paul that “the Decad, then, being joined with the Ogdoad,
and multiplying it ten times, gave rise to the number eighty,” etc.? Did one
of the Disciples suffer from a brain tumor that mixed up his memories of
Jesus of Nazareth and blended them with notes he had made while studying
Pythagoras?
In the literature we have found impressive evidence that ‘Christ’ was not
always spelled with an ‘i’ and that the word probably would not have meant
‘anointed’ or ‘messiah.’ As we turn now to epigraphic evidence we shall
see that the ei spelling for Chr?stos is well attested, and that other spellings
also once abounded.
ΙΧΘΥCΙΗ
CΟΥCΧΡΗCΤ +
+ ΟCΘΕΟΥΥΙ
ΟCCΩΤΗΡ
I cannot agree with Ms. Gibson, however, in her claim that the engravers
were mistaken in their understanding of the etymology of
Christos/Chrēstos. It seems obvious to me that in these inscriptions we are
witness to the vowel shift in medias res and a new etymology about to
become developed. Although we must suppose it highly probable that in
proto-Orthodox communities ‘the Christ’ had already been equated to the
Jewish Messiah, relics of a pre-messianic savior seem here to lie exposed
upon the graves of Phrygian believers of the third and early fourth
centuries.
Although the major focus of this chapter has been on the question of the
original spelling of the term Chr?stos in order to test the hypothesis that the
title was not originally messianic in meaning, I have hinted several times
that the ‘crucifixion’ may not have been a physical occurrence taking place
on earth. While I shall deal with this question in more detail elsewhere
(“Bart Ehrman and the Body of Jesus of Nazareth”), it may be pointed out
here that it is highly likely that the passion narrative account of a physical
crucifixion — like the mention of Nazareth and the virgin birth story and
the bloody sweat on the brow of Jesus on the Mount of Olives — was
composed to counter the Docetists. Certainly, the story of Doubting Thomas
has the Docetists in view when Thomas is invited manually to inspect the
wounds of the risen Christ or Jesus. If inspection of the wounds was
invented for polemic purposes, why not the wounds themselves?
The Greek word for ‘nail’ (hēlos) is found only in the Gospel according
to John, 20:25: “The other disciples therefore said unto him, We have seen
the Lord. But he said unto them, Except I shall see in his hands the print of
the nails, and put my finger into the print of the nails, and thrust my hand
into his side, I will not believe.” Amazingly, not even in the Gospel of John
is it ever said that Jesus was nailed to the ‘cross.’ Only in post-resurrection
retrospect do we learn that nails were used in the crucifixion — a
punishment that more often than not did not involve affixing the victim to
the stake with nails.
In the oldest of the canonical gospels, Mark, they simply crucify
(staurousin) Jesus and there is no description of what exactly that entailed.
Since there are no post-resurrection appearances of Jesus in the best
manuscripts of this gospel, there are of course no hints of wounds at all, still
less of nails.
In Matthew 27:35 there is remarkable disinterest in the details of the
most important operation ever carried out in the history of the world. It is
tossed of with a participle: “After crucifying (staurōsantes) him, they
divided his clothes among them…” To my amazement, at least, there is no
hint in this gospel — even in the post-resurrection material — that Jesus
had been physically wounded during the crucifixion process. Even in verse
28:17 — where we read that “When they [the eleven disciples] saw him [the
risen Jesus], they fell prostrate before him, though some were doubtful” —
a golden opportunity to display some bloody wounds was lost. No
indication that any nails had been part of the story.
In the Gospel of Luke also, we learn nothing at all about how Jesus
might have been attached to the pole: “…and when they reached the place
called The Skull, they crucified (estaurōsan) him there…” [Luke 23:33] We
do, however, begin to get a hint that the feet and hands of Jesus might have
been injured during his execution. In the fish-eating-Jesus section of chapter
24 — the section clearly invented to confute the Docetists — the risen
master orders his doubting disciples to “Look at my hands and feet. It is I
myself. Touch me and see; no ghost has flesh and bones as you can see that
I have.” [Luke 24:39] For good measure, some manuscripts here add “After
saying this he showed them his hands and feet.” Take that, Docetic swine!
Modern readers, of course, interpret this hands-and-feet show-and-tell
episode as evidence of nails that had been used to affix Jesus to the ‘cross.’
But of course, they already know about nails only because they have read
about “Doubting Thomas” in the Gospel of John, [John 20:25]! An ancient
reader who knew only the text of Luke’s passion story, however, would
have no reason to think of nails. As the story stands, it is nothing more than
a further attempt to demonstrate the physicality of Jesus even after his
resurrection. Furthermore, what other parts of his anatomy might we expect
a fully clothed, formerly dead man would display? Judging from old
photographs of the longhaired savior, earlobes probably would not have
displayable.
So, if nails were not an original feature of the crucifixion story — and no
passage in the entire New Testament directly states that Jesus or Christ was
nailed to the ‘cross’ — we begin to suspect that ‘crucifixion’ is a greater
mystery than generally supposed. If nails had been used for certain, the
crucifixion of Jesus or the Christ would of necessity have had to take place
on earth. Without nails, however, a mystery cult-type celestial event
becomes at least possible. Perhaps the ‘cross,’ being not of this world, was
too ethereal to support a body anchored with nails? My hypothesis that the
‘crucifixion’ occurred at the intersection of the celestial equator and the
ecliptic when the vernal equinox had moved into Pisces, however, awaits
further evidence.
CONCLUSION
And the LORD said to Michael, “Go, and extract Enoch from
[his] earthly clothing. And anoint him with my delightful oil, and put
him into the clothes of my glory.” And so Michael did, just as the
LORD had said to him. He anointed me and he clothed me. And the
appearance of that oil is greater than the greatest light, and its
ointment is like sweet dew, and its fragrance myrrh; and it is like the
rays of the glittering sun. And I looked at myself, and I had become
like one of his glorious ones, and there was no observable difference.
[385]
We see that Enoch not only had been anointed with oil in a celestial
setting, he had become “like one of the glorious [i.e., glowing] ones.” Had
he not ipso facto become a heavenly Christos? Wasn’t that Christos more
exalted than a mere terrestrial messiah? Might not the ‘Christ’ of the first
Christians also have been a being more exalted than the lowly would-be
messiah of Ehrman’s argument? We may hope that research carried out in
the new paradigm of a science of Christian origins will soon discover
convincing answers to this and related questions raised by Ehrman’s attempt
to defend traditional views.
Frank R. Zindler
If the Docetists had won the war, we would not be debating the
historicity of Jesus of Nazareth in the twenty-first century. Indeed, we
wouldn’t even know that this was the twenty-first century!
ABSTRACT
Romans 1:3. Concerning his Son Jesus Christ our Lord, which
was made of the seed of David according to the flesh… [A.D. 60]
Romans 8:3. For what the law could not do, in that it was weak
through the flesh, God sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful
flesh, and for sin, condemned sin in the flesh… [A.D. 60]
1 Peter 3:18. For Christ also hath once suffered for sins, the
just for the unjust, that he might bring us to God, being put to death
in the flesh, but quickened by the Spirit… [A.D. 60]
1 John 4:1–3. Beloved, believe not every spirit, but try the
spirits whether they are of God: because many false prophets are
gone out into the world. Hereby know ye the Spirit of God: Every
spirit that confesseth that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh is of God:
And every spirit that confesseth not that Jesus Christ is come in the
flesh is not of God: and this is that spirit of antichrist, whereof ye
have heard that it should come; and even now already is it in the
world. [A.D. 90]
2 John 1:7. For many deceivers are entered into the world, who
confess not that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh. This is a deceiver
and an antichrist. [A.D. 90]
Before going further, I must confess that the dates given with each
quoted verse is the date assigned to it by the infamous Archbishop James
Ussher [1581–1656] — the same guy who determined the biblical ‘fact’
that the world was created in the year 4004 B.C. Even so, a very large
number of Christian scholars even today would assert that these dates are
essentially correct.
It should be noted that in all of the verses I have quoted the writers seem
to have gone out of their way to stress that Jesus had a body — something
that one might think would be a given. Why would these sacred authors
bother to mention such a fact? If I were writing about my childhood and
talking about the exciting times I had with my grandfather, wouldn’t it seem
more than odd if I mentioned even once, “By the way: my grandfather had a
body”? What if I told you, “My grandfather had a mother”? Clearly the
verses quoted were written to contradict rival Christians who were claiming
that Jesus only seemed to have a body. Docetists were the antichrists of the
first century.
Now let us think about this a bit more. If the Epistle to the Galatians was
in fact written in the year 58, and Jesus was crucified in the year 33…
I can hear Franklin D. Roosevelt arguing with Herbert Hoover: “Did
Theodore Roosevelt have a body?” “Did Mittie Roosevelt really bear
Teddy?”
The fact that Docetic actors are standing on the Christian stage as early
as the raising of the first curtain of our passion play is of considerable
explanatory significance. If Jesus of Nazareth never existed as an actual
man of flesh and blood, but rather began as a god who had come to earth to
help the souls of men and women find their ways back to their heavenly
home, there would arise lots of questions concerning what he had actually
been like when he was on the earth. Very early on, we might expect to find
squabbling theological factions engaging in arguments concerning his
terrestrial nature.
Did a god perhaps take possession of the body of some human and then
fly back to heaven when that body died? Was a fully human organism
‘adopted’ by Yahweh, becoming a god in the process? This actually was an
early ‘Adoptionist’ view of Jesus that is reflected in some manuscript
readings (including that of the ever-fascinating Codex Bezae) of the story of
[389]
the baptism of Jesus found in Luke 3:22. These have a voice from
heaven tell Jesus as he emerges from the water “Thou art my Son; this day I
have begotten thee.” After the crucifixion, we must suppose, the god
[390]
abandoned — “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” — the
physical body of Jesus and flew back to heaven.
Did a god — as Orthodoxy now holds — impregnate a mortal woman in
the way that Zeus had done on a number of occasions? Was Jesus then
simultaneously a god and a man of flesh and blood? Was his mortal human
mother then literally ‘the Mother of God’?
Or were the Docetists and Gnostics correct? When the god came to earth
he only seemed to be the mortal man Jesus. Throughout his enactment of
this divine drama, Jesus never had a mortal body, but continued to the end
to be composed of whatever ectoplasmic essence it is that gods are made
of. How could Jesus have been mortal if he was a god? How can a god die?
Gods are immortal — that’s the main difference between gods and humans.
If Jesus had had a physical body, ipso facto he could not have been a god.
Q.E.D.
Scholars who believe without positive evidence that there once was a
man called Jesus of Nazareth surely must experience a bit of Angst because
of this silly situation. This must be made even more anxiety-provoking by
the fact that René Salm has shown, in The Myth of Nazareth: The Invented
[391]
Town of Jesus, that ‘Nazareth’ was not inhabited at the time Jesus
should have been living there. No matter. I’m sure that Jesús de Rancho
Cucamonga had a body made of flesh and blood.
If the Pauline epistles are indeed as early as most scholars suppose, it is
abundantly clear from the passages examined above that Docetism was a
very early form of Christianity — perhaps representing the original type of
belief shared by the groups we might label as the first Christians. Might
reaction to Docetism have left traces in the canonical gospels as well? As
we shall see a bit later on, Bart Ehrman in The Orthodox Corruption of
Scripture: The Effect of Early Christological Controversies on the Text of
[392]
the New Testament (OCS) has demonstrated beyond cavil that this is
indeed a fact. But before we look at Ehrman’s evidence it may be of interest
to see what I have discovered on my own without his help.
[393]
Irenaeus of Lyons, in his Against Heresies [ca. 180 CE: Book III,
chapter xi.7], tells us that the Ebionites preferred Matthew’s gospel;
Marcion preferred his “mutilated” version of Luke; the Valentinians
preferred John’s gospel; and “Those, again, who separate Jesus from Christ,
alleging that Christ remained impassible [incapable of suffering], but that it
was Jesus who suffered, preferring the Gospel by Mark…” It seems obvious
that the unnamed group of separationist heretics who held that Christ (nota
bene, not Jesus) could not suffer were Docetists of some sort.
Now an easy question: Why would Docetists at the time of Irenaeus have
preferred Mark to, say, Matthew or Luke? An easy answer: Because Mark
has no genealogies to prove a human ancestry for ‘the Jesus’; no birth
legend to indicate that he had been composed of flesh and bones; and no
tales of a childhood that might imply that he had been away from heaven
for a long time before getting around to proclaiming his ‘Good News.’
Further reason and evidence to support the notion that Docetism was the
earliest form of Christianity of which we have record come from what will
seem to be a rather shocking understanding of the theopolitical motivations
that governed the evolutionary development of the Synoptic Gospels.
The earliest of the three Synoptic Gospels, ‘Mark,’ as we have noted
above has no concern for the birth, genealogy, or early life of ‘the Jesus’ —
a character probably understood as ‘the Savior,’ not a regular guy named
Joshua or Jesus. The two gospels that were derived from it — ‘Matthew’
and ‘Luke’ — have added genealogies and birth narratives to the Markan
[394]
story framework. Why is that?
The writings of the Church Fathers provide a clue. Like modern
Christians, the Church Fathers did not perceive the genealogies and birth
narratives of Matthew and Luke to be additions to the text of Mark. Rather,
they supposed Matthew and Luke were independent witnesses who simply
were a bit more thorough than Mark. When they encountered non-Orthodox
groups whose gospels lacked these elements, they accused them of
mutilating the gospel texts — excising these important parts of the Jesus
story for evil ends.
Now that we know that Matthew and Luke are expansions of Mark’s
text, however, we see that it is not likely that various ‘heretical’ groups
were “truncating” Matthew and Luke as Irenaeus and other Church Fathers
claimed, but rather they had retained earlier versions of these gospels dating
from a time before the birth narratives were invented. Is it not highly likely,
therefore, that the birth narratives had been added only after the proto-
Orthodox had become engaged in a struggle to extinction with the Docetists
and others who believed that a man of flesh and blood could not be or
become a god? Is it not, moreover, likely that the earliest gospel, Mark,
lacks a birth story for the simple reason that it is nearer to the Docetic roots
of the Christian movement? Is it not easier to derive Orthodox Christianity
from Docetism than the other way around? If the Christian gospel began as
an abstraction conveyed in metaphor and symbolism, it would not only be
easy to reify everything and make the abstract concrete, it would be
practically inevitable. Dullness and ignorance will always be more
successful than intelligence and understanding in the course of religious
evolution.
Ehrman is absolutely spot-on when he notes [OCS 54] “Since the
orthodox struggle with adoptionists centered in part on the doctrine of
Jesus’ virgin birth, we might expect to find a theological battle waged over
the first two chapters of Matthew and Luke, the only New Testament
passages that affirm the belief.”
Indeed.
It might be argued against both Ehrman and me that the genealogies and
birth narratives were created simply because of a natural human desire to
know more about a man who had become a god. But where would the
needed information have come from? If it were a reliable source, why
would Matthew and Luke have come up with completely contradictory
genealogies and mutually exclusive tales of Jesus’s birth and childhood?
Why would idle curiosity have driven Matthew and Luke to invent such
stories out of thin air?
Well, what if there were a motivation other than idle curiosity — a
motivation much, much stronger than idle curiosity moving the several
authors of those gospels to invent their stories? What if there were
theopolitical reasons? What if the political ascendance of someone’s church
and its authorities were at stake? What if there were a theopolitical reason
to demonstrate that Jesus had been born a child of flesh and blood? What if
one needed to show that Jesus wasn’t a phantom as the Docetists claimed as
they seemed poised to corner the religion market?
Indeed, what if the genealogies and birth legends were made up to
confute the Docetists? How might this have been accomplished? It seems
likely that once the title Chreistos had evolved phonetically into Christos
[see chapter “Bart Ehrman and the Crucified Messiah”], Christ-Jesus could
become Messiah-Jesus and would warrant a genealogy from King David
and perhaps from a Joseph as well. Not only would that establish Christos’s
bona fides as a Jewish Messiah, it would prove beyond doubt that he had
been a man of flesh and blood — a man whose newly acquired name Iēsous
just happened to mean Savior and implied divinity.
In the case of the Gospel of Matthew, the genealogy almost certainly was
added first to the Markan narrative, before the birth legends were added to
the tale. Like any good Jewish genealogy, it traced the lineage of Jesus —
now equated with Chreistos/Christ — paternally from King David to
Joseph. While a long series of ‘begats’ connecting Jesus to King David
would be all that was really needed to trump the claims of the Docetists,
there was the problem that now the god Chreistos-Jesus was too human, too
mundane.
What to do? A miraculous birth was needed: miraculous, to retain the
signs of divinity; physical birth from a woman, to keep the Docetists out of
the religion markets in the better neighborhoods. A virgin birth story was
the perfect solution.
Alas, adding a virgin birth to the curriculum vitae of a fleshly Jesus now
vitiated the genealogy that traced Jesus’ ancestry through Joseph back to
David! It was necessary to amend the genealogy so that we now may learn
that “Jacob begat Joseph the husband of Mary, of whom was born Jesus,
who is called Christ.”
How do we know the genealogy was altered? The oldest manuscript of
the Syriac versions of the Gospel of Matthew — the so-called Sinaitic
Palimpsest or Codex Sinaiticus Syriacus — attests to the pre-virgin-birth
[395]
state of the genealogy. It simply states that “Jacob begat Joseph;
Joseph, to whom was betrothed a young woman, Mary, begat Jesus who is
called Messiah” [my translation].
The Matthaean genealogy and nativity tale have been so basic a part of
our ‘common sense’ since our childhoods that it is almost impossible to step
outside our imbedded framework for thought — our paradigm — to
question why these components of Matthew’s gospel are present in the first
place, whereas they are absent from Mark and John. Rarely does any one of
us get beyond wondering why Matthew’s genealogy and nativity account
differ so completely from those of Luke.
As was the case of what we might call proto-Matthew (the form of the
newly expanded form of Mark’s narrative that still lacked a genealogy and
an account of the birth of Jesus), it seems quite clear that proto-Luke also
had neither genealogy nor tale of a miraculous child. What evidence might
we cite to support this idea?
Marcion of Sinope [ca. 84–ca. 160 CE] was one of the first ‘heretics’ of
whom we have abundant information in the form of detailed refutations by
early Church Fathers such as Tertullian, Irenaeus, and Epiphanius. Although
all his writings were destroyed after the triumph of Nicene Christianity, it is
known from the writings of his critics that he was the first Christian to
create a canon of scripture, and his ‘Bible’ can be reconstructed in some
detail. This is not as difficult as it might seem, as his Bible was very small.
It had only one gospel — the Evangelicon, a form of the Gospel of Luke —
and the Apostolicon comprised of ten of the so-called Pauline Epistles:
Galatians, I & II Corinthians, Romans, I & II Thessalonians, Laodiceans
(Ephesians), Colossians, Philemon, and Philippians. (Perhaps significantly,
Marcion did not attribute his gospel to Luke by name, for which oversight
he was criticized by Tertullian in his Adversus Marcionem 4.2.)
It was a scandal that Marcion did not include most of the first four
chapters of Luke in his edition of the gospel. That means there was no
Jesuine genealogy and no miraculous births of the Summer and Winter
Solstice babies John the Baptist and Jesus of Nazareth. Also, it must be
noted, there were four fewer mentions of ‘Nazareth’ — leaving none at all
[396]
spelled with a –th or –t ending — and there was no preface addressed
[397]
to “most excellent Theophilus.”
In addition to the fact that Nazareth is not mentioned in any of the
canonical epistles or Apocalypse, it is startling to find that the place is
unknown also in Tischendorf’s Greek text of The Infancy Gospel of
Thomas, although it does turn up in “The Infancy Gospel of Thomas C: An
Alternative Beginning” translated by Bart Ehrman from a fifteenth-century
[398]
manuscript edited by Armand Delatte. Nazareth is also not to be found
in other ‘infancy gospels,’ including The Proto-Gospel of James, the Latin
Gospel of Pseudo-Matthew, and The Latin Infancy Gospels (Arundel Form).
It is, however, found three times in the Bohairic Coptic text of History of
Joseph the Carpenter, which Pleše [loc. cit. 158] tells us was “most likely
composed in Byzantine Egypt in the late sixth or early seventh century.”
Nazareth is not to be found elsewhere in the entire corpus of apocryphal
documents published by Ehrman and Pleše, although Ehrman uses the
expression “Jesus of Nazareth” in this translation from the Greek text of
The Letter of Tiberius to Pilate [loc. cit. 532–33]. This, however, is a KJV-
type mistranslation of Iēsou ton [sic] Nazōraiou — ‘of Jesus the Nazorean.’
This means that Nazareth is not mentioned even once in The Gospel of the
Nazareans, The Gospel of the Ebionites, The Gospel according to the
Hebrews, The Gospel according to the Egyptians, A gospel Harmony: The
Diatessaron?, The Gospel according to Thomas, the Agrapha, The Gospel
of Peter, The Gospel of Judas, Jesus’ Correspondence with Abgar, The
Gospel of Nicodemus (Acts of Pilate A & B), The Report of Pontius Pilate,
The Handing Over of Pilate, The Letter of Pilate to Claudius [sic!], The
Letter of Pilate to Herod, The Letter of Herod to Pilate, The Vengeance of
the Savior, The Death of Pilate Who Condemned Jesus, The Narrative of
Joseph of Arimathea, The Gospel according to Mary, The Greater
Questions of Mary, and ten ancient papyri published by Ehrman and Pleše!
It was, as I have noted, a scandal that Marcion’s gospel lacked the birth
narrative, and it was claimed that Marcion had deleted that and many other
things from his text to accord with his heretical, Docetic, ideas. Marcion,
we may suppose, must have responded that his short version was the
original, true version, and that the proto-Orthodox versions had been
swollen by interpolations. What were those interpolations? It seems likely
to me that the interpolations were basically all the passages intended to
refute a Docetic theory of Jesus. I see no reason to believe the Orthodox
apologists’ claims rather than Marcion’s — especially for the text-critical
reasons below.
[399]
According to the text of Marcion’s Evangelicon (available at
www.marcionite-scripture.info) as reconstructed from Tertullian’s Adversus
Marcionem [iv.7] and Epiphanius’s Panarion [42], Marcion’s gospel began
with what is now chapter 3, verse 1 of present-day Luke and followed it
immediately by what now is verse 31 of chapter 4:
MARK
Secondly, Ehrman was well aware that I particularly have argued that the
mention of Nazareth in Mark 1:9 was not original to ‘Mark’ and that the
original author of that gospel had never heard of the place. Shouldn’t
Ehrman have noted here, at least in a footnote, that his claim of Markan
attestation was controversial and shouldn’t he have addressed my objections
fully?
Thirdly, he makes the shocking claim that the sayings source ‘Q’ attests
to an historical fact of Jesus coming from a place called Nazareth. Where
did he get that idea? It is so controversial, he should have devoted at least
several pages to defense of that unsubstantiated claim. Consulting the Greek
concordance of John S. Kloppenborg’s Q Parallels: Synopsis, Critical
[406]
Notes, & Concordance fails to find any mention not only of Nazareth,
but also of the titles ‘Nazarenos’ or ‘Nazoraios.’ Going further, consulting
[407]
the scripture index of John S. Kloppenborg’s The Formation of Q fails
to find any mention of the two verses in Matthew that mention Nazareth
(Matt. 2:23; 21:11) or any of the five verses in Luke (1:26; 2:4; 2:39; 2:51;
4:16). This is not surprising, as five of the above seven references derive
from the birth narratives, and even Ehrman accepts the fact that those tales
[408]
are not historical but “made up,” as he might well have put it.
It is only when one consults The Critical Edition of Q, by James M.
[409]
Robinson, Paul Hoffmann, and John S. Kloppenborg that one finds an
entry—not for Nazareth or Nazarenos or Nazoraios—but for Nazará, with a
reference for Q 4:16, 31. Turning to pages 42 and 43 that present the eight
synoptic columns pertaining to this verse, the first thing we see atop the
columns for Matt. 4:13 and Luke 4:15, 31 is the footnote siglum 0/
signaling a note that asks the feeble question, “Is (at least) Nazará in Q?”
It seems safe to say, therefore, that the compilers of Q knew nothing of a
place called Nazareth, even if they were familiar with Aesop’s fables.
Moreover, they seem to have known nothing of the appellations Nazarenos
or Nazoraios! This leaves us to consider the claim that the Sondergüter ‘M’
and ‘L’ attest to Jesus coming from Nazareth.
MATTHEW
As already noted, there are only two places in Matthew where the Greek
text indicates Jesus came from Nazareth. If they are not verses derived from
Q or Mark—and indeed they aren’t—then they must be part of what
Ehrman refers to as ‘M,’ Matthew’s Sondergut (material unique to
Matthew). Ehrman begs the question not only that ‘Matthew’ derives this
from written sources and hasn’t made it up on his own to embellish his
version of the story, but also the question as to whether this previous source
can be considered to have been a historical record rather than a literary or
purely theological one.
The first of these two verses (Matt 2:23) would seem to hold an
important clue to the origin of the word ‘Nazareth’ and to its original
function. It seems to me that the word originated right here in this verse.
The verse reads:
LUKE
1:26 And in the sixth month the angel Gabriel was sent from
God unto a city of Galilee, named Nazareth. 27 To a virgin espoused
to a man whose name was Joseph, of the house of David; and the
virgin’s name was Mary.
JOHN
[411]
This brings us to consider if John 1:45, 46 can be considered an
independent attestation of the ‘fact’ that Jesus came from a place called
Nazareth. It has long been a strong minority opinion that one of the authors
of ‘John’ knew of at least one of the Synoptic Gospels. The discovery that
‘Aenon,’ the place where John was baptizing, was the product of a dyslexic
reading of a Codex Bezae-like manuscript of Luke does, however, seem to
[412]
clinch it. That means that ‘John’ is not an independent attestation of
Nazareth, but rather it is an elaboration of information gleaned from Luke
and perhaps other Synoptic Gospels. Although John may originally have
been a Docetic or proto-Gnostic type of composition, in its present form it
is strongly anti-Docetic and thus was in need of a residence for a god who
had to be given a body of flesh and blood. Consequently, in the Gospel
according to John we find not an independent attestation of Jesus coming
from Nazareth, but rather a polemic application of the toponym ‘Nazareth’
employed by someone who had (mis)read a manuscript of the Gospel
according to Luke.
While it is clear that John cannot be used as a witness of the fact that
Jesus came from a city (polis) called Nazareth, this gospel’s question “Can
anything good come out of Nazareth?” is worthy of examination. It must be
admitted that the origin of this verse is enigmatic. However, it is
nevertheless a powerful refutation of Ehrman’s unsubstantiated claim that
the Nazareth of Jesus was “a one-dog town,” so small that it left no remains
for archaeologists of the twentieth century to find. If it was that small, how
could it have given rise to an ostensibly well-known folk aphorism? It
seems likely that we are dealing with an adaptation of something like “Can
anything good come out of Possumtrot?” Like the made-up name
‘Possumtrot,’ the fictive name ‘Nazareth’ may have been substituted for
some other made-up name. In any case, when biblical archaeologists tire in
their search for the Nazareth of Jesus, they might find searching for the
Possumtrot of Bubba a bit easier.
After claiming the absence of theopolitical impulses in the creation of
the birth legends, and asserting multiple attestations of Nazareth as the
hometown of Jesus, Ehrman goes on to assert that the Nazareth traditions
would actually have been an embarrassment:
Apart from wondering how Ehrman can know so much about the size
and quadruped population of a place “that no one had ever heard of,” we
have already questioned just how it could be that a one-dog “town” could
simultaneously be so obscure that no one had ever heard of it and yet be
famous enough to give rise to a saying that appears to be part of the
common folk wisdom of ancient Palestine!
One wishes further that Ehrman would have presented at least some
evidence to show how the one-dog town could be equivalent to both the city
that now bears the name, where no synagogue was ever built atop the hill
above it as well as the biblical polis that was itself atop a hill that had a cliff
and possessed a synagogue of which not a trace remains today.
So much for multiple attestation and the criterion of dissimilarity! Surely
the facts of archaeology and logic must trump them both.
Critical examination of our texts, I have asserted, lends support to the
notion that Marcion’s gospel was an early form of Luke that did not yet
have the anti-Docetic additions of genealogies and miraculous births. Why
would I think so?
First of all, let us remind ourselves that in both Mark — the narrative
framework for Luke’s gospel — and Marcion, Jesus’s first adventure after
being tempted in the wilderness takes place in a synagogue in Capernaum.
In canonical Luke, however, Jesus first makes an appearance in a
synagogue in Nazareth. To compensate for skipping over the Capernaum
adventure that appeared first-up in his Vorlage, Luke inserts a sort of flash-
back of Jesus’s activities in Capernaum — something for which there is no
room in Luke’s chronology since the Nazareth pericope is clearly the first
act of Jesus’s preaching career!
Luke 4:23 And he [Jesus] said unto them, Ye will surely say
unto me this proverb, Physician, heal thyself: whatsoever we have
heard done in Capernaum, do also here in thy country. 24 And he
said, Verily I say unto you, No prophet is without honor except in his
own country.
Luke 4:28 And all they in the synagogue, when they heard
these things, were filled with wrath, 29 And rose up, and thrust him
out of the city, and led him unto the brow of the hill whereon their
city was built, that they might cast him down head long. 30 But he
passing through the midst of them went his way, 31 And came down
to Capernaum, a city of Galilee, and taught them on the Sabbath
days.
Luke doesn’t tell us how Jesus passed through the midst of the lynch-
mob, but early Roman Catholic and Greek Orthodox traditions have it that
Jesus jumped into the air to evade the mob. So, since escaping the mob and
arriving in Capernaum are events recorded in the same Lukan sentence, we
must suppose (unless, of course, this is a seam indicating the precise point
where someone has tampered with our text!) that Jesus did indeed (1)
launch into the air from the top edge of Nazareth Hill, (2) shoot like an
artillery shell for 25 miles, and (3) land without cratering the Capernaum
synagogue. (Nota bene: Occasional claims to the contrary notwithstanding,
no first-century synagogue remains have ever been found at K’far Nahum, ̣
the major site identified by Franciscan ‘archaeologists’ and tour guides as
being the remains of ancient Capernaum — which, like Nazareth, was
[413]
unknown to the world at the turn of the era. I have shown elsewhere
that claims that Josephus mentioned Capernaum are incorrect.)
My children, this is the last hour! You were told that Antichrist
was to come, and now many antichrists have appeared; which proves
to us that this is indeed the last hour. They went out from our
company, but never really belonged to us; if they had, they would
have stayed with us. They went out, so that it might be clear that not
all in our company truly belong to it.
THE SUMMING UP
It seems abundantly clear that Docetism was one of the earliest forms of
Christianity. Indeed, Docetism may be the earliest form of Christianity of
which we have knowledge. Orthodoxy may be but a reified form of a
mystery cult centered upon a savior who came to earth from the sky and
somehow took human form and then substance.
The present Christian scriptures bear numerous scars and swellings that
are the result of a long and bitter fight with Docetists. The birth legends of
Matthew and Luke created Nazareth as a residence for a Jesus who had a
physical body. According to these inventive authors, Jesus inhabited
Nazareth like a man of flesh and blood. He didn’t haunt the place as would
a specter such as the Christ worshipped by the Docetists.
And so, it seems highly likely that Jesus of Nazareth was the invention of
proto-Orthodox propagandists in their long, drawn-out struggle against
their Docetist progenitors. We seem to be witness to a reversal of the
classical myth of Kronos. Instead of Kronos eating his children, one of his
children has served him up as a Eucharistic meal — and eaten him!
It is astoundingly difficult to do, but we must strive not to make the same
mistake that Ehrman and historicists in general have always made, viz.,
treating all references to Christ as though they were equivalent to references
to Jesus. Still less has it been permissible to equate them to references to
Jesus of Nazareth, a character practically never mentioned in the canonical
new Testament and throughout the apocrypha, the Apostolic Fathers, and
the Ante-Nicene Fathers. We know that ‘Separationists’ and others carefully
distinguished Christ from Jesus and we too must always try to distinguish
Christ from Jesus. We must always try to ascertain if any given source does
this as well. We cannot presume that Jesus the man is anterior to Christ the
god. Indeed, I argue that the opposite is the case.
*****
Earl Doherty
*****
Those who have become familiar with my writings over the years
will know that I have a soft spot for the epistle to the Hebrews. In many
ways it is the most revealing of the New Testament documents.
A time of revelation
As he did in regard to the Prologue of 1 John, Ehrman offers the event of
revelation at the formation of the sect, described at the beginning of chapter
2, as a reference to the historical Jesus’ own preaching. But the ‘hearing’
and ‘confirming’ are of the message of salvation, one provided by God.
(The NEB gives us a particularly gratuitous translation which inserts Gospel
Jesus implications that are not in the Greek.) In fact, the verse paraphrased
by Ehrman (committing the same sin as the NEB),
raises the question of why it would be said that God supported Jesus’
message by miracles, rather than Jesus himself. After all, according to the
Gospels, this was the very purpose of Jesus’ miracles. Rather, God is the
one supplying the miracles here because it is God who is delivering the
message at the time of the community’s formation. This is a thought
reinforced later in 9:10, in which the writer locates the inauguration of the
New Covenant in the present “time of reformation,” the time of
understanding (i.e., by revelation based on scripture), not the historical time
of Jesus’ sacrifice.
· He was descended from the tribe of Judah [lit., has arisen out
of Judah] (7:14).
This one is a complex point (see my Jesus: Neither God Nor Man: 228–
[414]
231). It entails an analysis of the figure of Melchizedek who appears
throughout the middle section of the epistle. While this figure is based on
the king and high priest of Salem (probably Jerusalem) in Genesis 14:18–
20, the writer also employs him as a heavenly personage akin to an angel
(as one of the Dead Sea Scrolls does). In fact, he melds the two. First,
historically speaking, Melchizedek was in a line leading to David and could
thus be associated with the tribe of Judah. This provided Christ, in being
linked with Melchizedek, with a High Priesthood of a different tribe than
the Levites of the old priesthood of Aaron — a necessity, as he sees it, to
accompany the new covenant and “change of law” (7:12), since the Levites
were associated with the old law and covenant.
But because Melchizedek was also looked upon as a heavenly priest (see
also 2 Enoch), this could give the heavenly Son a priesthood in heaven, and
this the writer bases on Psalm 110:4: “You are a priest forever in the
succession of Melchizedek.” (We can see here, as well as in Christ’s
heavenly sacrifice, the extent to which a Christian exegete could ‘tease’ out
of scripture a revelation of just about any scenario in the spiritual universe
he desired.)
Immediately following 7:14, the writer notes:
Not only does the writer dismiss physical descent as the basis on which
Christ belongs to Judah and enjoys a legitimate priesthood, he derives that
legitimacy from scripture. For “the power of an indestructible life” is in no
way a reference to his resurrection on earth, but to the above-quoted Psalm
110:4, that Christ is “a priest forever,” a promise made by God.
Clearly the writer knows of no life on earth, let alone a descent from
David (whom he never refers to), for if Jesus as the new High Priest needed
to be of a different tribe, no arcane link to Melchizedek should have been
required. An appeal could simply have been made to the historical tradition
that Jesus of Nazareth was descended from David and was automatically of
the tribe of Judah. Thus, the “it is clear” of 7:14 is a reference to the
information provided by scripture, not by “the life of the historical Jesus.”
For Christ did not enter a man-made sanctuary that is only a copy
of the true one, but into heaven itself . . .
Present or Past?
According to the rule, this would place the thought in the present time,
such as the NIV translation above. But general rules generally enjoy
exceptions, or are seen as not always so clear cut. Paul Ellingworth,
appealing to A Greek Grammar of the New Testament by Blass and
Debrunner, says [Hebrews: 405]:
The thought here is rather trivial, but the writer has expanded on verse 3
by stating that each type of high priest, in regard to their respective
sacrifices, operated in his own territory: Christ in the heavenly sanctuary
and the regular high priests in the sanctuary on earth. The two could not
overlap.
Verse 5 goes on to emphatically state this Platonic separation of
respective territories, with Christ having operated in heaven and the high
priests on earth “in a sanctuary which is only a copy and shadow of the
heavenly.” This emphasis not only rules out that the writer is constructing a
metaphor for an earthly Calvary, but ought to rule out the very existence of
such an earthly event. Quite certainly, a graphic, historical crucifixion
everyone would have remembered—one that had started the movement—
would surely have compelled him to include it in his picture of the
‘sacrifice’ Christ made (the way most commentators on Hebrews regularly
try to introduce it).
But then his Platonic comparison would be foiled throughout. (It would
have been foiled even if there had been an earthly crucifixion and the writer
chose to ignore it.) For then the blood was not spiritual but human; the
sacrifice, being on earth, did not take place in a sanctuary not made by man
(8:2), it was not “perfect, spiritual, and eternal” [9:14, NEB]; the blood of
his offering was not heavenly, and could not cleanse heavenly things [9:23].
And if it was performed in the same territory as the sacrifices of the earthly
priests, this would produce an outright incompatibility with the statement of
8:4.
You need to persevere, so that when you have done the will of God
you will receive what he has promised. For “in just a little while”
[Isaiah 26:20 LXX] “The coming one [ho erchomenos] will come,
and will not delay.”
And so have quite a few other writers of the New Testament, who in a
similar way seem infected with memory loss.
Inasmuch as it is destined for men to die once, and after that comes
the judgment, so also Christ, having been offered once to bear the
sins of many, ek deuterou will appear to those awaiting him, not to
bear sin but (to bring) salvation.
The “ek deuterou” is usually translated “a second time.” But the phrase,
like its sister “to deuteron,” can also mean “second in sequence,” without
any thought of repetition of the first item but simply that of “next” or
“second in time.” (See Jude 5 and 1 Cor. 12:28.)
Moreover, such a meaning fits the context better. In verse 27, we have
not a repetition but a sequence: men dying and afterwards the judgment.
The “so also Christ” in verse 28 indicates that the writer is presenting a
parallel to verse 27, one which specifies not a repetition of the ‘coming to
bear the sins of many’ but a ‘next’ action after that one, namely to bring
salvation at the Parousia. Since the “offered once to bear the sins of many”
refers to the heavenly sacrifice, there need be no “second time” coming to
earth.
Besides, the writer’s sacrifice was a singular action, entering the
heavenly sanctuary and offering his blood. The Parousia will also be a
single occasion of “appearing,” thus much more suited to be called a
“second time”—should we wish after all to give the language any sense of
repetition—to the “appearing” for his heavenly sacrifice than to a coming
into an incarnated life on earth.
Like Hebrews 8:4 earlier, this passage has begged for a more careful
analysis which it has never received. The first thing to note is that the writer
is once again attempting (“and therefore Jesus also…”) to make a parallel
between Jesus’ actions and those of the high priests on earth. The latter are
spoken of as taking place “outside the camp” because the author, as much
as possible throughout the epistle, has been making his parallels with the
biblical accounts in which the first tent of sacrifice was set up outside the
Israelite camp in Sinai.
A bad comparison
But this comparison is problematic. It is not really a parallel at all. The
burning of the animals’ bodies takes place after the sacrifice of their blood,
and is a discarding of their bodies; nor does it cause the animal suffering.
Jesus’ suffering and death—with no burning involved—took place before
the sacrifice and was an essential prelude to it; and his body was hardly
discarded since he was resurrected. This inappropriate comparison is a
signal that the writer’s overriding object was to create as many parallels as
he could with scripture, even if they didn’t work very well.
Contrary to claims that the passage is governed by history, this shows
the opposite: the author’s process, and what he allots to Jesus, is governed
by his focus on creating parallels with scripture.
But what of the change from verse 11 to verse 12, the change from
“outside the camp” to “outside the gate”? Is that governed by history? Is it a
reference to the gate of Jerusalem, as some claim?
Since we have a great High Priest who has passed through the
heavens, Jesus the Son of God, let us hold to our confession.
If this is taken as a reference to Jesus’ ascension after his time on earth
(as is usually the case), it would serve little or no purpose. The ascension, as
conceived by orthodoxy, had no role in salvation, and why it would be a
reason for holding fast to faith would be obscure. Besides, in detailing
Jesus’ itinerary, why mention the spheres of heaven but not earth itself?
The answer is likely that the act of salvation directly involved this
passing through the heavens. This would fit the concept of the descent and
ascent of the Son, first descending to the lowest sphere to undergo death,
then ascending to the heavenly sanctuary to offer his blood in a new
atonement sacrifice to God.
I have made the point before that historicist scholars like Ehrman
regularly indulge in and require a superficial reading (or rather, ‘reading
into’) of the epistolary texts — with blinders attached — to make their case,
whereas a less preconceived examination reveals a depth and dimension too
readily overlooked, one pointing directly to Mythicism. The epistle to the
Hebrews is perhaps the best example of this very deficient methodology.
A Pauline Postscript
A few words are needed about the ending of the epistle to the Hebrews.
Uncertainty about the authenticity of the final verses (their number varies)
has been common in scholarship, and particularly of 13:22–25. These
constitute a ‘farewell greeting’ which, with its reference to Timothy, places
us in the world of Paul. There are scholars, such as Harold Attridge, who
maintain authenticity, but there are too many problems with this. In Jesus:
Neither God Nor Man, Appendix 4, I discuss them at length, but here I will
mention two. (That Appendix also discusses the question of dating, which
almost certainly must be judged as pre-Jewish War.)
In ancient times, Hebrews came to be attributed to Paul, but this enjoys
no support today, not least because the soteriology of the epistle is utterly
unlike anything Paul has given us. But if the ‘postscript’ was written by the
author of the epistle, this would mean that he moved in Pauline circles,
leading us to expect his treatise to reflect at least some of Paul’s thought.
On the other hand, the postscript is obviously designed to give the
impression that the epistle is by Paul.
That impression also creates a clear contradiction with the epistle itself.
The implied Paul of the postscript is ostensibly writing to a community that
he is not a part of. His remarks about Timothy point up the fact that he is a
wandering apostle, accompanied on his travels by a companion. Yet the
epistle itself presents the writer as a member of the community he is
addressing (as in 10:24–25). (The same incompatibility is suggested in
13:17, which would make that verse a part of the addition as well.)
If Hebrews is truly an independent expression recognizable nowhere
else, a unique interpretation of the Savior Christ on the first century scene,
we are justified in postulating a Christianity which developed without a
single founder or point of origin. It began in diversity, and only later
coalesced around a Jesus on earth who seems, all things considered, to be a
product of the imagination.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Bart Ehrman
And
The Cheshire Cat Of Nazareth
Frank R. Zindler
When all that is left of a Cheshire cat is its grin, how can we be sure
it is in fact the grin of a cat? To be sure, if we have watched a grinning cat
disappear progressively until all we see is its grin, we can have some
confidence that the aerial grin we perceive to remain is in fact that of a cat.
As the grin further dissolves into the fog and mist of a perplexing day,
however, it becomes harder and harder to determine if the motes that float
before our eyes are still the remnants of the grin or just the random rubbish
of polluted air. At some point, however, we will have to admit that the cat is
gone — completely gone.
This all seems obvious enough and uncontroversial. But what if someone
else were to walk by as you were standing at the wayside peering into the
low branches of a tree and fixing your gaze on the fading remnants of the
grin?
“What are you staring at?” the stranger might inquire.
“The grin of a Cheshire cat — a cat that used to live in Cheshire in
England,” you reply.
“Really?” he might ask. “Where exactly is it?”
You might point to a branch where the faint pattern of glowing dust still
hovered in the air. “Right there,” you’d explain. “A moment ago, the whole
cat was on that branch, but he’s faded away to just the grin you see up there
now.”
“What?!” the passerby might challenge you. “That’s no cat! That’s just a
will-o’-the-wisp!”
“Well,” you affirm, “I know it’s a cat that grew up in Cheshire even
though it’s gone now and not even a trace remains.”
Who would believe you? Who ought to believe you?
Just as with Alice wandering around in Wonderland, a walk through the
field of New Testament studies comes again and again to faint, ethereal
traces that one is told are remnants of the scowl, or grin, or grimace, or
smirk, or leer, or glare, or smiley-face, or amorous glance, or winsome wink
of another character of Western literature: Jesus of Nazareth.
Unlike the case of Alice and the Cheshire cat, no one now alive was
around two thousand years ago to witness Jesus of Nazareth in his physical
entirety before he started to fade into the blurry image of the past we now
possess. Moreover, it certainly doesn’t help when we learn that many of the
earliest Christians didn’t believe that Jesus ever had a physical entirety!
There is a further problem. Unlike Alice witnessing the fading of the
Cheshire cat from the beginning and so being able not only to attest to the
identity of the pattern glowing amidst the darkling leaves but even to
confirm the physical reality of a feline philosopher of known provenience,
no one today can even attest with certainty to the identity of the character
they think they see in the Rorschach records of the past. Still less can they
vouchsafe the reality of his physical existence. No two persons see the same
Jesus, let alone the Jesus that Bart Ehrman describes in Did Jesus Exist?
[415]
One thing now seems certain to all scholars who are theologically free to
follow the trail of evidence whithersoever it might lead: the original
character — whose jigsaw-puzzle image has fragmented and been scattered
to the point where only a few pieces of the face remain in the puzzle-box of
history — could not possibly have been any of the Jesuses of the canonical
New Testament.
From the time of the Enlightenment it has been understood that whoever
Jesus of Nazareth might have been in real life, he could not have been the
miracle-worker of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. That is to say, he could
not have performed actual miracles that violated the laws of science. The
Rationalists, however, held on to the stories as being history of a sort, but
history that misunderstood what was really going on. Jesus wasn’t really
dead in the tomb; he had merely swooned. Jesus wasn’t really walking on
the water; the stones just below the surface weren’t visible in the fog. And
so on.
The Rationalists rescued the various gospel Jesuses from deconstructive
demise for a time. But then in 1900 L. Frank Baum’s wonderful The
Wonderful Wizard of Oz was published, and the adventitious nature of
Rationalist salvage efforts could eventually come to be seen as no more
credible than arguments trying to prove that Emerald City isn’t green
because it is made of emeralds; rather, it is green due to paint pigments that
exhibit high reflectance at wavelengths around 555 nanometers.
And so began the inexorable disintegration and disappearance of the
Cheshire Jesus of Nazareth — a god long believed to have been a man but
now known to have been no more real a man than was the Cheshire cat a
real cat. After we briefly retrace the dissolution of ‘The Historical Jesus’ a
bit later, we shall see that insoluble epistemological problems now rule out
any possibility that Bart Ehrman — still less believing Christian apologists
— can save the Savior long piously believed to have come from a place
called Nazareth in the Galilee.
With so much of the ‘Historical Jesus’ now having been pared away we
may imagine his total dissolution. For nearly two centuries, one scholar
after another has claimed that this or that feature of the ‘Life of Christ’ was
borrowed from some Pagan source, adapted from the Hebrew scriptures or
Septuagint, modeled after Homer, other divinities, etc. A large part of
‘Jesus’ can be seen to be ‘The New Moses’ or ‘New Elijah,’ and it is easy
to see how all the ‘Old Testament’ so-called predictions of Jesus were
actually the seeds that sprouted and turned into the various Jesuses of the
various gospels.
Certainly, it is not possible to prove such a thesis in an essay such as this.
Nevertheless, a fair number of scholars are busily at work adducing
evidence to show that practically every detail of the Jesus biography is
either borrowed and adapted from non-Christian sources, modeled after
them, or was the creative fallout from ancient theopolitical equivalents of
[432]
nuclear wars of attrition. What if these scholars succeed?
What will Historicists such as Bart Ehrman do if it can be clearly
demonstrated that eighty or ninety percent of the ‘biography’ of Jesus is
bogus in the sense that it was created ad hoc to create a terrestrial itinerary
for a heavenly being sojourning on our sublunary sphere? Some years ago I
sent a questionnaire polling fellow members of The Jesus Project in which
one question read something like “If it could be clearly demonstrated that
the entirety of the gospel Jesus biography was inauthentic, would you still
believe in the Historical Jesus? If 90%? If 80%? …
To my astonishment, more than one of those hard-headed, secular
scholars indicated that they would continue to believe in the Historical
Jesus even if his entire biography were proven to be a fiction!
With regard to the stories of Jesus’s birth, one does not need to
wait for the later Gospels, mentioned above, to begin seeing the
fabricated accounts; they are already there in the familiar versions of
Matthew and Luke. There never was a census under Caesar
Augustus that compelled Joseph and Mary to go to Bethlehem just
before Jesus was born; there never was a star that mysteriously
guided wise men from the East to Jesus; Herod the Great never did
slaughter all the baby boys in Bethlehem; Jesus and his family never
did spend several years in Egypt. These may sound like bold and
provocative statements, but scholars have known the reasons and
evidence behind them for many years. …
It is almost impossible to say whether the people who made up
and passed along these stories were comparable to forgers, who
knew full well that they were engaged in a kind of deception, or
whether they, instead, were like those who falsely attributed
anonymous books to known authors without knowing they were
wrong. … They may not have meant to deceive others (or they may
have!), but they certainly did deceive others. In fact, they deceived
others spectacularly well. For many, many centuries it was simply
assumed that the narratives about Jesus and the apostles —
narratives both within and outside the New Testament — described
[458]
events that actually happened.
It is unlikely that Ehrman realized what he had admitted here when later
he composed Did Jesus Exist? The Historical Evidence for Jesus of
Nazareth. We must emphasize the subtitle of that book here. For it is
precisely in the birth narratives that we find all but two references to
[459]
Nazareth in the entire canonical New Testament! When we eliminate
the birth legends from our database we no longer have any compelling
support for the existence of Jesus’ purported hometown, and without
Nazareth, Jesus becomes inevitably the Jesus of Someplace-Else — who, as
we shall see, is a meaningless and identity-less character. It is hard to
estimate how much of the Jesus of (Not)-Nazareth database is left now for
Ehrman to use in reconstructing the face. Fifty percent? Forty percent?
Even less?
It cannot be stressed too strongly: the more data Ehrman has to exclude
from his database, the less likely it is that he can produce a meaningful
hypothesis concerning a historical Jesus. By excluding all data that might
argue against or falsify his thesis, his thesis is in danger of becoming worse
than wrong; it risks becoming meaningless.
Earl Doherty
*****
Evidently, Ehrman does not realize that the Humanist movement arose in
great part as a response to religion, as a rejection of its traditional all-
encompassing and rigid dictations of what life constituted, how it should be
lived, how we should think, and how we should view and treat the world.
Having come to realize that this tradition was flawed and even harmful —
an ongoing impediment to rationality, science, and human rights — many
people came together to try to counter these undesirable effects and offer an
alternative.
Adopting a stance against religion in all its negative aspects was
essentially one raison d’être. Those who were convinced that religion’s
foundation in a belief in God(s) and a supernatural dimension to reality was
fundamentally erroneous felt a desire to correct that error in humanity’s
thinking — not through force, indoctrination, or legislation to impose one
view of reality on everyone, such as religion has traditionally tried to do and
is inherently ‘set up’ to do — but through reasoned persuasion and
education.
But what struck me most about the meeting was precisely how
religious it was. Every year I attend meetings of the Society of
Biblical Literature, conferences on early Christian studies, and the
like. I have never, in my recollection, been to a meeting that was so
full of talk about personal religion as the American Humanist
Association, a group dedicated to life without religion. [DJE? 333]
Here Ehrman shows how the religious mind (even an ex-religious mind)
can only evaluate other or opposing views in religious terms. It seeks to
apply the concepts of religion to the non-religious. Thus, focusing on how
one should live one’s life in the Humanist way becomes a “religious”
activity and fixation. “Life without religion” can only be achieved through
“religion.”
But this is a misuse of language and concepts. We can say “he works at
his job religiously” because we have broadened the meaning of ‘religiously’
to apply to anything that is undertaken with dedication and faithful
attention. This does not make working at that job a religion in the standard
sense, because it does not involve belief in a god or the supernatural.
Humanism may be promoted by some circles of non-believers quite
‘religiously’ but that does not make Humanism a religion. That is simply an
attempt by members of actual religions to cast their own net over their
opponents. “You criticize us for the qualities we value? You practice the
same ones!” But what those respective qualities are used in the service of is
quite different.
Considering that religious belief has produced so much that has operated
against that greater good, ‘taking on religion’ is a natural and necessary
aspect of being a Humanist and Atheist in most societies around the world
(even if a considerable number of Humanists have advocated against doing
so) — with a few notable exceptions, one of which is unfortunately not the
United States of America.
Well, this type of admonition could have been made against almost any
individual or group who ever put forward a theory which bucked the going
wisdom. Copernicus threw traditional astronomy into disrepute. Darwin
was mocked by the religious establishment. Wegener was disowned by the
discipline of geology and ridiculed by his colleagues for his theory of
continental drift. If innovators and researchers not shackled by received
tradition backed away through fear of such reactions we’d still be living in
the Stone Age. Yes, we have had our share of new theories deserving
rejection (alien visitors to earth as the source of human life is probably one
such). But that rejection has usually been backed up by reasoned argument
and counter-demonstration. And such rebuttal has had to stand up to
scrutiny. Ridicule by itself or appealing to “the way we’ve always thought”
doesn’t do the trick.
The problem then with Jesus is that he cannot be removed from his
time and transplanted into our own without simply creating him
anew. When we create him anew we no longer have the Jesus of
history but the Jesus of our own imagination, a monstrous invention
created to serve our own purposes. But Jesus is not so easily moved
and changed. He is powerfully resistant. He remains always in his
own time. As Jesus fads come and go, as new Jesuses come to be
invented and then pass away, as newer Jesuses come to take the
place of the old, the real, historical Jesus continues to exist, back
there in the past…. [DJE? 336]
Ehrman has summarized modern Jesus scholarship quite well here and,
given the perennial failure of repeated quests to find the real historical
Jesus, more and more of our modern New Testament scholars have begun
admitting as much.
But what do many of them turn around and do? Just like Ehrman, they
claim that they have finally identified the true, real, genuine historical Jesus
to properly replace all those “monstrous inventions” of the past. No fad my
theory. No problems with my evidence and argument to finally uncover the
Jesus of history buried under all that early Christian superstructure and
misguided preceding scholarship. If they live long enough (give it maybe a
couple of decades), they get to see their own claims follow onto the scrap
heap.
Like the difference between the Atheist and the Christian monotheist
who rejects the existence of Allah, or Zeus, or any of a thousand other gods
humanity has subscribed to, one could say: “But Dr. Ehrman, you’re already
a Jesus mythicist; I just believe in one less mythical Jesus than you do!”
But what has Ehrman himself been doing? Is Christianity any more
debunked by demonstrating that Jesus did not exist than by demonstrating
that he was nothing like the character the Christian faith worships, a failed,
somewhat crazy preacher of doom who got himself executed, never to be
seen again? Either one would leave it in a “total shambles.” (Personally, if I
were a believer I would prefer Mythicism, because that would at least leave
me in a position to fall back on Paul’s heavenly Christ as an object of faith
and salvation, a divinity unaffected by later delusions created by the Gospel
writers that he had actually come to earth and been sacrificed there.)
Much harm has been done, he admits, in the name of Christ, but he
offers a ‘counter-balance’ which has become an almost pathetic cliché:
I also see that a tremendous amount of good has been done in his
name, and continues to be done, by well meaning and hardworking
Christian men and women who do untold good in the world on both
massive and individual scales. [DJE? 339]
Conclusion
If at the heart of Atheist concerns lies the realization that without any
historical Jesus at all, western religion would not have taken the course it
did, nor continue to have the negative results it has produced, it is only
natural that Humanist scholars would have a disposition to focus on this
issue. Ehrman notes, as though he has discovered a hand in the cookie jar,
that it is only Atheists and Humanists who seem to be open to the idea that
no historical Jesus ever lived. But this is hardly tantamount to being guilty
of deliberately fabricating their theory for nefarious ends, of promoting
their own wishful thinking based on no scholarly or legitimate evidence
whatever.
Mythicism has too long a history, it has produced too much responsible
literature to be dismissed with a simple stroke of the pen. (I have no
hesitation in including my own The Jesus Puzzle and Jesus: Neither God
Nor Man in that catalogue.) It has been in the hands of too many able
scholars, even if some have been for the most part self-educated, though
many have possessed ‘proper’ credentials such as the nineteenth-century
Dutch Radical school and a few contemporary scholars. It has been too
persistent and too tenacious not to be taken seriously. Through today’s
Internet, it has won over a broad constituency, comprising intelligent people
who can recognize traditional bias, fallacy, special pleading — as against
good argument and often simple common sense — when they see it.
Ehrman’s case for an historical Jesus has been exposed as the weak
effort and flawed exercise it truly is, by more than just myself (in a 34-part
series on Vridar.wordpress.com). Capping that effort off with the ultimate,
disreputable tactic of personally attacking the messengers and their integrity
makes Did Jesus Exist? a dismal failure and an embarrassment. Ultimately,
Mythicism will stand or fall on its own scholarly arguments, irrespective of
any supposed agenda. Contrary to its longstanding mantra-like claims,
traditional scholarship has done little to actually address those arguments,
let alone refute them. Bart Ehrman has made the effort and been found
wanting.
ENVOI
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Bart Ehrman and
the Emperor’s New Clothes
Once upon a time there lived a vain Emperor whose only concern in
life was to dress up in elegant clothes and regalia. He changed outfits
almost every hour and always was eager to show them off to the people.
Word of the Emperor’s refined habits spread across his kingdom and
abroad. Two scoundrels, hearing of the Emperor’s vanity, decided to take
advantage of it to make a profit. They introduced themselves at the gates of
the palace with an incredible scheme.
“We are expert clothificators,” one of the scoundrels told the entry guard.
I hold a doctorate in sartoriology, and my colleague here is a doctor of
haberdasheristics. We are professors from Harvard University in America.
The fame of your Emperor has spread even to the other side of the ocean
and we realized that we could be of service to him. In fact, we can help him
in a way that no one in his kingdom is able.”
“In what way can you help His Majesty?” asked the guard.
“After many years of research,” replied the sartoriologer — adding a
comment about Harvard being a research University — “we have developed
a wonderful method to weave a cloth so light and fine that it looks
invisible.”
“Wow!” replied the guard. “Is it really invisible?”
“Well,” chimed in the haberdasheristicist, “in a technical sense, it isn’t.
Highly competent, intelligent, and appropriately educated people can see it
— especially those holding doctorates in clothification. But people who are
incompetent and stupid — or those holding doctorates in inappropriate
areas of study — are utterly deficient in the refined sense required to
perceive it.”
The captain of the guards heard the impostors’ strange story and sent for
the court chamberlain. The chamberlain notified the prime minister, who
ran to the Emperor and disclosed the astounding news. The Emperor’s
curiosity got the better of him and he decided to give the two visiting
professors an audience.
“Besides being invisible, your Majesty, this cloth will be woven in colors
and patterns created especially for you. Your Majesty’s wisdom is
evidenced by the fact that you have chosen to put your faith in expert
clothificators instead of the amateurs who heretofore have been managing
the royal wardrobe.”
The Emperor gave the two experts a bag of gold coins in exchange for
their promise to begin working on the wonderful textile immediately.
“Just tell us what you need to get started and we’ll give it to you.” The
two impostors asked for a loom, silk, gold thread, and then pretended to
start to work. The Emperor thought he had spent his money wisely. In
addition to getting a fabulous new outfit, he would discover which of his
subjects were ignorant and incompetent. A few days later, he called the
wise old prime minister, who was considered by everybody to be a man
with good, common sense.
“Go and see how the work is proceeding,” the Emperor commanded him,
“and come back to let me know what progress is being made.”
The prime minister was welcomed by the two scalawags.
“We’re almost finished, but we need a lot more gold thread. Here,
Excellency! Admire the colors; feel the softness! The old man bent over the
loom and tried to see the fabric that was not there. Cold sweat began to
freeze on his forehead.
“I can’t see anything,” he thought. “If I see nothing, that means I’m
stupid or incompetent! “If I admit that, I’ll be fired from office.”
“What a marvelous fabric,” he exclaimed. “I’ll certainly tell the
Emperor.” The two ne’er-do-wells rubbed their hands with glee. They were
almost there! More gold thread and some platinum for buttons were
requested to finish the work.
Finally, the Emperor was told that the two doctors of clothification had
come to take all the measurements needed to sew his new garments.
“Come in,” the Emperor commanded. At the same time that they were
bowing before the Emperor, the two scoundrels pretended to be holding a
large bolt of fabric.
“Here it is your Majesty: the result of our labor,” the schemers
announced. “We have worked night and day, but at last the most beautiful
fabric in the whole world is ready for you. Look at these colors and feel
how fine it is!”
Of course, the Emperor did not see any colors and could not feel any
cloth between his fingers. He panicked and felt like he would faint. But then
he realized that no one else could know that he did not see the fabric, and he
felt better. Nobody could know that he was stupid and incompetent. Of
course, the Emperor could not know that everyone else was thinking and
doing the very same thing as he was.
The farce continued as the two scoundrels had planned. Once they had
taken the measurements, they began cutting the air with scissors while
sewing with their needles in and out of the invisible cloth.
“Your Majesty, you will have to take off your clothes to try on your new
ones.” The professors draped the new clothes on him and held up a large
mirror. The Emperor was embarrassed, but since no one else seemed to be
embarrassed he felt relieved and reassured.
“Yes, this is a beautiful outfit and it looks very good on me,” the
Emperor said — trying to look comfortable but not knowing if he was
wearing a suit, a robe, a ceremonial gown, or a military uniform. (It never
entered his mind that his new outfit might consist of less than a jock strap.)
“You have done a very fine job.”
“Your Majesty,” the prime minister said, “the people have found out
about this extraordinary cloth and they are anxious to see you in your new
outfit.” (The prime minister also wasn’t sure what kind of garment it was
that he wasn’t seeing.)
The Emperor was reluctant to show himself naked before his subjects,
but he quickly relinquished his fears. After all, nobody would see him that
way except the ignorant and the incompetent.
“Okay,” he said. “I shall grant the people this boon.” He summoned his
carriage and the ceremonial parade was formed. A group of dignitaries
walked at the very front of the procession and anxiously scrutinized the
faces of the people in the street. Everyone had gathered in the main square,
pushing and shoving to get a better look at the clothing. Applause
welcomed the royal procession. Everybody strained to learn how stupid or
incompetent their neighbors were. As the Emperor passed, a murmur rose
from the crowd.
Everyone exclaimed, loud enough for the others to hear, “Look at the
Emperor’s new clothes. How beautiful! What a magnificent train!”
“And the colors!” some exclaimed. “The colors of that fantastic fabric! I
have never seen anything like it in all my life!” They all tried to conceal
their disappointment at not being able to see the clothes. Since none of them
were willing to admit their own stupidity and incompetence, they all
performed exactly as the two scoundrels had predicted.
A child, however, a little boy who had no important job to retain and
could only see what his eyes could actually detect, approached the carriage.
“The Emperor has no clothes on him,” he exclaimed loudly.
“Foolish child!” his father scolded him. “Don’t talk so stupidly!” He
grabbed the boy and started to take him away.
Before he could escape with his son, however, the sartoriologer shouted
at the child. “What do you mean, he has no clothes on?”
“What evidence do you have for so ridiculous a claim?” demanded the
haberdasheristicist.”
“If he had no clothes on,” sneered the sartoriologer, pointing at the slope-
shouldered Emperor, “would he hold his shoulders like that? Can’t you see
that if he didn’t have the weight of gold cloth pulling them down, he would
be carrying his shoulders much higher up?”
The haberdasheristicist, pointing to the Emperor who could scarcely
move due to embarrassment and fear, advanced another powerful argument
to prove the existence of the exquisite apparel. “If he didn’t have any
clothing on,” he asked, flailing his own arms around, “wouldn’t he be able
to move his arms about with greater ease?”
Affecting the tone of an oh-so-wise authority and with disdain so acrid
his breath nearly corroded the gold plating off the royal crown, the
sartoriologer wagged his finger around as though it were circling about the
imperial body and inquired rhetorically, “Wouldn’t the air circulate around
him with less turbulence if in fact he had no clothes on?” The scoundrel
congratulated himself on the ingeniousness of the argument he had just
concocted.
“Indeed it would, Professor,” the haberdashersticist agreed, delighted by
the mental agility of his partner in crime. Glaring down, then, at the boy he
lectured him in a voice as condescending as a waterfall.
“Tell me,” he sniffed and pointed toward the Emperor’s fingertips.
Bending over and pretending to scrutinize the blue-from-the-cold hands of
the Emperor — it was a rather chilly day for one to be parading around
wearing such rarified textiles — he demanded, “Tell me, then — if you are
so smart and qualified to pass judgment in matters outside your area of
expertise — why would the Emperor’s fingernails show such tiny marks of
abrasion along their margins unless in fact he had been scratching them on
the surface of these gorgeous buttons on this beautiful coat?”
“But I can’t SEE any clothes on him,” replied the child in bewilderment.
“And just who are YOU,” the sartoriologer hissed, “to make such a silly
claim when real experts such as I and my colleague — both of us Harvard
professors who were educated and trained for years in the hyperfine arts of
sartoriology and haberdasheristics in the most prestigious clothification
centers in the world — can see with perfect clarity that these clothes exist?”
“But he’s naked as a jay-bird,” whimpered the intimidated child.
“You better give this boy a good thrashing,” the clothificators in unison
ordered the father of the boy. “Teach him to have more respect for the
knowledge and wisdom of his elders and not pretend to have knowledge in
fields outside his area of expertise,” the sartoriologer commanded as he
turned away from the boy and strode off toward the Emperor. The Emperor
was standing half-frozen and rigid on the deck of his carriage in the midst
of the crowd of subjects.
“Your Majesty,” he fawned as he relieved the page of his responsibility
to hold up the train of the imaginary cloak, “let me assist you.”
The Emperor by now had figured out that he wouldn’t be so cold if in
fact he actually was wearing clothing. He dared not, however, to admit his
error. He decided to continue the imperial procession to further the illusion
that anyone who couldn’t see his clothes was either stupid or incompetent.
When he got back to the palace, however, he took a long soak in a hot
bath. He never wore those fine regalia again — perhaps because he was
never able to find them.
[1]
R. Joseph Hoffmann, Marcion: On the Restitution of
Christianity: An Essay on the Development of Radical Paulinist Theology in
the Second Century. AAR Academy Series 46 [Chico: Scholars Press, 1984:
39–44].
[2]
Erich von Daniken, Chariots of the Gods? Unsolved Mysteries of
the Past. Trans. Michael Heron [NY: Bantam Books, 1971: 40–41].
[3]
Leon Festinger, A Theory of Cognitive Dissonance [Stanford:
Stanford University Press, 1957].
[4]
Willliam Wrede, The Messianic Secret in Mark’s Gospel. Trans.
J.C.G. Greig. Library of Theological Translations [Altrincham: James
Clarke, 1971].
[5]
H.P. Lovecraft, Selected Letters. Vol. 4 [Sauk City: Arkham
House, 1976: 162].
[6]
Van A. Harvey, the Historian and the Believer: An Essay in the
Morality of Historical Knowledge and Christian Belief [NY: Macmillan,
1969: 54].
[7]
James Barr, Fundamentalism [Philadelphia: Westminster Press,
1978: 128–129].
[8]
Werner Kramer, Christ, Lord, Son of God. Trans. Brian Hardy.
Studies in Biblical Theology no. 50 [Naperville: Alec R. Allenson, 1966:
42–44].
[9]
Walter Bauer, Orthodoxy and Heresy in Earliest Christianity. Ed.
Robert Kraft and Kendrick Grobel. Trans. Philadelphia Seminar on
Christian Origins [Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1971].
[10]
James M. Robinson and Helmut Koester, Trajectories through
Early Christianity [Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1971].
[11]
Burton L. Mack, A Myth of Innocence: Mark and Christian
Origins [Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1988].
[12]
Thomas S. Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions
[Chicago: University Press, 1962].
[13]
Bart D. Ehrman, Did Jesus Exist? The Historical Argument for
Jesus of Nazareth [New York: HarperOne, 2012].
[14]
Peter L. Berger and Thomas Luckmann, The Social
Construction of Reality: A Treatise in the Sociology of Knowledge [Garden
City: Doubleday Anchor Books, 1967: 87].
[15]
Thomas S. Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions
[Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1962].
[16]
Earl Richard, Acts 6:1–8:4: The Author’s Method of
Composition. Society of Biblical Literature Dissertation Series 41
[Missoula: Scholars Press, 1978].
[17]
He alleges that Christ-Myth Theorists engage in the ad hoc
strategy of what some call “surgical exegesis” or what Walter Kaufmann
called “gerrymandering the Bible” [The Faith of a Heretic. Garden City:
Doubleday Anchor Books, 1963: 109], writing off New Testament texts
inconvenient for one’s hypothesis as later interpolations. I would refer him
to William O. Walker, Jr., Interpolations in the Pauline Letters. Journal for
the Study of the New Testament Supplement Series 13 [London: Sheffield
Academic Press, 2001: 18–19] and the material cited there in footnote 54,
for 1 Cor. 11:23–26 as an interpolation. Walker is no Christ-Myth kook. Nor
was the late Winsome Munro who offers (as Walker does) definite criteria
for spotting interpolations from the early period in her Authority in Paul
and Peter: The Identification of a Pastoral Stratum in the Pauline Corpus
and 1 Peter. Society for New Testament Studies Monograph Series 45
[New York: Cambridge University Press, 1983].
What is darn near comical is that it is the author of The Orthodox
Corruption of Scripture: The Effect of Early Christological Controversies
on the Text of the New Testament [New York: Oxford University Press,
1993] who is so zealous for the inviolability of today’s ‘received text.’ In
that great book Ehrman demonstrates the frequent tampering with the New
Testament texts by ancient Christian apologists who sought thereby to
safeguard the scriptures against the use of them by heretics. Surely the
further back we go, the more likely it is that more such scribal funny
business occurred, in the early period before the texts had donned the halo
of inspired scripture. When Ehrman ought to be agnostic vis-à-vis possible
interpolations, he instead embraces fideism: let’s just assume, even insist,
that no such tampering occurred. If we don’t, it will be much harder to
dogmatize based on uncertain evidence. That is, after all, the duty of a
paradigm policeman.
[18]
Bart D. Ehrman, Forged: Writing in the Name of God — Why
the Bible’s Authors Are Not Who We Think They Are [New York: Harper
Collins, 2011].
[19]
David Friedrich Strauss, The Life of Jesus Critically Examined.
Trans. George Eliot (Mary Ann Evans). Lives of Jesus Series [Philadelphia:
Fortress Press, 1972: 55].
[20]
You can’t beat the discussion of these criteria by Norman
Perrin in his Rediscovering the Teaching of Jesus [New York: Harper &
Row, 1976: 39–47].
[21]
Bart D. Ehrman, Lost Christianities: The Battles for Scripture
and the Faiths We Never Knew [New York: Oxford University Press, 2003].
[22]
Walter Bauer, Orthodoxy and Heresy in Earliest Christianity,
translated from 2nd German edition [Mifflintown, PA: Sigler Press, 1996].
[23]
T.W. Manson, The Servant Messiah: A Study of the Public
Ministry of Jesus [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1953: 18–19].
[24]
Hermann Gunkel, Genesis. Trans. Mark E. Biddle. Mercer
Library of Biblical Studies [Macon: Mercer University Press, 1997: xviii–
xix].
[25]
Tryggve N.D. Mettinger, The Riddle of Resurrection: “Dying
and Rising Gods” in the Ancient Near East. Coniectanea Biblica Old
Testament Series 50 [Stockholm: Almqvist & Wiksell International, 2001].
[26]
Smith seems to think all the relevant myths must exactly
match, and he dismisses them because they don’t, whereas the point is to
formulate an ideal type of the dying and rising god myth by distilling the
common fabula shared by the various myths and then using the result as a
yardstick with which to measure and explain each individual myth’s
distinctions. He claims there is no solid evidence of pre-Christian
resurrected saviors, whereas in fact there is plenty, from the Ras Shamra
texts featuring Baal, to the Pyramid texts featuring Osiris, to shards
depicting the risen Attis. Ehrman denies Osiris was said to have risen in a
physical body, but Plutarch, whom he selectively quotes, makes it clear he
did. Did pagans pinch the mytheme from Christians? That’s absurd: had
they known pagans copied the Jesus story, would early apologists have
claimed Satan had counterfeited Jesus’ resurrection in advance by inspiring
the earlier myths of Adonis, Dionysus, Attis, and the rest?
[27]
Robert M. Price, Deconstructing Jesus [Amherst: Prometheus
Books, 2000: 88–92].
[28]
Robert M. Price, The Christ-Myth Theory and Its Problems
[Cranford, NJ: American Atheist Press, 2011: 44–46].
[29]
Stanley Fish, Is There a Text in this Class? The Authority of
Interpretive Communities [Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1980:
e.g., pp. 171–172].
[30]
Ibid.: 276.
[31]
Don Cupitt, The Leap of Reason. Studies in Philosophy and
Religion 4 [London: Sheldon Press, 1976].
[32]
Derrick Sherwin Bailey, Homosexuality and the Western
Christian Tradition [London: Longmans, Green and Co., 1955: Chapter I,
“Sodom and Gomorrah,” 1–28].
[33]
Richard C. Carrier, Proving History: Bayes’s Theorem and the
Quest for the Historical Jesus [Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 2012].
[34]
In the meantime a very brief précis of the case I shall make can
be viewed online: Richard Carrier, “So…if Jesus Didn’t Exist, Where Did
He Come from Then?” Madison Freethought Festival (28 April 2012) at
www.youtube.com/watch?v=XORm2QtR-os. You can also view a PDF of
the accompanying slideshow (lacking the animations) at
www.richardcarrier.info/Historicity_of_Jesus.pdf.
[35]
Maurice Casey is also due to publish his own defense of
historicity, as Jesus: Evidence and Argument or Mythicist Myths?, but that
has not yet come into print. That leaves Ehrman’s book as, at present, the
only book-length defense of historicity by a qualified expert in over fifty
years.
[36]
Bart Ehrman, “Did Jesus Exist?” The Huffington Post [20
March 2012] at www.huffingtonpost.com/bart-d-ehrman/did-jesus-
exist_b_1349544.html. He made several irresponsibly inaccurate,
fallacious, or misleading statements in that article that will greatly
misinform any lay reader, which I documented in my critique (see
following note), but I will not revisit those errors in the present chapter.
Here I will focus solely on his book.
[37]
For my latest recap of this exchange see: Richard Carrier,
“Ehrman on Historicity Recap,” Richard Carrier Blogs [24 July 2012] at
freethoughtblogs.com/carrier/archives/1794, which contains a table of links
to all of my more detailed articles on this matter, as well as a complete
summary of what I argued, and what (if anything) Ehrman said in reply.
[38]
The best works to start with are Earl Doherty, The Jesus Puzzle
[Canadian Humanist 1999] and Jesus: Neither God Nor Man [Age of
Reason 2009] and Robert Price, The Christ-Myth Theory and Its Problems
[American Atheist Press 2011] and The Incredible Shrinking Son of Man
[Prometheus 2003]. My own work On the Historicity of Jesus Christ will
adapt and reinforce the best features of these.
[39]
D.M. Murdock, “The Phallic Savior of the World Hidden in the
Vatican,” Freethought Nation [22 March 2012] at
www.freethoughtnation.com/contributing-writers/63-acharya-s/669-the-
phallic-savior-of-the-world-hidden-in-the-vatican.html.
[40]
Lorrayne Baird, “Priapus Gallinaceus: The Role of the Cock in
Fertility and Eroticism in Classical Antiquity and the Middle Ages,” Studies
in Iconography 7–8 [1981–82: 81–112].
[41]
In Bart Ehrman, “Acharya S, Richard Carrier, and a Cocky
Peter (Or: “A Cock and Bull Story”),” Christianity in Antiquity (CIA): The
Bart Ehrman Blog [22 April 2012), at ehrmanblog.org/acharya-s-richard-
carrier-and-a-cocky-peter-or-a-cock-and-bull-story.
[42]
Ehrman, Did Jesus Exist? 24.
[43]
Comment of 24 April 2012 (2:22pm) by moderator
GodAlmighty at freethoughtnation.com/forums/viewtopic.php?
p=25634#p25634.
[44]
Comment of 22 April 2012 (8:11pm) by KimRottman at
www.patheos.com/blogs/camelswithhammers/2012/04/ehrman-evades-
carriers-criticisms/#comment-8150.
[45]
“Bart Ehrman on Jesus’ Existence, Apocalypticism & Holy
Week,” Homebrewed Christianity [3 April 2012], timestamp 20:30-21:10,
at homebrewedchristianity.com/2012/04/03/bart-ehrman-on-jesus-
existence-apocalypticism-holy-week. Note that I put the word “statue” in
partial brackets because he speaks so quickly he didn’t complete the word
but started saying what is obviously the word “statue”; he doesn’t pause to
correct himself, though, he just quickly segues to the next phrase in
animated conversation.
[46]
Ehrman, Did Jesus Exist? 51–52.
[47]
On their possible connection (which I do believe scholars have
correctly inferred), see my discussion in Richard Carrier, Not the Impossible
Faith: Why Christianity Didn’t Need a Miracle to Succeed [Lulu 2009:
418–22].
[48]
Ehrman, Did Jesus Exist? 29.
[49]
Carrier, Not the Impossible Faith 182–87.
[50]
J.R. Alexander, “Graeco-Roman Papyrus Documents from
Egypt,” Athena Review 2.2 [1999] at www.athenapub.com/egypap1.htm.
[51]
Ehrman, Did Jesus Exist? 44.
[52]
See my discussion of the corresponding logic of evidence in
regard to the trial records under Pontius Pilate in Carrier, Proving History
220–24.
[53]
Bart Ehrman, “Fuller Reply to Richard Carrier,” Christianity in
Antiquity (CIA): The Bart Ehrman Blog [25 April 2012], at
ehrmanblog.org/fuller-reply-to-richard-carrier.
[54]
Ehrman, Did Jesus Exist?, 29. If instead Ehrman means arrest
warrants, we have a 3rd century arrest warrant for a Christian, for example
(P. Oxy. 3035, described at
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Papyrus_Oxyrhynchus_3035), demonstrating these
kinds of records existed — in fact such arrest warrants for all crimes were
commonplace: see Christopher Fuhrmann, Policing the Roman Empire:
Soldiers, Administration, and Public Order [Oxford University Press 2012:
79–81]. If instead Ehrman means merely death certificates, we know those
existed, too, even indeed coroner’s pronouncements of cause of death (e.g.
P. Oxy. 3926; cf. Darrel Amundsen, “The Forensic Role of Physicians in
Ptolemaic and Roman Egypt,” Bulletin of the History of Medicine 52.3 [Fall
1978: 336–53] and “The Forensic Role of Physicians in Roman Law,”
Bulletin of the History of Medicine 53.1 [Spring 1979: 39–56]). For more
mundane death certificates (necessary for purposes of tax and contract law),
see discussion in Rafael Taubenschlag, The Law of Greco-Roman Egypt in
the Light of the Papyri, 332 B.C.–640 A.D. Volume 1[New York: Herald
Square Press, 1944: 64–65].
[55]
For example, see the brief selection discussed in Barry
Baldwin, “Crime and Criminals in Graeco-Roman Egypt,” Aegyptus 43.3/4
[December 1963: 256–63].
[56]
W. W. Buckland, A Text-Book of Roman Law from Augustus to
Justinian [Cambridge University Press 1921: 19]. The fact is evident
throughout surviving treatises on Roman law, from the Institutes of Gaius to
the Digest of Justinian, which frequently draw on these legal records: see,
for example, Bruce Frier, A Casebook on the Roman Law of Delict
[Scholars Press 1989] and J.J. Aubert, “A Double Standard in Roman
Criminal Law? The Death Penalty and Social Structure in Late Republican
and Early Imperial Rome,” in Speculum Iuris: Roman Law as a Reflection
of Social and Economic Life in Antiquity, edited by Jean-Jacques Aubert
and Boudewijn Sirks [University of Michigan Press 2002: 94–133].
[57]
See Richard Carrier, “An Ancient Roman Tax Receipt (P.
Columbia 408)” (1999) at http://richardcarrier.info/papyrus.
[58]
See the examples published in P. Euphrates, P. Hever and P.
Yadin. On which see Hannah Cotton, Walter Cockle and Fergus Millar,
“The Papyrology of the Roman Near East: A Survey,” Journal of Roman
Studies 95 [1995: 214–35].
[59]
Ehrman, Did Jesus Exist? 26.
[60]
Plutarch, On Isis and Osiris 35.364f, 65.377b, and 19.358b
(see also Plutarch, On the E at Delphi 9.389a). See my discussion of the
vocabulary in Richard Carrier, “The Spiritual Body of Christ and the
Legend of the Empty Tomb,” The Empty Tomb: Jesus Beyond the Grave,
edited by Robert Price and Jeffery Lowder [Prometheus 2005: 105–232; see
also 154–55].
[61]
Ehrman, Did Jesus Exist? 228.
[62]
See my critical review of Earl Doherty’s book The Jesus Puzzle
in Richard Carrier, “Did Jesus Exist? Earl Doherty and the Argument to
Ahistoricity,” The Secular Web [2002] at
www.infidels.org/library/modern/richard_carrier/jesuspuzzle.html.
[63]
See my thorough survey of the evidence in Carrier, “Spiritual
Body.”
[64]
S.G.F. Brandon, The Saviour God: Comparative Studies in the
Concept of Salvation [Greenwood 1963: 17–36; and John Griffiths, The
Origins of Osiris and His Cult, 2nd ed. [Brill 1980].
[65]
Translations from Samuel Mercer, The Pyramid Texts
[Longmans, Green & Co. 1952].
[66]
Plutarch, On the E at Delphi 9.388f–389a.
[67]
See Carrier, Not the Impossible Faith 17–20 and 85–128.
[68]
Richard C. Miller, “Mark’s Empty Tomb and Other Translation
Fables in Classical Antiquity,” Journal of Biblical Literature 129.4 [2010:
759–76].
[69]
Tryggve Mettinger in The Riddle of Resurrection: “Dying and
Rising Gods” in the Ancient Near East [Almqvist & Wiksell International
2001] and “The Dying and Rising God: The Peregrinations of a Mytheme,”
in W.H. van Soldt, ed., Ethnicity in Ancient Mesopotamia [Nederlands
Instituut voor het Nabije Oosten 2005: 198–210]. See also M.S. Smith, The
Ugaritic Baal Cycle, vol. 1 [Brill 1994] and M.S. Smith and W. Pitard, The
Ugaritic Baal Cycle, vol. 2 [Brill 2009]; and Tikva Frymer-Kensky, “The
Tribulations of Marduk: The So-Called ‘Marduk Ordeal Text’,” Journal of
the American Oriental Society 103, no. 1 [January–March 1983: 131–41],
in light of the further analysis and evidence in Mettinger.
[70]
I discuss the evidence in Carrier, “Spiritual Body,” which can
be read with its accompanying FAQ at
www.richardcarrier.info/SpiritualFAQ.html (which also cites the leading
scholars in agreement).
[71]
For example: Lucian, Hermotimus 7; similarly for Romulus:
Plutarch, Romulus 28.6. See Carrier, “Spiritual Body” 137.
[72]
Documented in Carrier, “Spiritual Body” 109–13, 136–37.
[73]
See Carrier, Not the Impossible Faith 90–99.
[74]
Ehrman, Did Jesus Exist? 28.
[75]
See Carrier, Not the Impossible Faith 376.
[76]
See Brook Pearson, Corresponding Sense: Paul, Dialectic, and
Gadamer [Brill 2001: 206–18, 312–29].
[77]
Plato, Republic 364e–365a; inscriptions are discussed in Hans
Conzelmann, 1 Corinthians [Fortress 1975: 275–76, n. 116].
[78]
Tertullian, On Baptism 5; and On the Prescription against
Heretics 40.
[79]
Ehrman, Did Jesus Exist? 26.
[80]
Ehrman, Did Jesus Exist? 247–51.
[81]
In fact one of the “sources” Ehrman must mean is the Talmud,
as he includes it in his own discussion of “sources” (ibid. 66–68), yet the
Talmud only knows of a Jesus who lived and died in the 70s BCE. The
other source is Epiphanius, Panarion 29.3, where a Christian sect is
discussed who taught the same. Notably that sect was a Torah-observant
sect, still using the movement’s original name, located in the Middle East.
[82]
Ehrman, Did Jesus Exist? 55.
[83]
The most important of which are C. Saumagne, “Tacite et saint
Paul,” Revue Historique 232 [1964: 67–110] and Jean Rougé, “L’incendie
de Rome en 64 et l’incendie de Nicomédia en 303,” Mélanges d’histoire
ancienne offerts à William Seston [E. de Boccard 1974: 433–41]. For these
and other examples see Herbert Benario, “Recent Work on Tacitus (1964–
1968),” The Classical World 63.8 [April 1970: 253–66; see 264–65] and
“Recent Work on Tacitus (1974–1983),” The Classical World 80.2 [Nov.–
Dec. 1986: 73–147; see 139]. The matter is also discussed in the leading
reference work on the evidence for Jesus: Robert Van Voorst, Jesus Outside
the New Testament [William B. Eerdmans 2000: 43–44].
[84]
In fact, despite my long-standing certainty that this reference
cannot have been interpolated, upon further investigation I have found
Rougé’s argument rather convincing, and will be publishing a paper
updating his case: Richard Carrier, “The Prospect of a Christian
Interpolation in Tacitus, Annals 15.44” (in progress). Note, however, that
the Jesus myth theory in no way requires this passage to be inauthentic. It
has no historical value even if genuine, because it would simply be
repeating what early second century Christians were by then saying.
[85]
Compare Ehrman, Did Jesus Exist? pages 187 and 293.
[86]
Ehrman, Did Jesus Exist? 187.
[87]
Ehrman, Did Jesus Exist? 166.
[88]
I have surveyed the evidence and arguments in Richard Carrier,
“The Dying Messiah Redux,” Richard Carrier Blogs [14 June 2012] at
www.freethoughtblogs.com/carrier/archives/1440. Its content will soon be
updated and published as “Did Any Pre-Christian Jews Expect a Dying-
and-Rising Messiah?”
[89]
See b.Sanhedrin 98b and b.Sukkah 52a–b.
[90]
On the great number of Jewish sects and our ignorance of their
specific beliefs see Carrier, “Spiritual Body” 107–13; on the whole problem
of our pervasive ignorance on questions like this: Carrier, Proving History
129–34.
[91]
Ehrman, Did Jesus Exist? 193.
[92]
Ehrman, Did Jesus Exist? 142–44, 156–70. The second of
Ehrman’s two pillars is the evidence for Jesus having a brother [144–56],
which is really the only evidence for historicity there is. It deserves
reasonable debate. But alas, Ehrman doesn’t provide one, his treatment
succumbing to the kinds of errors I document here in other cases. I will treat
the subject better in my forthcoming book.
[93]
See Mark Goodacre, The Case against Q: Studies in Markan
Priority and Synoptic Problem [Trinity Press International 2002], with
Mark Goodacre, The Synoptic Problem: A Way Through the Maze [Sheffield
Academic Press 2001], and his supplementary website
http://www.markgoodacre.org/Q, as well as Mark Goodacre and Nicholas
Perrin, ed., Questioning Q: A Multidimensional Critique [InterVarsity Press
2004]. Dennis MacDonald has produced the only viable challenge I know,
in Two Shipwrecked Gospels: The Logoi of Jesus and Papias’s Exposition of
Logia about the Lord [Society of Biblical Literature 2012]. MacDonald’s
argument actually confirms Luke’s use and redaction of Matthew, but
argues that there was a previous lost gospel, written in Greek, employed by
all three Synoptic Gospels, which lacked nativity, betrayal, passion, and
empty tomb narratives, and was a rhetorical rewrite of Deuteronomy,
casting Jesus in the role of Moses.
[94]
Ehrman, Did Jesus Exist? 88.
[95]
Which could also explain the biblical citations in the Gospels
to verses that we can’t find in our Bible, like Matthew’s Nazarene prophecy
(in Matthew 2:23); because the Aramaic targumim often altered the text,
and we don’t have most of the targumim that were then in use.
[96]
See my discussion of the evidence and the scholarship in
Carrier, Proving History 131–33.
[97]
Ehrman, Did Jesus Exist?, p. 87.
[98]
See Randel Helms, Gospel Fictions [Prometheus 1988: 65–67].
[99]
See bibliography in Richard Carrier, “Why the Resurrection is
Unbelievable,” The Christian Delusion, edited by John Loftus [Prometheus
2010: 312, n. 11].
[100]
Philip J. Klass, The Real Roswell Crashed Saucer Coverup
[Prometheus, 1997] and Karl T. Pflock, Roswell: Inconvenient Facts and
the Will to Believe [Prometheus, 2001].
[101]
Still the best and most comprehensive warning on this point is
David Hackett Fischer, Historians’ Fallacies: Toward a Logic of Historical
Thought [Harper & Row 1970]. Answering his concluding call, I
demonstrate the universal logic of all historical methods in Carrier, Proving
History. But an invaluable resource is Bo Bennett’s Logically Fallacious
[eBookIt 2012], a handy collection, and easy lay explanation, of three
hundred fallacies.
[102]
See Mary Lefkowitz, The Lives of the Greek Poets [Johns
Hopkins University 1981] and “Biographical Mythology,” in Ueli Dill, ed.,
Antike Mythen [de Gruyter 2009: 516–31]; Janet Fairweather, “Fiction in
the Biographies of Ancient Writers,” Ancient Society 5 [1974: 231–75] and
“Traditional Narrative, Inference, and Truth in the Lives of the Greek
Poets,” Papers of the Liverpool Latin Seminar 4 [1983: 315–69]; Barbara
Graziosi, Inventing Homer [Cambridge University 2002]; and Ava
Chitwood, Death by Philosophy: The Biographical Tradition in the Life and
Death of the Archaic Philosophers Empedocles, Heraclitus, and
Democritus [University of Michigan 2004].
[103]
See the studies of Raffaella Cribiore, Gymnastics of the Mind:
Greek Education in Hellenistic and Roman Egypt [Princeton University
Press 2001]; David Gowler, “The Chreia,” The Historical Jesus in Context,
edited by Amy-Jill Levine, Dale Allison, and John Dominic Crossan
[Princeton University Press 2006: 132–48]; and Thomas Brodie, The
Birthing of the New Testament: The Intertextual Development of the New
Testament Writings [Sheffield Phoenix Press, 2004: 2–81]. Also of value is
the recent contribution of John Dominic Crossan, The Power of Parable:
How Fiction by Jesus Became Fiction about Jesus [HarperOne 2012].
[104]
A.J. Droge, “Jesus and Ned Lud[d]: What’s in a Name?”
CAESAR: A Journal for the Critical Study of Religion and Human Values
3.1 [2009: 23–25]; Kurt Noll, “Investigating Earliest Christianity without
Jesus,” “Is this not the Carpenter?” The Question of the Historicity of the
Figure of Jesus, edited by Thomas Thompson and Thomas Verenna
[Equinox 2012: 233–66]; Thomas Thompson, The Messiah Myth: The Near
Eastern Roots of Jesus and David [Basic 2005] and “Introduction,” “Is this
not the Carpenter?” 1–26.
[105]
Thomas Brodie, Beyond the Quest for the Historical Jesus
[Sheffield-Phoenix 201]; Robert Price, The Christ-Myth Theory and Its
Problems [American Atheist Press 2011].
[106]
Just read the apt chiding Philip Davies, professor of biblical
studies for the University of Sheffield (now emeritus), gives Ehrman and
others who attempt the intimidation of scholars entertaining the Jesus myth
theory, in “Did Jesus Exist?” The Bible and Interpretation [August 2012] at
www.bibleinterp.com/opeds/dav368029.shtml. Davies is convinced of
historicity but admits there are reasonable doubts, and says “a recognition
that [Jesus’] existence is not entirely certain would nudge Jesus scholarship
towards academic respectability.” This is a significant development against
Ehrman.
[107]
Baird, Lorrayne Y. “Priapus Gallinaceus: The Role of the
Cock in Fertility and Eroticism in Classical Antiquity and the Middle
Ages.” Studies in Iconography, 7–8 (1981–82): 81–111.
[108]
Bart D. Ehrman, Did Jesus Exist? The Historical Argument
for Jesus of Nazareth [New York: HarperOne, 2012]. Hereafter, DJE?
[109]
“I sometimes get asked,” Ehrman breezily explains, “usually
by supporters, why I do not make a practice of responding to scholars and
bloggers who criticize my work and attack me personally. It’s a good
question, and I have several answers. For one thing, there are only so many
hours in the day. If I responded to all the crazy things people say, I would
have no time for my other work, let alone my life. Anyone should be able to
see whether a point of view is plausible or absurd, whether a historical
claim has merit or is pure fantasy driven by an idealogical or theological
desire for a certain set of answers to be right” [DJE? 142].
We see several defense mechanisms here at play. First of all, by labeling
even scholars and bloggers who criticize him as “crazy,” he relieves himself
of responsibility to recheck his assumptions and facts. Secondly, readers can
only use their intelligence to evaluate his “point of view” or “historical
claim” if they already have enough background information to be able to
appraise the evidence he uses to support his claims. Will even the above-
average reader be able to tell that Ehrman is wrong when he claims that
Josephus wrote about “Jesus of Nazareth”? Once again, relying upon
presumed readers’ intelligence and knowledge absolves him from the
responsibility of perpetually reexamining and reevaluating his facts and
assumptions.
[110]
The Jesus the Jews Never Knew: Sepher Toldoth Yeshu and the
Quest of the Historical Jesus in Jewish Sources [Cranford, NJ: American
Atheist Press, 2003].
[111]
Cranford, NJ: American Atheist Press, 2011.
[112]
For legal and/or personal reasons involving third parties or
institutions, slight redaction of several of the following messages has been
necessary.
[113]
I thank Professor Ehrman for graciously having granted me
permission to reprint here his messages, provided only that I “acknowledge
that they were emails, not written intended for publication.”
[114]
Ehrman devotes pages 66–68 to discussion of “Rabbinic
Sources” relating to a historical Jesus. His endnote 24 on page 351 explains
that “Here I am simply summarizing my discussion in Jesus: Apocalyptic
Prophet of the New Millennium… For fuller discussion, see the classic
studies of R. Travers Herford, Christianity in Talmud and Midrash (New
York: Ktav, 1903), and Morris Goldstein, Jesus in the Jewish Tradition
(New York: Macmillan, 1950).”
Because Ehrman probably had not read my book, he did not realize that
a large part of it was devoted to an exhaustive critique of the entirety of
Herford’s book! It was absolutely necessary for Ehrman to provide an
explanation of how it could have been possible for the founders of the
rabbinic tradition—working in Tiberias and other places in the Galilee—not
to have known anything at all about the religious activist who had been
stirring up trouble there just a few decades before them. He needed to
explain why ‘Nazareth’ itself is unknown in the Mishnah and two Talmuds.
If he had read my book, why did he not deal with my arguments?
[115]
It is interesting to note that Ehrman says the same thing in
DJE? page 212. Criticizing my hypothesis that astrologers (the Magi) as the
vernal equinox was moving into Pisces “left their cult centers in Phrygia
and Cilicia… to go to Palestine to see if they could locate not just the King
of the Jews but the new Time Lord,” he opines that “Zindler says this in all
sincerity, and so far as I can tell, he really believes it. What evidence does
he give for his claim that the Mithraists moved their religion [sic!] to
Palestine to help them find the king of the Jews? None at all. And so we
might ask: what evidence could he have cited, had he wanted to do so? It’s
the same answer. There is no evidence. This is made up.” Why did Ehrman
think I was suggesting that the Magi would have moved their religious
headquarters, when it was clear that an information-gathering expedition
would have been meant? Ehrman offers no evidence to support his claim
that I could not possibly have had evidence to support my hypothesis or the
implied claim that I did not want to cite evidence for my hypothesis. Why
did he not ask me about this as he later was to do concerning other Mithraic
issues?
[116]
It is interesting that that Ehrman repeats this information in
his criticism of René Salm on page 193: “Like so many mythicists before
him, Salm emphasizes what scholars have long known: Nazareth is never
mentioned in the Hebrew Bible, in the writings of Josephus [even though on
page 58 he falsely asserts that Jesus of Nazareth is mentioned in Josephus!]
or in the Talmud. It first shows up in the Gospels.” By hohummification of
Salms’ argument — “what scholars have long known” — Ehrman neatly
obscures the fact that scholars have never been able to provide a believable
explanation for what they “have long known”!
[117]
In DJE?, on page 191, Ehrman criticizes my argument that the
sole mention of ‘Nazareth’ in Mark’s gospel [Mark 1:9] is an interpolation.
“Frank Zindler, for example, in a cleverly titled essay, “Where Jesus Never
Walked,” tries to deconstruct on a fairly simple level the geographical
places associated with Jesus, especially Nazareth. He claims that Mark’s
Gospel never states that Jesus came from Nazareth. This flies in the face, of
course of Mark 1:9, which indicates that this is precisely where Jesus came
from (“Jesus came from Nazareth in Galilee”), but Zindler maintains that
that verse was not originally part of Mark; it was inserted by a later scribe.
Here again we see history being done according to convenience. If a text
says precisely what you think it could not have said, then all you need to do
is claim that originally it must have said something else.9”
Had Ehrman forgotten the evidence I cited back on October 14, 2010?
Not at all! In footnote 9 [page 356] he completely reverses his charge and
lightly comments, “I do not mean to say that Zindler does not cite evidence
for his view. [Although in his main text that is exactly the implication.] He
claims that the name Jesus in Mark 1:9 does not have the definite article,
unlike the other eighty places it occurs in Mark, and therefore the verse
does not appear to be written in Markan style. In response, I should say that
(a) there are two other places in Mark where the name Jesus does not have
the article; …”
This gives one the impression that Ehrman has researched the Greek text
better than I did. But in my letter of October 14, I clearly say ‘Jesus’ is
inarticulate unlike all other occurrences in Mark except for vocatives, etc.
Actually, there are more than two other occasions of ‘anarthrous’ Jesus, as I
discuss in my chapter “Mark’s ‘Jesus from Nazareth of the Galilee’.” In all
of those other cases, however, ‘Jesus’ could not carry the definite article for
grammatical reasons. While the changing principles of using the Greek
definite article are quite complicated, it is interesting that Mark’s use of “the
Jesus” where the other gospels have simply “Jesus” gives the overall
impression that in Mark Jesus is still a title—‘the Savior’—but has become
a personal name in the other, later gospels.
According to Richard Carrier [Proving History: Bayes’s Theorem and the
Quest for the Historical Jesus, 2012: 142ff], “Eric Laupot makes a plausible
case that the term was originally derived from Isaiah 11:1 as the name of
the Christian movement (as followers of a prophesied Davidic messiah),
which was retroactively made into Jesus’ hometown (either allusively or in
error). J.S. Kennard makes just as plausible a case that it was a cultic title
derived from the nazirites (“the separated” or “the consecrated”) described
in Numbers 6 (and the Mishnah tractate Nazir).” It is regrettable that
Ehrman is not likely to read Carrier’s book, which seeks to bring
mathematical rigor to the writing of history.
[118]
I freely confess that this was the ‘efficient cause’ of my
immediate investigation into Mythicist claims. However, I am quite sure I
would have done that even if the claim had come from someone less
famous than Madalyn Murray O’Hair. I have always tried to understand
why people believe crazy things—things that occasionally turn out not to be
crazy at all. In decades of debating creationists, again and again I have been
alerted to important problems in science that otherwise would have escaped
my notice. Although the creationists in every case so far have
misunderstood — or misrepresented — the evidence surrounding any given
problem, it has always been well worth my while to get to the bottom of it
—not only for the joy of being able publicly to explain a particular
creationist’s error, but for the satisfaction of gaining deeper understanding
of some point of science of which I hitherto had been ignorant. This would
not seem to be a habit shared with Ehrman.
[119]
Arguably, this is the most important argument not dealt with
in DJE? Historicists seem never even to consider the possibility that
Christianity had no discrete beginning in either space or time. It could not
possibly have developed the way the ‘heathen’ religions did! Detailed
comparison of the braid-vs-tree models of Christian origins was urgently
needed in DJE? In that book, Ehrman does not even hint that his most
fundamental assumption concerning Christian origins had been challenged
by me two years before publication of DJE? Was the braid model of
Christian origins cognitively too dissonant for him to remember over so
long a time? Was it perhaps too dissonant even to gain his full, conscious
attention when he read my e-mail?
[120]
It is a shock to discover that despite this challenge, the word
‘Docetism’ or its derivatives is not to be found in DJE? All the more is it
shocking to see an authority on the earliest Christian heresiologists evading
an argument so closely pertaining to his research specialty.
[121]
During more than two years of dialogue, Ehrman never
explained what “these arguments” were, and it was not until I read DJE?
that I discovered that almost entirely he was relying on the arguments used
by fundamentalist apologists, not real scholars, to support his historicity
claims. Why didn’t he reveal his arguments to me? Did he understand at
some subconscious level that an argument based on something silly such as
the ‘criterion of embarrassment’ could easily be demolished, leaving him
with nothing but his much-used appeal to authority? It is almost comical
now to reread this e-mail denying that he is depending upon authority,
claiming that there are evidentiary grounds for his position, yet giving not
even a hint as to what they are. Moreover, I had already devoted hundreds
of pages to criticism of the traditional arguments, and Ehrman had
repeatedly been made aware of them.
I did not realize at the time the implication of his snide “I assume you
know the arguments, or at least I hope you do.” All the arguments were
dealt with in the books and articles I had given to him, so it is clear that he
never read them. Nevertheless, he assures me that “you are presuming too
much if you presume that I haven’t looked at your work”!
[122]
Despite my bragging at this point, it still came as a shock
when DJE? was published and I could see not only that I had researched
things more deeply than Ehrman but that all of the “amateurs” whom he
criticized were more deeply studied in Historicist arguments than he.
[123]
Despite my hyperbole here, if Ehrman had in fact read my
arguments against the Testimonium Flavianum (a passage in all extant
copies of Josephus’ Antiquities of the Jews mentioning Jesus) in my chapter
“Faking Flavius,” he could not have written his criticism of Earl Doherty
[pages 59–66 of DJE?] the way he did. He would have had to explain why
notice of the passage (as well as the death of James the Just or John the
Baptist) is missing in the table of contents of a pre-fifth-century Greek
manuscript of Josephus but a fifth- or sixth-century Latin version of the
table of contents adds “Concerning John the Baptist.” Moreover, he would
have had to account for the presence of the Testimonium in the Slavonic
version of The Jewish Wars! Oh, yes—he would also have had to explain
why Photius [c. 810–c. 893], Patriarch of Constantinople did not report in
his Bibliotheca any version of the passage in his review of Antiquities of the
Jews, even though he would have been highly motivated to exploit the
passage had it been in his copy of Josephus.
[124]
In retrospect, it appears that Ehrman would not read my books
and papers simply because I am not a doctoral graduate of a seminary or
similar program. Can there any good thing come out of Nazareth? Of course
not! Clearly, this hyperparochial attitude has protected him from coming in
contact with disturbing stimuli that might “awaken him from his dogmatic
slumber,” but it made the embarrassment of DJE? inevitable.
[125]
Docetism was an ancient form of Christianity that held that
Jesus or Christ only appeared (Greek dokein, ‘seem,’ ‘appear’) to have a
body of flesh and to suffer on the cross. The Docetists were the ‘antichrists’
of 2 John 1:7—“For many deceivers are entered into the world, who
confess not that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh. This is a deceiver and an
antichrist.”
[126]
This was the conference Ehrman mentions on pages 332–334
of DJE? At the last minute, I had to cancel my plans to attend the meeting
and so missed an opportunity to discuss historicity issues publicly with him.
[127]
It surely is significant that Ehrman makes no effort to counter
my claims here at any point in DJE? but rather repeatedly chides Mythicists
for not being properly educated and repeatedly citing the conclusions of the
“authorities” here discussed! Because he makes no attempt to deal with this
argument, the appeals to authority and ad hominem attacks of that book are
more glaringly apparent than would be the case if he had tried fairly to deal
with my argument here.
[128]
This was an early version of the chapter in the present book,
“Bart Ehrman and the Body of Jesus of Nazareth.” Surely, had Ehrman read
“this light-hearted essay,” he would have had to say something about how
the Docetists could have claimed that Jesus didn’t have a real body—merely
several decades after his supposed death!
[129]
It is amusing to note that in his scholarly works Ehrman has
often had to deal with references to Christian mysteries, but has never been
conscious of their significance. On page 267 of The Orthodox Corruption of
Scripture [New York: Oxford University Press, 1993], for example, he
discusses the Greek text of Colossians 2:2: “But it is difficult to know how
to construe the syntax of the phrase; does it mean the “mystery of the Christ
of God”? Or the “mystery of God, namely Christ”? Or “the mystery of the
God Christ” (i.e. of God, who is Christ)? … Some fourteen variations are
attested, virtually all of them eliminating the possibility of understanding
the verse as equating Christ with God …[the Father] himself. Thus we have
manuscripts that speak of “the mystery of God,” or “the mystery of Christ,”
or “the mystery of God which (neuter, referring to mystery) is Christ,” or
“the mystery of God the Father of Christ,” etc.” Do we not get a whiff of
something mysterious here? A mystery cult, perhaps?
[130]
Considering all the books and essays I had given him
displaying my technical competence in biblical studies, this insult was a
wake-up call to me, warning me that some powerful defense mechanisms
had suddenly been activated. By insulting me, he might get me to break off
the annoying conversation and he would not have to come up with evidence
for Jesus of Nazareth. Perhaps more importantly, he wouldn’t have to read
the materials I had given to him. Quite deliberately, I worked to keep the
dialogue going.
[131]
Shouldn’t Ehrman have kept this in mind when staking
everything on his ‘multiple-attestation’ arguments, with his fanciful appeals
to Mark, Q, M, L, Thomas, etc.? Shouldn’t he have explained why he
wasn’t including the Infancy Gospel of Thomas and other infancy gospels
in his arsenal of ‘evidence’? He published a whole book about such
scriptures!
[132]
Ehrman isn’t the first apologist or scholar to avoid dealing
with this embarrassing problem. In debates and publications I have been
pointing this out repeatedly for thirty years. In my experience, no one ever
has tried to explain why the earliest authors knew the least about Jesus of
Nazareth and the latest knew the most.
[133]
Could Ehrman have actually read this comment and then gone
on to spill so much ink charging all Atheists with the moral crime of
pursuing a nefarious “atheist agenda”?
[134]
Although Ehrman claims in DJE? that Jodi Magness disagrees
with my Nazareth claims, he gives no hint that I am wrong about her
opinion concerning Oshri and Bethlehem. I wonder why. Although I
personally gave her a copy of René Salm’s The Myth of Nazareth: The
Invented Town of Jesus, it seems certain that she never read the book.
[135]
It is truly surprising that no Historicist known to me even
notices this problem, let alone explains it adequately. Yes, I know that this
sentence is repetitiously redundant. I have given up all hope of winning a
Nobel Prize in literature.
[136]
By “anachronistic” I meant in terms of the traditional
presumption that theological evolution went from ‘low’ Christology to
‘high.’ In fact, however, it appears that ‘Judaizing,’ low Christologies are
the end of the evolutionary line.
[137]
The fact that this goading never elicited any response should
have told me that no new arguments would be forthcoming in DJE? It really
looks as though he knew that any ‘evidence’ he might present in an e-mail
would easily be deconstructed and demolished. On the other hand, because
of his conviction that I was completely unqualified to understand such
matters, he may have thought he would be able to floor me with a book full
of Josh McDowell apologetics and wanted to surprise me.
[138]
Recently, claims have been trumpeted about alleging that a
small number of Hasmonean coins have been discovered somewhere at
Nazareth. Unless those coins are confirmed by at least hundreds of other,
contemporary coins, we must conclude that the reports derive either from
archaeological incompetence or from something even more sinister.
[139]
Despite this warning, Ehrman uncritically cites the ‘evidence’
from this commercial operation on page 195 of DJE?
[140]
Ehrman unfairly ridicules my argument concerning the lack of
the definite article before ‘Jesus’ in Mark 1:9, apparently refusing to
mention this important point.
[141]
Although I had no firm opinion at the time I wrote the e-mail
above as to why N-Ts-R would be turned into the name of a town, in the
course of research for the present book I think I have come up with a
convincing explanation: Nazareth was invented to provide a home town as
well as a physical existence for Jesus in order to counter the claims of
Docetic Christians who believed that Jesus had no real, flesh-and-blood
body. If a home town name was not a made-up name, it is hard to explain
the two competing variants of the name found in the New Testament and
church fathers—Nazaret(h) and Nazara. If the town had really existed, how
could the first Christians have become confused as to its real name?
[142]
It is really quite shocking to realize that a scholar as famous as
Ehrman would not have known of the classical and patristic literature
concerning the mysteries. Surely, if he had ever taken a course in epigraphy
he would have understood the importance of inscriptions, coins, art, etc. not
only with regard to Christian origins but for understanding as well the social
world of the first Christians. Surely, he would have encountered some
Mithraism-related information. It is unfortunate that I had to tell him about
this. It is much more unfortunate to discover that none of the information I
was to send him had any effect on what he wrote in DJE?
[143]
It was a crushing disappointment that Ehrman didn’t mention
this fact when he misrepresented and criticized my claims about Mithraism
[DJE? 212]: “According to Zindler, the cult figure of the Mithraists, the
Persian god Mithras, was said to have been born on December 25 to a virgin
[my actual words were “born of a virgin on the winter solstice—frequently
December 25 in the Julian calendar”]; his cult was headed by a ruler who
was known as a pope, located on the Vatican hill; the leaders of the religion
wore miters…” [emphasis mine]
[144]
I fear that all this information pertaining to astronomy and
astrology must have generated far too great cognitive dissonance for
Ehrman even to understand my arguments let alone treat them fairly in
DJE?
[145]
To my profound dismay, Ehrman gave no hint that I ever told
him anything like this when he ridiculed and misrepresented this essay in
DJE?
[146]
Editor’s note: In the Septuagint Greek translation of the
Hebrew scriptures, the title ‘Lord’ (Gk. Kyrios) is the normal substitute for
the ineffable name YHWH (Yahweh). At some point in the evolution of
Christianity, ‘Jesus is Lord’ came to mean ‘Jesus is Yahweh.’ If the so-
called “Kenosis Hymn” here under discussion actually is stating the latter
equality, the hymn must be a later composition if Ehrman be correct in his
claim that the earliest Christians didn’t consider Jesus to be a god. In that
case, he would have to suppose the hymn to be a later composition
retrojected into a Pauline text, perhaps for the purpose of attributing its
creedal intent to the worthy name of Paul. On the other hand, if ‘Lord’ does
not have its LXX meaning of ‘Yahweh,’ and Paul has actually inserted a
pre-existing hymn into his letter, we must wonder how long the Christian
community that composed the hymn had been in existence at the time
Paul’s letter was written. How much time would be needed after the death
of a man for an initially disorganized group of people to develop the social
and ecclesiastical organization needed to compose and sing hymns to him
— and creedal hymns at that? — FRZ
[147]
Rom 16:25 Now to him that is of power to stablish you
according to my gospel, and the preaching of Jesus Christ, according to the
revelation of the mystery, which was kept secret since the world began, 26
But now is made manifest and by the scriptures of the prophets, according
to the commandment of the everlasting God, made known to all nations for
the obedience of faith: 27 To God only wise, be glory through Jesus Christ
for ever, Amen.
[148]
I Cor 15:12 Now if Christ be preached that he rose from the
dead, how say some among you that there is no resurrection of the dead? 13
But if there be no resurrection of the dead, then is Christ not risen: 14 And
if Christ be not risen, then is our preaching vain, and your faith is also vain.
15 Yea, and we are found false witnesses of God; because we have testified
of God that he raised up Christ: whom he raised not up, if so be that the
dead rise not. 16 For if the dead rise not, then is not Christ raised:
[149]
Rom 8:22 For we know that the whole creation groaneth and
travaileth in pain together until now. 23 And not only they, but ourselves
also, which have the first-fruits of the Spirit, even we ourselves groan
within ourselves, waiting for the adoption, to wit, the redemption of our
body.
[150]
From his forthcoming book Jesus: Mything in Action [2012].
[151]
Ken Smith, Ken’s Guide to the Bible [Blast Books, 1995.
ISBN-10: 0-922233-179].
[152]
David Fitzgerald, Nailed: Ten Christian Myths That Show
Jesus Never Existed at All [Lulu.com, 2010. ISBN-13: 978-0-557709-915].
[153]
Jon D. levensen, The Hebrew Bible: The Old Testament, and
Historical Criticism: Jews and Christians in Biblical Studies [Westminster
John Knox Press, 1993: 30].
[154]
Timothy Fitzgerald, The Ideology of Religious Studies
[Oxford University Press, 2000: 6–7].
[155]
Hector Avalos, The End of biblical Studies [Amherst, NY:
Prometheus, 2007].
[156]
Robert M. Price, Deconstructing Jesus [Amherst, NY,
Prometheus, 2000: 12–17].
[157]
Harvey Falk, Jesus the Pharisee: A New Look at the
Jewishness of Jesus [Wipf & Stock, 2003].
[158]
Geza Vermes, Jesus the Jew: A Historian’s View of the
Gospels [Fortress Press, 1981].
[159]
Mark 7:15 There is nothing from without a man, that entering
into him can defile him: but the things which come out of him, those are
they that defile the man. …
[160]
Matt. 5:31 It hath been said, Whosoever shall put away his
wife, let him give her a writing of divorcement: 32 But I say unto you, That
whosoever shall put away his wife, saving for the cause of fornication,
causeth her to commit adultery: and whosoever shall marry her that is
divorced committeth adultery.
[161]
Matt. 5:43 Ye have heard that it hath been said, Thou shalt
love thy neighbor, and hate thine enemy. 44 But I say unto you, Love your
enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to those that hate you, and pray
for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you…
[162]
Matt. 12:6 But I say unto you, That in this place is one greater
than the temple. 7 But if ye had known what this meaneth, I will have
mercy and not sacrifice, ye would not have condemned the guiltless. 8 For
the Son of man is Lord even of the sabbath day.
[163]
John Dominic Crossan, The Historical Jesus: The Life of a
Mediterranean Jewish Peasant [New York: Harper San Francisco, 1992:
xxviii].
[164]
Jesus: Apocalyptic Prophet of the New Millennium: 56–57.
[165]
Richard Carrier, Sense & Goodness Without God: A Defense
of Metaphysical Naturalism [Bloomington, Indiana: authorHouse,
2005:227ff].
[166]
Richard Carrier, Not the Impossible Faith: Why Christianity
Didn’t Need a Miracle to Succeed [Lulu.com, 2009].
[167]
Steve Mason, Josephus and the New Testament [Peabody,
MA: Hendrickson, 1992].
[168]
Nailed: 151–52.
[169]
Bart D. Ehrman (ed. & trans.). The Apostolic Fathers, Volume
I Loeb Classical Library [Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press,
2003:437].
[170]
Bart D. Ehrman, Did Jesus Exist? The Historical Argument
for Jesus of Nazareth [New York, HarperOne, 2012: 6]
[171]
Paleontology generally is able to succeed in such
reconstructions despite the incompleteness of the fossil record. Thanks to
book burning, benign neglect, forgery, fraud, and the simple accidents of
time, early Christian historiography is also plagued with incompleteness.
Nevertheless, paleontological methods can be used to infer common
ancestors, dogmatic mutations, and theopolitical history from the physical
and literary artifacts that do survive. In biblical studies, paleontological
principles can be used to reconstruct what biblical scholars call
‘trajectories.’
[172]
Did Jesus Exist?: 2.
[173]
Ibid. Perhaps Professor Ehrman didn’t ask around very much
before making this extraordinarily strong claim. None of the scholars in
question have even a doubt concerning the historicity of Jesus of Nazareth?
Not only are none of them Mythicists, none of them are even agnostic
concerning the ‘Historical Jesus’? Hector Avalos, a Harvard Ph.D. and
Professor of Religious Studies at Iowa State University, is at least agnostic,
and he would not want to be counted among the Mythicists or Historicists
either one. I am told that Arthur Droge, Professor of Early Christianity at
UCSD doubts we can know whether Jesus existed or not. Recently, Thomas
Brodie, the director of the Dominican Biblical centre in Limerick, Ireland,
has argued against the historicity not only of Jesus but of St. Paul as well.
[cf. Thomas Brodie, Beyond the Quest for the Historical Jesus: A Memoir of
a Discovery, Sheffield Phoenix Press, 2012] My guess is that the Mythicists
of today are but the tip of an agnostic iceberg that one day soon will draw
the serious attention of the captains of Historicist Ship Titanic.
[174]
Ibid.: 17.
[175]
Ibid.
[176]
Ibid.: 17–18.
[177]
Ibid.: 18.
[178]
Ibid., pages 18–19. Ehrman seems to be unaware of Mythicist
studies in non-Danish parts of Scandinavia. The Swedish scholar Alvar
Ellegård published Myten om Jesus: Den tidigaste kristendomen I nytt ljus
in 1992 [Stockholm: Bonnier Fakta Bokförlag AB].
[179]
Actually, Carrier’s Ph.D. is in Ancient History.
[180]
Did Jesus Exist?: 19.
[181]
Ibid.
[182]
The term ‘paradigm shift’ derives from Thomas Kuhn’s
famous book of 1962, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions [Chicago:
University of Chicago Press]. A paradigm in science is simply the
common-sense framework within which scientists think and carry out
research. A paradigm shift is merely (!) an abrupt change in that common-
sense framework. A commonly cited example is the shift from reckoning
geocentrically to heliocentrically.
I myself lived through one of the most dramatic paradigm shifts in the
history of science when I was a graduate student studying geology at
Indiana University. Before entering high school, I had never heard of the
meteorologist Alfred Wegener (the ‘Father of Continental Drift’) who back
in 1912 had argued that the continents had once been conjoined but had
drifted apart. Nevertheless, I had been a ‘drifter’ since the age of twelve
when I was in eighth grade at a two-room country school in Michigan. The
school’s only piece of ‘scientific equipment’ was a globe map mounted on
a floor stand. I had long noticed the apparent fit of South America with
Africa across the South Atlantic and intuitively thought they must once
have been attached. One morning, instead of going out for recess, I got
some tissue paper from the teacher, moistened it, and placed one piece over
South America and one piece over Africa. By afternoon recess, the tissue-
papier-mâché was dry. I traced the Atlantic coast outlines on each piece, cut
the pieces out along the lines, and slid the continents over the globe to join
them. The fit was close enough to convince me that the continents had once
been together. That settled it for me.
That conclusion was only strengthened over the years by my studies of
biogeography and paleontology. But then, in graduate school I took a mind-
boggling course in tectonics in which the professor tried to account for
large-scale vertical movements of the earth’s crust in the framework of
stationary continents. In the middle of the course, the famous issue of the
journal Science appeared with a cover showing the zebra-striped map of the
Atlantic floor demonstrating a two-hundred-million-year history of
reversals of the earth’s magnetic field as recorded in lava that had welled up
at the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, frozen, and pushed ocean floor both eastward
and westward — somehow moving the Americas apart from Europe and
Africa.
Almost overnight, tectonics had become plate tectonics as far as I was
concerned and mountain-building no longer was the abominable mystery
the textbooks so unconvincingly had tried to explain. Even so, my professor
was not ‘converted’ that year. He eventually became a ‘tectonic drifter,’ but
I’m not sure how long it took him to shift paradigms. It remains to be seen
if Ehrman too will eventually be able to shift paradigms or will endure to
the end walking on the paradigm treadmill built for him at Moody Bible
Institute.
[183]
Accessed July 22, 2012.
[184]
Because Benton Harbor High School (Michigan) did not have
a debate team, I was lucky to win a scholarship between my junior and
senior years to study debate at a summer institute at Northwestern
University. Although I can’t remember winning a single debate, the skills
obtained from that program proved invaluable in my later years debating
creationists, theologians, anti-choice advocates, and apologists of all kinds.
Most importantly, it has made me try hard when writing books and essays to
research opposing views as thoroughly as possible.
[185]
It appears as though most of his reading was of contemporary
Mythicists. He appears to depend on the second English edition of Albert
Schweitzer’s Quest of the Historical Jesus for information about nineteenth
and early twentieth-century Mythicists. He seems unaware of the many
Mythicists of whom Schweitzer was also unaware or had little knowledge,
such as: Thomas Whittaker, The Origins of Christianity: with an outline of
Van Manen’s Analysis of the Pauline Literature [London: Watts & Co.,
1904]; L. Gordon Rylands, The Evolution of Christianity [London: Watts
&Co., 1927]; Paul-Louis Coucheaud, The Creation of Christ: An Outline of
the Beginnings of Christianity [two volumes, translated by C. Bradlaugh
Bonner, London, Watts & Co., 1939]; Robert Taylor, The Diegesis: Being a
Discovery of the Origin, Evidences, and Early History of Christianity [R.
Carlile & J. Brooks, 1829]; Thomas Paine, The Age of Reason, Part Three:
Examination of the Prophecies [1803, annotated reprint American Atheist
Press, 1993]; Milesbo (Emilio Bossi), Gesù Cristo non è mai esistito, 2nd
ed. [Milano: Società Editoriale Milanese, 1904]; William Benjamin Smith,
Ecce Deus: The Pre-Christian Jesus [Chicago: Open Court, 1894], The
Birth of the Gospel [posthumous, New York: Philosophical Library, 1957].
[186]
www.absoluteastronomy.com/topics/Wheaton_College_(Illinois) Further
attacks on academic freedom at Wheaton came to light in 2004 when
Joshua Hochschild, assistant professor of philosophy, was dismissed for
becoming Roman Catholic. Wheaton’s president said his “personal desire”
to retain Hochschild, “a gifted brother in Christ,” was outweighed by his
duty to employ “faculty who embody the institution’s Protestant
convictions.” Then in 2008, English professor Kent Gramm resigned after
declining to give the college administration details of his pending divorce
from his wife of thirty years.
[187]
In 2008 I was invited to lecture on how to develop a science
of Christian origins at the Westfälische Wilhelms-Universität Münster in
Germany. The Director of the Institute for Religious Studies was the
brilliant linguist Prof. Stephen Kalisch, a Sufi Muslim. He had amassed a
great deal of evidence to show that Muhammad, like Jesus of Nazareth, had
never existed as a real person. Almost a decade earlier, another scholar
writing under the safe pseudonym ‘Ibn Warraq’ published The Quest for the
Historical Muhammad [Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 2000] that
revealed an impressive scholarly literature going back at least a century and
seriously questioning the historicity of the supposed founder of Islam.
[188]
Did Jesus Exist?: 4–5.
[189]
Ibid.: 5. The falseness of this analogy consists in the fact that
evolutionary biologists and Mythicists have immense amounts of
supporting evidence combined with virtually no contradictory evidence,
whereas ‘historicists’ and creationists have virtually no supporting evidence
and an immense amount of evidence that is “incommensurable,” to use a
term of Thomas Kuhn.
[190]
In 2008 I delivered a paper at a meeting of The Jesus Project
that was titled “Prolegomenon to a Science of Christian Origins.” In it I
outlined a program that could bring the study of Christian origins into the
ambit of the social sciences. I sent Ehrman at least two copies of the paper,
but he steadfastly refused to comment on it. I fear he did not understand
why he needed to read it. The paper was later published in a volume edited
by R. Joseph Hoffmann, Sources of the Jesus Tradition: Separating History
From Myth [Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 2010: 140–156].
[191]
My high school Latin teacher was a very fine linguist who not
only taught me Latin (including a substantial part of Vergil’s Aeneid) but the
rudiments of Greek as well — introducing me to Indo-European historical
linguistics in the process. This fit in well with my self-study of Sanskrit
during my last two years of high school. Later, I spent a summer at the
University of Michigan in an intensive program in Greek. My Hebrew
studies also had begun in high school with the aid of a brilliant Jewish
friend. My command of Hebrew increased gradually through the years until
the period when I was working on my master’s degree in geology at Indiana
University. At that time I took several courses in Biblical Hebrew in
addition to my courses in paleontology, etc. Semitic philology finally came
into focus many year later when I spent an intensive summer studying
Arabic at Yale, where I finally was able to get a comparative grasp of
Ugaritic, Aramaic, Syriac, Phoenician, etc.
[192]
Madalyn Murray O’Hair did not live to complete Jesus Christ
Superfraud. After her murder in 1995, I attempted to retrieve her text and
notes from her office in Austin, but the discs were unreadable. They had
been produced on an off-brand word processor and damaged by an
electrical accident.
[193]
This is a slip of the pen I have let stand to make a point. I
soon discovered that not everyone in ancient times equated ‘Christ’ to a
‘Jesus of Nazareth’ and that the various titles and the temporal sequence of
their association with each other might yield an insight into the evolution of
the cult and the literary trajectories of which it has been composed. This
would require the application of bioinformatic theory such as is used by
evolutionary biologists to reconstruct phylogenetic trees to trace the
evolutionary trajectories of living and fossil organisms. Much of the work
Bart Ehrman has done on the New Testament Apocrypha and the Apostolic
Fathers provides a valuable database with which to pursue such a study. I
am hard at work on such a study and I hope to be able to publish my
findings soon.
[194]
R. Joseph Hoffmann, editor, Sources of the Jesus Tradition:
Separating History From Myth [Amherst: NY, 2010: 153].
[195]
Luke 3:18 (KJV) reads: “And many other things in his
exhortation preached he [John the Baptist] unto the people.” All but one of
the Greek manuscripts known use the word parakalōn (‘urging,’
‘encouraging,’ ‘summoning,’ ‘comforting’) for what the King James
Translators rendered ‘exhortation.’ The fifth-century manuscript known as
D, or Codex Bezae, however, uses the word parainōn (‘advising,’ ‘urging’).
John 3:23 (KJV) reads: “And John also was baptizing in Aenon near to
Salim, because there was much water there; and they came, and were
baptized.” Now just where did the author of John 3:23 learn this interesting
fact? Aenon is unknown to the other gospels, including all the apocryphal
gospels. Nor is it to be found in the Mandaean literature concerning John. It
is unknown to the Talmudic literature, and the first mention of the place in
the history of our planet is here in John 3:23.
D. Paul Glaue, formerly at the University of Jena, discovered the
surprising answer to this question back in 1954. According to Glaue, the
author of John 3:23 must have been reading a Bezae-type manuscript of
Luke that was written in large letters, with no separation of individual
words and with all words run together as often was the case in ancient
times. When he came to what we now identify as Luke 3:18, ‘John’ was
confronted by something like this:
…POLLAMENOUNKAIETERAP
ARAINWNEUHGGELIZETOTONL
AON...
Where to separate the words? When he came to the rather rare word
PARAINWN, he apparently took it for two words, PAR + AINWN. To a
person who could think in Hebrew or Aramaic, the letters making up
PARAINWN would seem to be a Greek compound containing a Hebrew or
Aramaic word such as ‘ayin, meaning ‘fountain’ or ‘spring’ — a not
inappropriate supposition, given the context of John baptizing people.
Aenon might thus be the name of a place with springs. The PAR would be
interpreted as a shortened form of a Greek preposition meaning by, in the
vicinity of, from, or something of the sort. ‘John’ thought he was reading
that the Baptist was ‘in the vicinity of Aenon.’ Thus was created another
fictive toponym of the New Testament. [D. Paul Glaue, ‘Der älteste Text der
geschichtlichen Bücher des Neuen Testaments,’ Zeitschrift für die
neutestamentliche Wissenschaft und die Kunde der älteren Kirche, Vol. 45,
1954: 90–108] This is wonderfully corroborated by the fact that the Greek
text of the paraphrase of the Gospel of John by Nonnus Panopolitanus [end
of 4th century] does not have the “en Ainōn” in verse 3:23, which reads
simply “And John also was baptizing near to Salim, because there was
much water there...” [R. Janssen. Das Johannes-Evangelium nach der
Paraphrase des Nonnus Panopolitanus, Leipzig: J.C. Hinrichs, 1903].
[196]
I have postulated at least two competing theopolitical forces
reflected in the passages where Jesus is disrespectful of his mother and
family, such as Mark 3:31–35:
3:31 There came then his brethren and his mother, and, standing
without, sent unto him, calling him. 32 And the multitude sat about
him, and they said unto him, Behold, thy mother and thy brethren
without seek for thee. 33 And he answered them, saying, Who is my
mother, or my brethren? 34 And he looked round about on them
which sat about him, and said, Behold my mother and my brethren!
35 For whosoever shall do the will of God, the same is my brother,
and my sister, and mother.”
[197]
In 1992 I published an article with this title in the journal
American Atheist. Although my understanding of the way in which the
Jesus biography evolved has changed through time, I still think there is
merit in that article and I have reprinted it as Chapter 3 of the first volume
of my Through Atheist Eyes: Scenes from a world that won’t Reason.
Volume One: Religions & Scriptures [Cranford, NJ: American Atheist
Press, 2011: 58–80].
[198]
In the sciences, one has to learn how to establish ‘prior art,’ to
find the frontier in one’s chosen area of study, and to develop a plan to
advance knowledge beyond that point. In the humanities, by contrast, there
is little concept of ‘progress’ — what in the world would constitute progress
in poetry or music, after all? — and so ‘research’ often involves little more
than adding digits to the right of decimal points. Rarely is there an effort to
account for whole bodies of facts or gain deeper insight into observed
phenomena.
[199]
This may be due to the fact that New Testament scholars are
not trained as anthropologists who must try to ‘get into the heads’ of the
group they are studying. Few scholars outside of anthropology and
astronomy are aware of the centrality of astronomy and astrology in the
awareness of ancient Christians and Jews.
[200]
See the fascinating doctoral dissertation of Daniel Christopher
Sarefield, “Burning Knowledge”: Studies of Bookburning in Ancient Rome
[The Ohio State University, 2004].
[201]
On page 3, Ehrman notes that “Even a quick Internet search
reveals how influential such radical skepticism has been in the past and how
rapidly it is spreading even now.” He does not identify any of the Mythicist
sites that have alarmed him, and readers might like to know where to look
for information about Mythicist discoveries. So, it may be helpful to list
some of the most popular sites. The JesusMysteries discussion group for at
least a dozen years now has led the way in promoting Mythicist research.
Many of the discussants are immensely knowledgeable about primary
sources and make stimulating observations about commonplace ‘facts.’ The
e-dress for the group is: [email protected]. René Salm has
two related sites: www.renesalm.com/mp/ (Mythicist Papers) and
www.nazarethmyth.info (archaeological data and evidence relating to the
discovery that Nazareth was not inhabited during the first centuries BCE
and CE). Richard Carrier’s blog can be reached through
www.richardcarrier.info and there is an affiliated site for the Internet
Infidels — www.infidels.org. Carrier is the author of the important new
book Proving History: Bayes’s Theorem and the Quest for the Historical
Jesus and the forthcoming On the Historicity of Jesus Christ. Earl Doherty,
author of The Jesus Puzzle, operates the site at www.jesuspuzzle.com, as
well as the archival site http://vridar.info. Robert M. Price, author of many
books including The Christ Myth Theory and Its Problems can be followed
at www.robertmprice.mindvendor.com. Acharya S. (D.M. Murdock), author
of the recent Christ in Egypt and many other books, operates the site
www.truthbeknown.com. Dr. Hermann Detering, the eminent German
scholar, can be followed both in German and in English at
www.radikalkritik.de/in_eng/htm. Some of my own work is archived at
www.atheists.org, the Web-site of American Atheists, Inc.
[202]
Did Jesus Exist?: 6–7.
[203]
According to A.J. Ayer’s Language, Truth, and Logic, a
statement is ‘meaningless’ if one could not even imagine a way to test it. A
meaningless statement cannot even be false. In the opinion of the
philosopher of science Karl Popper’s The Logic of Scientific Discovery, for
a hypothesis or theory to be truly scientific it must at least in principle be
“falsifiable” — that is, one should be able to imagine making an
observation that would show that the hypothesis was false.
[204]
For an exhaustive evaluation of all the archaeological
evidence concerning the Palestinian site now called Nazareth see René
Salm’s The Myth of Nazareth: The Invented Town of Jesus [Cranford, NJ:
American Atheist Press, 2008]. Salm shows that the venerated sites owned
and operated by the Franciscans could not possibly have been inhabited by
observant Jews, due to the presence of tombs that would have made the
Holy Family perpetually ritually unclean. Furthermore, the amount of
evidence needed to show that those sites were inhabited by anyone at the
turn of the era would be several orders of magnitude greater than the scanty
and ambiguous material collected by Franciscan archaeologist-apologists.
For updates on post-2008 efforts to demonstration first-century habitation at
Nazareth, see Salm’s Web-site: http://www.nazarethmyth.info/
[205]
I first reported this startling fact in an article titled “Where
Jesus Never Walked,” published in the journal American Atheist [Winter,
1996–1997] and reprinted it in Through Atheist Eyes: Scenes From a World
That Won’t Reason. Volume I: Religions & Scriptures [Cranford, NJ:
American Atheist Press, 2011: 27–56].
[206]
In geology it is sometimes the case that old strata overlie
younger strata as the result of ‘overthrusting’ — the breaking of the earth’s
crust downward through the rock strata followed by an upheaval and
thrusting of deeper strata over younger and previously higher strata. In the
Pauline Epistles, by analogy, we may see this in the form of old material
being grafted on top of newer texts, as in the case of putatively earlier
creeds being thrust into Paul’s discourse. (Of course, given the great amount
of fraud and forgery to be expected in the composition and transmission of
religious texts, it is quite possible that those creeds are in fact the latest
deposits in the texts and are actually later creeds seeking validation by
attachment to the authority of Paul!)
[207]
A now classic example of this has been Kenneth Neumann’s
application of statistical analytical methods for the purpose of determining
the authorship of the Pauline Epistles. See: Kenneth J. Neumann, The
Authenticity of the Pauline Epistles in the Light of Stylostatistical Analysis
[Atlanta, GA: Scholars Press, Atlanta, 1990].
[208]
The freshwater lake of this story was never called the Sea of
Galilee before the composition of the Gospel of Mark. It was known as the
Sea [Heb. yam, a word that could be used for any body of water, but usually
translated thalassa in the Greek Septuagint] of Kinnereth [Numbers 34:11;
Joshua 13:27] or simply ‘Kinneroth’ [Joshua 11:2]. By the time Mark’s
gospel was being written it had become known as ‘Lake Tiberias,’ after the
controversial founding [ca. 20 CE] of the City of Tiberias. It may be that
the lake was turned into the ‘Sea of Galilee’ in order to model parts of the
gospel after Homer’s Odyssey. [See Dennis R, MacDonald, The Homeric
Epics and the Gospel of Mark [New Haven: Yale University Press, 2000:
55–62], although adding Galilee to the name might well have been due to
assonance with the Hebrew term for ‘The Great Sea’ (Mediterranean) —
ha-yam ha-gaddol.
[209]
Bart D. Ehrman, Didymus the Blind and the Text of the
Gospels [Atlanta, GA: Scholars Press, 1986: 2].
[210]
Neither Metzger nor anyone else seems to have read closely
the comment at the bottom of the table of data on page 199: “Obviously
Didymus does not stand in as close a relationship to these texts as they
stand in relationship to him.” Surely, a sentence like that should have been
corrected by Ehrman’s advisors or rendered less solecistic in appearance.
If Ehrman had received an education in evolutionary biology he would
have been better prepared to discover familial and genetic relationships of
the various manuscript families of concern to him. Essentially, his concern
is one of taxonomy — the classification of texts into hierarchical schemes
that reveal genetic relationships. In scientific parlance, a phylogenetic
taxonomy is needed. He could have gotten off to a flying start on this
problem if he had known of the now-classic text Numerical Taxonomy: The
Principles and Practice of Numerical Classification, by Peter H.A. Sneath
and Robert R. Sokal [San Francisco: W. H. Freeman & Co., 1973].
However, even more significant texts have appeared in later years that
Ehrman could use to construct a phylogenetic tree revealing the genetic
relationships among the texts of interest to him. It’s never too late for him to
start. An old but still useful text is Cladistics: The Theory and Practice of
Parsimony, by Ian J. Kitching [New York: Oxford University Press, 1998].
Sadly, most of the textbooks that promise “Phylogenetic Trees Made Easy”
are completely dedicated to analysis of DNA sequences and can be adapted
to textual analyses only with great difficulty.
[211]
The likelihood that the twelve disciples also represent the
Twelve Tribes of Israel only increases their astrological significance. It is
very probable that the Twelve Tribes are themselves the zodiacal symbols
of an Israelite religion that was evolving from a lunar cult into a solar cult
and had always had strong astral underpinnings. The Dead Sea Scrolls
include solar calendar-related materials and astrological matter such as
“Thunder in Gemini.”
[212]
According to a letter written by Pliny the Younger to the
Emperor Trajan [Pliny, Letters 10.96–97] when he was governor of
Pontus/Bithynia [111–113 CE] and had interrogated Christians, “They [the
Christians] asserted, however, that the sum and substance of their fault or
error had been that they were accustomed to meet on a fixed day before
dawn and sing responsively a hymn to Christ as to a god…”
[213]
Although I was unaware of the fact, about a decade earlier
(1977–78), James H. Charlesworth had published a translation and
discussion of The Treatise of Shem, a new addition to the Pseudepigrapha.
In that fascinating paper, he nicely summarized my theory-to-be in a few
sentences:
[214]
Knowledge of the precession of the equinoxes seems to have
been widespread by the turn of the era, especially among the Stoics.
Discovered by Hipparchus of Rhodes [d. ca. 127 BCE], it seems clear that
the phenomenon was known to the Roman poet and Augustan propagandist
Vergil [70–19 BCE], who sang of the dawning of a new age in his Fourth
Eclogue. As already mentioned, the timing of the New Age of the New
Testament seems to be a perfect fit for the passage of the vernal equinox
into Pisces. Startling evidence of the sophistication of astronomical
knowledge of the first century BCE was discovered in the year 1900 when
sponge divers discovered the remains of an ancient shipwreck of the coast
of the Aegean island of Antikithera. Ultimately dated to before 76–67 BCE
on the basis of the latest coins found by Jacques Cousteau in the 1970s, it
was ultimately discovered that the shipwreck had been carrying an ancient
astronomical computer, the so-called Antikithera mechanism. The device
was originally thought to have been built by Hipparchus himself, because
the gearing of the device conforms to the mathematics of his astronomical
reforms. Recently, however, it is thought to have been built around 87 BCE
or somewhat earlier on the basis of inscriptions on the faces of the
mechanism’s components. (The device is marked with the Greek signs of
the zodiac and tracks the course of the sun through them.) It is thought that
the ship was carrying loot from Athens of the Roman general Sulla in 86
BCE and was on its way to Rome. In any case, sophisticated astronomical
knowledge was widespread in the Mediterranean world by the first century
of the Common Era. Educated men such as the authors of the Pauline
Epistles and Acts of the Apostles would surely have had at least
rudimentary knowledge of Hipparchus and his age-turning discovery. (For a
popular but scientifically accurate account of this discovery see Jo
Marchant’s Decoding the Heavens: A 2,000-Year-Old Computer and the
Century-Long Search to Discover Its Secrets [Cambridge, MA: Da Capo
Press, 2009]).
[215]
David Ulansey, The Origins of the Mithraic Mysteries:
Cosmology and Salvation in the Ancient World [New York: Oxford
University Press, 1989].
[216]
Some years later, I spoke with Ulansey at a meeting of the
Society of Biblical Literature and was astounded to learn than he
completely disagreed with me concerning a possible precessional
component in Christian beginnings! Precession, it would seem, was not a
double-barreled shotgun.
[217]
American Atheist, Vol. 34, No. 6, June, 1992. Reprinted in
Through Atheist Eyes, Volume One: Religions & Scriptures [Cranford, NJ:
American Atheist Press, 2011: 57–80].
[218]
Frank R. Zindler, “Prolegomenon to a Science of Christian
Origins,” in, Sources of the Jesus Tradition: Separating History From Myth,
edited by R. Joseph Hoffmann [Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 2010:
140–156].
[219]
The laws and theories of the physical sciences are exhaustive
in the sense that they are intended to apply to the entire universe. In their
formulation, exhaustive inquiry is carried out to see that they comport with
everything relevant that is known at the time. Experiments and observations
are carried out in order to discover facts that might falsify the reigning
theory and cause it to be amended or abandoned. In the historical sciences,
of course, this is neither possible nor sought after. However, historical
theories and explanations can still be scientific if they share the
exhaustiveness of scientific inquiry. The exhaustiveness relates not to the
entire universe, of course, but rather to the ‘universe’ of everything that is
known about a particular problem. An historical theory must account for
everything that is known about the problem. Nothing can be ignored. When
new facts are discovered that do not conform to expectations of the current
theory, the theory must be amended or abandoned. Thus will progress occur
in the historical sciences as has been the custom in the physical sciences.
[220]
This has already been assembled in the Thesaurus Linguae
Graecae (TLG).
[221]
Latin literature is being assembled in the Brepols Library of
Latin Texts along lines similar to the TLG.
[222]
Much is to be expected of the Comprehensive Aramaic
Lexicon Project in this regard.
[223]
In my The Jesus the Jews Never Knew: Sepher Toldoth Yeshu
and the Quest of the Historical Jesus in Jewish Sources [50–51] I discuss an
ancient table of contents in a pre-fifth-century Greek manuscript that lacks
mention of the Testimonium Flavianum or the deaths of James and John the
Baptist, whereas a fifth- or sixth-century Latin version of the table adds
“Concerning John the Baptist.” On page 63 of that book I show a page of
Codex Vossianus Graec. 72 Olim Petavianus wherein the Testimonium
Flavianum has been interpolated into the text of Josephus’ Jewish War !
[224]
The Franciscans have attempted to show that there was a first-
century synagogue at Kfar Nahum ̣ (supposedly Capernaum) as well as a
house church of St. Peter, and so both an understanding of the principles of
archaeological excavation and architectural history are needed to evaluate
their outré claims.
[225]
According to L. Michael White [From Jesus to Christianity,
New York: HarperOne, 2005: 30], the temple complex reconstruction begun
by Herod the Great [d. 4 BCE] was not completed until the year 64 CE, just
a few years before its destruction ‘prophesied’ in the ‘Little Apocalypse’ of
Mark 13:2 (“And as he went out of the temple, one of his disciples saith
unto him, Master, see what manner of stones and what buildings are here! 2
And Jesus answering said unto him, Seest thou these great buildings? There
shall not be left one stone upon another, that shall not be thrown down.”). If
this had actually happened around the year 33 CE, the curiously anonymous
disciple would actually have asked, “Master! Behold these heavy stones!
How shall the one be set upon the other?” If Jesus had really been a
prophet, he would have answered “They shall use the craft of Rome to build
this temple to the top, but it shall avail them naught; for even as the roof be
placed upon the pillars, a legion of the Romans shall set upon it: verily I say
unto thee, there shall not be left one stone upon another.”
[226]
In my “Bart Ehrman and the Crucified Messiah” I argue that
the Greek vowel shift known as itacism that took place around the turn of
the era turned the name or title Chreistos or Chrēstos into Christos
(derivable then from Greek chriō — ‘anoint’) and allowed the identification
of the indicated character with the Messiah of Jewish expectation.
[227]
Perhaps not surprisingly, Ehrman does not list Dutch, the
language of ‘Radical Critics’ such as Willem Christiaan van Manen who
presented evidence to show that none of the so-called Pauline Epistles can
be considered to be authentic. Quite surprising, however, is his omission of
Italian, the language of vast amounts of Roman Catholic scholarship. When
I was investigating papal claims that the actual bones of Saint Peter had
been found in the ancient necropolis beneath the high altar of Saint Peter’s
Basilica, it was necessary to read hundreds of pages of Vatican reports and
related materials. My exposé of the fraudulent claims — “Of Bones and
Boners: Saint Peter at the Vatican” — has been reprinted in volume one of
my book Through Atheist Eyes: Scenes From a World That Won’t Reason.
[228]
Matthew Black [An Aramaic Approach to the Gospels and
Acts, Third Edition 1967, reprinted by Hendrickson, Peabody MA: 1998]
attempted in 1946 to demonstrate an Aramaic substrate for the gospel
documents based on alleged Aramaisms and syntactic peculiarities of the
Greek texts. The purpose, of course, was to establish their relationship to
the Targumim and the supposed language of Jesus of Nazareth. I, however,
agree with the Roman Catholic scholar Joseph Fitzmyer who finds Black’s
evidence unconvincing. Aramaisms do indeed exist in the New Testament,
but they are entirely to be expected in a Greek koine spoken by bilingual
residents of the eastern part of the Roman Empire during the first and
second centuries of the Common Era.
[229]
Dennis R, MacDonald, The Homeric Epics and the Gospel of
Mark, [New Haven: Yale University Press, 2000: 55–62],
[230]
For the Greek text of Aesop’s fable “Alieus aulōn,” see Ben
Edwin Perry, Aesopica [Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1952: 326].
[231]
Chapter two of my The Jesus the Jews Never Knew: Sepher
Toldoth Yeshu and the Quest of the Historical Jesus in Jewish Sources is
titled “Faking Flavius” and deals with Christian alterations of both
Josephus’ Jewish Antiquities but also his Wars of the Jews. The third
chapter, “James the Just, John the Baptist, and Other Perversions of
Josephus,” gives evidence for textual tampering by both Christians and
followers of John the Baptist for the purpose of providing Jesus with an
earthly brother (instead of the celestial twin of Gnostic lore?) and
documentation of uncertain importance concerning the Baptist.
[232]
In my essay “How Jesus Got a Life” [Through Atheist Eyes,
Volume One: Religions & Scriptures: 57–80] I explain that discovering that
the vernal equinox (‘Easter’) had moved from Taurus into Aries and was in
the process of entering Pisces may have been the trigger-stimulus for the
founding not only of the Mithraic Mysteries with their sacramental
Taurobolium but also of the Christian Mysteries with their symbols of two
fishes, crucifixion, and chi-cross. Just as Mithras had been the god of the
Age of Aries, Christ would have been the god (‘chronocrat’) of the New
Age of Pisces. I did not realize at that time that the ‘New Age’ cult of the
Caesars also was based on the same astronomical phenomenon.
[233]
I take it as evidence that the author of Acts knew about the
precession of the equinoxes the fact that he quotes Aratus, because the most
likely source of his knowledge of Aratus probably would have been
Hipparchus’ commentary on the Phaenomena. If he was reading
Hipparchus, he would have known about precession — something that was
common knowledge to the Stoics of the first century. A necessary but
insufficient evidence of the precession-stimulated origin of Christianity is
that the first Christians were aware of the phenomenon. If it should be
shown that the first Christians did not know of Hipparchus’ discovery or
disavowed it, my hypothesis would be falsified.
[234]
Practically the same thing is found in the “Hymn to Jupiter”
by Cleanthes of Troas:
With Jove we must begin; nor from him rove;
Him always praise, for all is full of Jove!
He fills all places where mankind resort,
The wide-spread sea, with every shelt’ring port.
Jove’s presence fills all space, upholds this ball;
All need his aid; his power sustains us all.
For we his offspring are; and he in love
Points out to man his labour from above…
— Adam Clarke (1856)
[235]
For discussion of Epimenides in relation to the lying Cretans
in Titus 1:12 (“One of themselves, even a prophet of their own, said, The
Cretans are always liars, evil beasts, slow bellies.”) see pages 107–109 of
The Anchor Bible Volume 35 The Letter To Titus, by Jerome D. Quinn [New
York: Doubleday, 1990]. The “prophet” in Titus 1:12 is identified by
Clement of Alexandria as Epimenides [Stromata, i. 14]. In this passage
Clement mentions that “some say” Epimenides should be counted among
the seven wisest philosophers.
[236]
Greek text reconstructed by J. Rendel Harris from a ninth-
century Syriac commentary on Acts by Isho‘dadh of Merv [Expositor, April
1907: 332–37]
[237]
Mark 6:14 “And king Herod heard of him; (for his name was
spread abroad) and he said, That John the Baptist was risen from the dead,
and therefore mighty works do shew forth themselves in him. 15 Others
said, That it is Elias. And others said, That it is a prophet, or as one of the
prophets. 16 But when Herod heard thereof, he said, It is John, whom I
beheaded: he is risen from the dead.”
Matthew 16:13 “When Jesus came into the coasts of Caesarea Philippi,
he asked his disciples, saying, Whom do men say that I the Son of man am?
14 And they said, Some say that thou art John the Baptist: some, Elias; and
others, Jeremias, or one of the prophets.”
Luke 9:7 “Now Herod the tetrarch heard of all that was done by him: and
he was perplexed, because that it was said of some, that John was risen
from the dead; 8 And of some, that Elias had appeared; and of others, that
one of the old prophets was risen again. 9 And Herod said, John have I
beheaded: but who is this, of whom I hear such things? And he desired to
see him.” (There is no follow-up on Herod & Jesus)
[238]
An astonishing example of such work was done by Thomas
Paine, one of America’s Founding Fathers. Paine could only read English
and a little French. Nevertheless, his critical analysis of the King James
Bible led him not only to reject the supposed divine inspiration of that work
but reject the historicity of Jesus as well. In his The Age of Reason, Part
Three: Examination of the Prophecies, which I edited and copiously
annotated for an American Atheist Press edition in 1993, he says that
“[R]epeated forgeries and falsifications create a well-founded suspicion that
all the cases spoken of concerning the person called Jesus Christ are made
cases… that so far from his being the Son of God, he did not exist even as a
man — that he is merely an imaginary or allegorical character, as Apollo,
Hercules, Jupiter and all the deities of antiquity were. There is no history
written at the time Jesus Christ is said to have lived that speaks of the
existence of such a person, even as a man.”
In a letter written to Andrew Dean of New York (August 15, 1806) he
explained that “The fable of Christ and his twelve apostles, which is a
parody on the sun and the twelve signs of the zodiac, copied from the
ancient religions of the eastern world, is the least hurtful part [of the bible].
… Everything told of Christ has reference to the sun. His reported
resurrection is at sunrise, and that on the first day of the week; that is, on the
day anciently dedicated to the sun, and from thence called Sunday — in
Latin Dies Solis, the day of the sun; as the next day, Monday, is Moon-
day…”
[239]
The Pauline epistles present a particularly great danger in this
regard. They include a substantial amount of technical vocabulary —
astrological and Gnostic jargon — that would never be recognized as such
in any English New Testament known to me. This includes words such as
archōn (‘ruler,’ but also one of the seven world-creating archons comprising
the Hebdomad); aiōn (‘age,’ but also a Valentinian rough equivalent to an
archon or a time-god like Chronos, a specific Aeon being Stauros —
‘Cross’ — who functions as a circumvallation and boundary of the
Pleroma); ektrōma (‘miscarriage’ or ‘abortion,’ but also specifically the
abortion of Sophia — ‘Wisdom’); sophia (‘wisdom,’ but also an aeon and
the creative element (hokmah)
̣ of Proverbs 3:19); stoicheion (‘element,’ but
also a sign of the zodiac); and many other seemingly ordinary words. In his
treatise St. Paul and the Mystery-Religions [London: Hodder and
Stoughton, 1913], H.A.A. Kennedy devoted a lengthy chapter to the topic
“St. Paul’s Relation to the Terminology of the Mystery-Religions.” It should
be required reading for anyone desiring to plumb the esoteric depths of the
Pauline Epistles.
[240]
The Roman comic dramatist Titus Maccius Plautus lived from
ca. 254 BCE to 184 BCE. His hymn to Jupiter in his Punic comedy
Poenulus [Poen. 1187–89] is echoed in Acts 17:28, which reads “For in him
we live, and move, and have our being; as certain also of your own poets
have said, For we are also his offspring.”
Plautus has “O Jupiter, who cherishes and nurtures the race of man;
through whom we live and draw the breath of being, in whom is the hope of
the life of all men...” (Iuppiter, qui genus colis alisque hominem, per qui
vivimus | Vitalem aevom, quem penes spes vitae sunt hominem | Omnium…)
If the author of Acts was familiar not only with Greek Stoics but Latin
literature as well, it seems highly likely that he would have been aware of
the Latin Stoic Seneca. Seneca’s possible connection to the Apostle Paul
was the source of much ancient Christian speculation, culminating in the
forgery of the apocryphal Correspondence Between Paul and Seneca. The
author certainly knew of Seneca’s older brother Lucius Junius Gallio
Annaeanus (the Gallio who was the proconsul [51/2–52/3 CE] of the new
senatorial province of Achaia of Acts 18:12–17). Even if the pericope in
Acts was made up for the purpose of situating Paul’s life in the framework
of Roman chronology, we know that whoever wrote that part of Acts knew
of a Stoic intimately related to Seneca. That being the case, it remains
reasonable to suppose Stoic influences upon that author. Drawing the thread
even thinner, it remains possible but in no way proven that he knew of
Hipparchus’ discovery of the precession of the equinoxes. Did he know he
was living in the New Age of Pisces? It would have been more than a
century after Vergil’s Fourth Eclogue and the self-conscious awareness of
that fact, and Christianity’s New-Age astral origins may very well no longer
have been remembered. In any case, it seems clear that ‘Luke’ derived his
information from earlier authors who must have been well aware of that
celestial phenomenon.
[241]
The Romans would have been able to equate Saturn with
Yahweh of the Jews, whose sabbath-day was equivalent to ‘Saturn’s Day.’
Saturn occupied the seventh heaven, with only the firmament of the fixed
stars being more exalted. This fact almost certainly was of significance to
the origins of Jewish and Christian Gnosticism, and there is pressing need
for research to elucidate the implications of this theological equation.
[242]
Long before being awakened from my historicist slumber by
Madalyn O’Hair, I had fallen under the spell of Will Durant’s The Story of
Civilization and had read all but the last-appearing volume of that
wonderful monument of Western civilization. In his very first volume [Our
Oriental Heritage: 449] he told of the Indian King Ashoka [r. 273–? BCE]
who became a Buddhist and, according to his Rock Edict XIII, sent
Buddhist missionaries to the west, including Egypt, Syria, and Greece.
[243]
Arthur Drews, Die Petruslegende [Frankfurt am Main: Neuer
Frankfurter Verlag, 1910]. In 1997 I published my English translation of
this book as The Legend of Saint Peter [Austin, TX: American Atheist
Press, 1997]. I greatly expanded Drews’ text with a foreword and appendix
of selected texts referenced by Drews that I presented in full-text English
translation to give readers a better understanding of the context of Drews’
arguments.
[244]
Irenaeus, Adversus Haereses, I, 27.
[245]
In biogeography it is often the case that plants and animals
that have survived the least altered from archaic forms are found in regions
furthest from their zone of origins or greatest development. Thus,
Amborella, the most primitive Angiosperm (flowering plant) known is
found only on the remote island of New Caledonia. Lemurs, among the
most primitive of Primates, have survived only on Madagascar — a long
way from North America where the oldest primate fossils are found.
[246]
Bodleian manuscript, MS.Copt.e.150(P)
[247]
Bart D. Ehrman, Did Jesus Exist? The Historical
Argument for Jesus of Nazareth [New York, HarperOne, 2012].
[248]
The four myths of creation are found in Genesis 1:1–2:4;
Genesis 2:5–25; John 1:1–5; and Proverbs 3:19–20.
[249]
René Salm, The Myth of Nazareth: The Invented Town of
Jesus [Cranford, NJ: American Atheist Press, 2008]. See also his chapter in
this book, “Archaeology, Bart Ehrman, and the Nazareth of ‘Jesus’ “
[250]
Even if a papyrus record were to be discovered containing the
autopsy report on Jesus of Nazareth written and signed by Pontius Pilate’s
coroner, at best, the life of Jesus would be established simultaneously with
his death. At worst, well, we may leave such speculation as an exercise for
the reader.
[251]
Employment of the ignotum per ignotius fallacy often implies
or is actually accompanied by the petitio principii fallacy as in this case. It
may be that begging the question is needed to avoid having to deal with the
rhetorical burden of concealing the ever-greater numbers of questions
arising with each step further into the more unknown.
[252]
I must admit, however, that I am being forced to reconsider
my acceptance of the reality of Q and my theory of its nature by recent
publications of Thomas L. Brodie, especially his The Birthing of the New
Testament: The Intertextual Development of the New Testament Writings
[Sheffield, UK: Sheffield Phoenix Press, 2004].
[253]
The Gnostic library discovered at Nag Hammadi in Egypt
provides some examples of how non-Christian materials could have been
appropriated for Christian purposes and even displays the smoking gun of
revelation-in-the-making-up. James M. Robinson, the editor of the Nag
Hammadi materials published in English, tells us that
The Nag Hammadi library even presents one instance of the
Christianizing process taking place almost before one’s eyes. The
non-Christian philosophic treatise Eugnostos the Blessed is cut up
somewhat arbitrarily into separate speeches, which are then put on
Jesus’ tongue, in answer to questions (which sometimes do not quite
fit the answers) that the disciples address to him during a
resurrection appearance. The result is a separate tractate entitled The
Sophia of Jesus Christ. Both forms of the text occur side by side in
Codex III. [James M. Robinson, The Nag Hammadi Library, 3rd rev.
ed. (San Francisco: Harper, 1988: 55)]
[254]
Eugene, OR: Cascade Books, 2011.
[255]
The word in dispute here is the Greek passive participle
peplērophorēmenōn, a form of the verb plērophoreō, which Ehrman renders
“have been fulfilled” and the KJV translates “are most surely believed.”
Gerhard Kittel’s Theological Dictionary of the New Testament [VI:309]
explains that in the active voice this verb means “to bring to fulness,” and
that it can mean “‘to satisfy someone completely,’ erotically (magic).” In
the passive, “plainly so” we are told, it can mean “to be fully convinced of
something, to come to full certainty.” [Kittel cites in this regard 1 Cl., 42, 3;
Ign. Mg., 11, 1; Sm., 1, 1.] The unabridged Liddell & Scott A Greek-
English Lexicon indicates that in the passive (of persons) this verb means
“have full satisfaction, to be fully assured.”
[256]
Thus, Marcion’s version of Luke lacked all but one of that
Gospel’s mentions of Nazareth as well.
[257]
Joseph A. Fitzmyer, The Gospel According to Luke I–IX. The
Anchor Bible [Garden City, NY: Doubleday & Co., 1981:311].
[258]
DJE?:142–174.
[259]
The nineteenth-century scholar Ferdinand Baur not only
thought Paul existed, he thought there must have been at least four of him!
On the other hand, Epiphanius’ discussions on the Carpocratians tell us that
their eponymous founder Carpocrates (who, like the Paul of Acts hailed
from Asia Minor) worshiped images of Jesus, Paul, Homer, and Pythagoras.
Now, the historicity of Homer and Pythagoras has long been questioned. In
light of the fact that Paul was being worshiped as a god almost as early as
was Jesus, shouldn’t we now question the historicity of Paul as well?
The Dominican Thomas L. Brodie recently has done exactly that and has
produced what is certain to become a Mythicist classic — Beyond the Quest
for the Historical Jesus: Memoir of a Discovery [Sheffield: Sheffield
University Press, 2012]. In his chapter titled “Paul: The Penny Finally
Drops,” Brodie reminisces,
[260]
It is curious that Ehrman did not think of his own answer to
this question when writing chapter five of DJE? and quoting from
Galatians. In his The Orthodox Corruption of Scripture [New York: Oxford
University Press, 1993] he discusses corruptions of Galatians 2:20, 3:16,
3:17, 4:4, 5:11, and 6:17. Of particular interest is his discussion of Galatians
4:4 [“God sent his own son, born of a woman, born under the law…”] and
Romans 1:3–4 [“…Jesus Christ our Lord, which was made of the seed of
David according to the flesh”] in the context of anti-Docetic corruptions of
scripture. “A similar corruption occurs in Romans 1:3–4,” he tells us on
page 239, “a passage I have already discussed in a different connection. …
As was the case with Galatians 4:4, the change was a matter of the
substitution of a word in the versions and of a few simple letters in Greek
(from genomenon to gennōmenon), so that now the text speaks not of Christ
“coming from the seed of David” but of his “being born of the seed of
David.”
[261]
The pericope of Matt 16:13–20 takes place at Caesarea
Philippi, the scene of a grand temple to Augustus and Roma built by Herod
the Great. Instead of inveighing against the idolatry of emperor worship,
Jesus asks his disciples “Whom do men say that I the Son of Man am?”
[Matt 16:13]. Simon Peter replies “Thou art the Christ, the son of the living
God.” This is followed by a blatant bit of theopolitical invention — the
charter for the authority of the Roman Catholic Church: “16:17 Blessed art
thou, Simon bar Jona … 18 And I say also unto thee, That thou art Peter,
and upon this rock I will build my church; and the gates of hell shall not
prevail against it.” Then, ‘Peter’ is given the magic keys to the gates of the
heavens (tōn ouranōn) — keys formerly owned by Mithras.
[262]
B, À*, A, P51, P46, etc.
[263]
Mark 6:3 Is not this the carpenter, the son of Mary, the brother
of James, and Joses, and of Juda, and Simon? and are not his sisters here
with us? And they were offended at him. 4 But Jesus said unto them, A
prophet is not without honour, but in his own country, and among his own
kin, and in his own house. 5 And he could there do no mighty work, save
that he laid his hands upon a few sick folk, and healed them. 6 And he
marveled because of their unbelief.
[264]
Matt 13:55 Is not this the carpenter’s son? is not his mother
called Mary? and his brethren, James, and Joses, and Simon, and Judas? 56
And his sisters, are they not all with us? Whence then hath this man all
these things? 57 And they were offended in him. But Jesus said unto them,
A prophet is not without honour, save in his own country, and in his own
house. 58 And he did not many mighty works there because of their
unbelief.
[265]
There is also another, more intriguing possibility. If ‘Luke’
were copying from an early edition of a Docetist-friendly ‘proto-Mark,’
there may not yet have been mentions of Jesus’ family to copy.
[266]
Perhaps not too surprisingly, the Matthaean passage was also
used to prove the exact opposite, i.e., that Jesus wasn’t human. Epiphanius,
in a digression in his Panarion chapter on the Ebionites tells us that
Cerinthus and Carpocrates used this pericope to argue against the humanity
of Jesus!
[267]
Mark 3:31 There came then his brethren and his mother, and,
standing without, sent unto him, calling him. 32 And the multitude sat about
him, and they said unto him, Behold, thy mother and thy brethren without
seek for thee. 33 And he answered them, saying, Who is my mother, or my
brethren? 34 And he looked round about on them which sat about him, and
said, Behold my mother and my brethren! 35 For whosoever shall do the
will of God, the same is my brother, and my sister, and mother.
[268]
Galatians 1:19 But other of the apostles saw I none, save
James the Lord’s brother. 20 Now the things which I write unto you,
behold, before God, I lie not.
[269]
Galatians 2:9 And when James, Cephas, and John, who
seemed to be pillars, perceived the grace that was given unto me, they gave
to me and Barnabas the right hands of fellowship; that we should go unto
the heathen, and they unto the circumcision.
[270]
12 For before that certain came from James, he [‘Peter’] did
eat with the Gentiles: but when they were come, he withdrew and separated
himself, fearing them which were of the circumcision.
[271]
Leviticus 24:16. “Whoever utters the name of the LORD
[YHWH] shall be put to death: all the community shall stone him;
alien or native, if he utters the Name [shem-YHWH], he shall be put
to death.” [NEB]
[272]
On page 192 of DJE? Ehrman criticizes my theory that the
name ‘Nazareth’ was derived from the Hebrew word netser
(‘branch’). Creating a straw-man argument and falsely reporting that
I claim this comes from a Hebrew “term” NZR, he makes the
preposterous assertion that “The term branch in Hebrew (which
does not have vowels) is spelled NZR…” One wonders if he learned
this astonishing fact in his Hebrew studies at Moody Bible Institute
or at Wheaton College.
[273]
For the most thorough, comprehensive, and probing analysis
of Acts and the related Pauline material of which I am aware, consult
Richard I. Pervo’s commentary in the Hermeneia series, Acts: A
Commentary (2009).
[274]
Clement of Alexandria [Stromata I 15:73] tells us that
“Herodotus relates that Hercules, having grown a sage and a student of
physics, received from the barbarian Atlas, the Phrygian, the columns of the
universe; the fable meaning that he received by instruction the knowledge
of the heavenly bodies.” Chapman’s translation of Homer’s Odyssey on the
other hand tells of the pillars’ donor: “... Atlas, who of all alive the motion
and the fashion doth command With his wise mind, whose forces
understand The inmost deeps and gulfs of all the seas, Who (for all his skill
of things superior) stays The two steep columns that prop earth and heav’n
...”
[275]
Arthur Drews. The Legend of Saint Peter. Translated from the
German, with Foreword and Appendix of Selected Reference Texts by
Frank R. Zindler [Austin, TX: American Atheist Press, 1997: 28–29].
[276]
Hermeneia. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2009: 12.
[277]
W.A. Oldfather. Epictetus: The Discourses. Books III–V.
Fragments. Encheiridion. Vol. II, Book IV, Chapter VII:6. The Loeb
Classical Library. [Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1928:362–
63].
[278]
Wilmer Cave Wright. The Works of the Emperor Julian, Vol.
III. The Loeb Classical Library. [Cambridge, MA: Harvard
University Press, 1961].
[279]
Ibid., 320–321.
[280]
Ibid., 340–341.
[281]
Ibid., 342–343.
[282]
Ibid., 376–377.
[283]
Ibid., 412–413.
[284]
New York: Oxford University Press, 1993.
[285]
1 Corinthians 11:23 For I have received of the Lord that
which also I delivered unto you, That the Lord Jesus the same night in
which he was betrayed took bread: 24 And when he had given thanks, he
brake it, and said, Take, eat: this is my body, which is broken for you: this
do in remembrance of me. 25 After the same manner also he took the cup,
when he had supped, saying, This cup is the new testament in my blood:
this do ye, as oft as ye drink it, in remembrance of me. 26 For as often as ye
eat this bread, and drink this cup, ye do shew the Lord’s death till he come.
27 Wherefore whosoever shall eat this bread, and drink this cup of the Lord,
unworthily, shall be guilty of the body and blood of the Lord. 28 But let a
man examine himself, and so let him eat of that bread, and drink of that cup.
29 For he that eateth and drinketh unworthily, eateth and drinketh
damnation to himself, not discerning the Lord’s body.
[286]
Matt. 11:17; Luke 7:32 “We have piped unto you, and ye have
not danced…”
[287]
R. Joseph Hoffmann (editor). Sources of the Jesus Tradition:
Separating History from Myth [Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 2010:
145].
[288]
An example of “a Christian inscription still with the symbols
D M S proper for a Pagan epitaph” is given by Pasquale Testini on page 331
of his Archeologia Cristiana: Nozioni Generali Dalle Origini Alla Fine Del
Sec. VI, Desclée & C. — Editori Pontifici, Roma (no date; 1958?).
[289]
Bruce J. Malina, On the Genre and Message of Revelations:
Star Visions and Sky Journeys [Peabody, MA: Hendricson, 1995].
[290]
Bart D. Ehrman, Did Jesus Exist? The Historical Argument
for Jesus of Nazareth [New York: HarperOne, 2012].
[291]
Ehrman corrects Tacitus’ Annals 15:44 concerning Pilate’s
title. In the disputed passage in the Annals, Tacitus gives Pontius Pilate the
title of procurator. As Ehrman notes on page 56, epigraphic evidence
proves that Pilate’s title was prefect. Curiously, he claims that “Tacitus
evidently did know some things about Jesus,” even though the possibly-
forged passage makes no mention of any Jesus from anywhere. Rather, it
mentions ‘Christians’ and a ‘Christus’ who was put to death by an
erroneously titled Pilate.
Despite his own scholarly blunder, Ehrman takes to task Mythicists who
claim such Pagan attestations to be interpolations. “…and so when they find
any such reference, they claim the reference was not original but was
inserted by Christians. But surely the best way to deal with evidence is not
simply to dismiss it when it happens to be inconvenient.” [DJE? 55]
But surely, the two pages detailing strong evidence of forgery in my
essay “Did Jesus Exist?” — which Ehrman read in volume one of my
Through Atheist Eyes — cannot be considered dismissal of evidence by me.
Rather, it seems that Ehrman simply dismissed evidence that he found
inconvenient.
[292]
Bart D. Ehrman, Did Jesus Exist? The Historical Argument
for Jesus of Nazareth. [New York: HarperOne, 2012].
.
[293]
One is planned by Maurice Casey, PhD, and another by a
consortium of scholars edited by R. J. Hoffmann.
[294]
Georges Ory, Le Christ et Jésus. [Brussels: Éditions du Cercle
d’Éducation Populaire, 1968: 29–38].
[295]
See J. Bowman, Samaritan Documents Relating to their
History, Religion and Life. [Pittsburgh: The Pickwick Press, 1977: 61 ff].
[296]
Erik Zara, ThD, “The Chrestianos Issue in Tacitus
Reinvestigated” (2009)
http://www.textexcavation.com/documents/zaratacituschrestianos.pdf; “A
Minor Compilation of Readings of Suetonius’ Nero 16.2,” 2011
http://www.textexcavation.com/documents/zarasuetoniuschristiani.pdf (both
online).
[297]
René Salm, The Myth of Nazareth: The Invented Town of
Jesus. [Cranford, New Jersey, 2008].
[298]
For the continuation of the tit-for-tat regarding this
excavation, please visit my online website devoted to Nazareth archaeology,
www.nazarethmyth.info, “Scandal 5.”
[299]
Biblical Archaeology Review [May–June 1999: 16]. At the
time of this writing (August 2012) the Web-site for the Nazareth Village is
http://nazarethvillage.com/home.php.
[300]
I also have addressed this bogus claim elsewhere:
“Christianity at the crossroads — Nazareth in the crosshairs.” American
Atheist [July–Aug. 2010: 8–12]. PDF online at:
http://www.nazarethmyth.info/naz4article.pdf. See also:
http://www.nazarethmyth.info/scandalsix.html.
[301]
“Christianity at the crossroads — Nazareth in the crosshairs.”
American Atheist [July–Aug. 2010: 9]
[302]
“Nazareth, Faith, and the Dark Option,” American Atheist
[Jan. 2009: 12 (online at http://www.nazarethmyth.info/naz3article.html).
[303]
The 61 page NVF report begins with the following sections:
“The Nazareth Farm site discovery and survey,” “The Nazareth Village
Farm: initial survey,” “GPS mapping survey,” followed by a lengthy
“Summary of excavated areas,” and then “The stone quarries.”
[304]
Fig. 19 follows. It is a coin from the time of Tiberius II (578–
82 CE). The authors add a few lines of description of the coin which,
incidentally, includes the Chi-Rho staurogram. Fig. 20 is of a Gaza Ware
bowl of the Early Bronze III.
[305]
Editors Note: When Hellenistic, Hasmonean, Early Roman,
and Byzantine coins were pulled like rabbits from a hat out of Alexandre’s
cache of 14th–15th-century coins, did anyone consider the implications of
finding coins dating to a period 332–63 BCE in the same cache with coins
nearly two thousand years younger? Does this mean that she had come upon
the safety deposit pot of a rare-coin collector? Does this mean that the
circulation half-life of Hellenistic coins was almost a millennium in
magnitude? If Hellenistic coins had circulated so long, why weren’t more
than “a few” Byzantine coins found? Was their circulation half-life for some
reason much shorter than that of the Hellenistic coins? If those Hellenistic
coins should ever be proved to exist, what evidence is there that they had
ever been to ‘Nazareth’ before the fifteenth century? If Alexandre ever gets
around to publishing her official report, may we hope that she will provide
therein some explanation for this numismatic mystery? As a scientist, Ms.
Alexandre may be assumed to be proficient in mathematics; and, since this
problem is ideal for application of Bayesian analysis, we would hope that
she would include the findings of such an analysis in her publication. —
FRZ
[306]
“Nazareth, Faith, and the Dark Option.” American Atheist
[Jan. 2009: 10–13] (online at
http://www.nazarethmyth.info/naz3article.html). See also my response to
Dark’s review at http:// www.nazarethmyth.info/bibl.html (#10).
[307]
Editor’s note: If the NVF theme-park project had any
scientific purposes at all, it would have carried out radiometric,
dendrochronological, and palynological studies of the soils and
archaeological matrices of the NVF area in order to determine the types of
crops being grown there (if any) and the agricultural microclimate at the
turn of the era. The fact that such studies were not done belies the
apologetic nature of the ‘archaeology’ associated with the venture. — FRZ
[308]
Frank R. Zindler, “Where Jesus Never Walked,” in: Through
Atheist Eyes: Scenes From a World That Won’t Reason, Vol. I: Religions and
Scriptures [Cranford, NJ: American Atheist Press, 2011: 36–37].
[309]
Cranford, NJ: American Atheist Press, 2008.
[310]
Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, Amherst, 2012.
[311]
The frequentist notion of probability considers it to be the
long-run expected frequency of occurrence of an event. The Bayesian view
of probability relates it to the degree of justifiability of belief and provides a
measure of the plausibility of an event given incomplete knowledge.
Bayesian probabilities can be revised in the face of new knowledge.
[312]
Kurt Aland, Matthew Black, Carlo M. Martini, Bruce M.
Metzger, and Allen Wikgren, The Greek New Testament, Third Edition
[New York: United Bible Societies, 1975]
[313]
Bart D. Ehrman, Did Jesus Exist? The Historical Argument
for Jesus of Nazareth [New York: HarperOne, 2012: 356].
[314]
William Benjamin Smith. Ecce Deus: Studies of Primitive
Christianity [London: Watts & Co., 1912: 314–315].
[315]
For an understanding of how book burning may have
contributed to our problem here, see Daniel Christopher Sarefield’s doctoral
dissertation Burning Knowledge: Bookburning in Ancient Rome [The Ohio
State University, 2004].
[316]
Richard Carrier informs me that this actually should be 1/74
(i.e., even more favorable to my hypothesis) in accord with Laplace’s Rule
of Succession, by which the probability that Mark would write 1:9 as it now
is would be (s + 1)/(n + 2), where s = 0 and n = 72, so that the probability
that Mark originally had the article here is 1/74.
[317]
Ideally, calculating such odds would involve calculating the
frequency of scribal error generally as well as the frequency of accidentally
dropping articles in particular prior to the first manuscript verification of the
contents of verse 1:9. Conceivably, Ehrman could refute my calculations by
determining those rates and showing that they favor the accidental-deletion
hypothesis strongly enough to alter favorably these calculations. It is ironic
that Ehrman needs to find a very high error rate here, whereas Christian
apologists are forced to agree with me that scribal errors of this sort are of
very low frequency!
[318]
As already noted, the probability of finding an accidentally
dropped article in the same verse as that containing the only mention of
Nazareth depends upon the frequency overall of accidentally dropped
articles. But how many article droppings in Mark can we expect there
would have to be before manuscript evidence could be expected to show
them? If, as Richard Carrier argues in his book Proving History, we argue a
fortiori and pick an absurdly high number such as 20, it will be seen that
Ehrman’s hypothesis is not helped nearly enough to save it.
Let us now consider the odds that one of those 20 deletions just
happened to occur here, at the precise spot where Nazareth makes its sole
appearance in the entire Gospel of Mark. A generous computation would
find that probability to be 20/666 = 0.03. However, there are actually four
places in Mark 1:9 where an article could be dropped. That means that the
probability of dropping the article specifically in front of the word ‘Jesus’
would be 0.03/4.00 — in other words, less than one chance in a hundred
that this was a scribal accident. If Ehrman argues for an error rate
significantly above 20, the entire integrity of the transmission of the text of
Mark collapses.
[319]
The oldest manuscripts of Mark end with verse 8 of chapter
16: “And they went out quickly, and fled from the sepulchre; for they
trembled and were amazed: neither said they any thing to any man; for they
were afraid.” Verses 9–20, constituting the so-called long ending, add the
post-resurrection appearances of Jesus and the verse so beloved of snake-
handling Pentecostals: “They shall take up serpents; and if they drink any
deadly thing, it shall not hurt them” [16:18].
A shorter ending also was added that reads [NEB] “And they delivered
all these instructions briefly to Peter and his companions. Afterwards Jesus
himself sent out by them from east to west the sacred and imperishable
message of eternal salvation.”
[320]
Ehrman might rightfully argue that throughout this chapter I
am assuming too high a rate of interpolation as compared to the relevant
rate of scribal errors. This is the most significant point where my hypothesis
might be endangered. It is possible that he might be able to reexamine the
data from his The Orthodox Corruption of Scripture to establish a baseline
rate for interpolations and show that the actual rate is too low. However,
that would amount to establishing a measurement baseline for determining
motivation to alter scriptures — something I find ridiculous on its face.
[321]
Reuben Swanson (editor), New Testament Greek Manuscripts:
Variant Readings Arranged in Horizontal Rows Against Codex Vaticanus:
Mark. [Sheffield, England: Sheffield Academic Press, 1995].
[322]
Robert Young, Young’s Analytical Concordance to the Bible,
Twenty-second Edition, revised Wm. B. Stevenson [New York: Funk &
Wagnalls Co., 1936].
[323]
This position is called ‘euhemerism’ or, for pronunciation’s
sake, evemerism, after the ancient Greek philosopher
Euhēmeros/Euhemerus, who surmised that the gods were ancient kings,
queens and heroes whose legends had been deified by the addition of
fabulous fairytales and mythical motifs. This process is also called
apotheosis, which did happen with some prominent figures such as
Alexander the Great and the Egyptian physician Imhotep. All pharaohs and
many other kings and rulers have been considered to be living ‘gods on
Earth.’ Each case must be weighed on its own merit. Thus, Mythicists
demonstrate specifically that the ‘Jesus Christ’ of the New Testament is a
fictional composite of characters, real and mythical, and that such a
composite of multiple ‘people’ is therefore no one. In other words, when the
mythological and midrashic layers, etc., are removed, there remains no
‘historical core’ to the onion.
[324]
As an example of the use of the concept ‘Jesus of Nazareth’ as
the basis for a ‘historical Jesus,’ in 2012 New Testament scholar Bart
Ehrman released his book Did Jesus Exist?, which was subtitled The
Historical Argument for Jesus of Nazareth. As Frank Zindler shows in his
rebuttal, “Bart’s Subtitle,” Ehrman fails to meet the burden of proof for this
supposed historical personage from a purported place called Nazareth.
[325]
Transliterations of other relevant terms in the New Testament
include Nazareth, Nazarat and Nazarath. The variations may be difficult to
explain, for writers purported to be familiar with a city by that name, from
which their all-important Lord and Savior had emanated, as well as in
consideration of the fact that the evangelists are claimed to have been
inspired infallibly by the Holy Spirit. The city-name ‘Jerusalem’ also varies
in the New Testament, appearing as Hierosolyma (G2414) and Hierousalēm
(G2419).
[326]
Luz, 148.
[327]
In December 2009, the media announced that “Jesus’s
neighbor’s house” had been found at Nazareth. René Salm analyzed the
account and declared it to be false. See my articles “Jesus neighbor’s house
found?” and “Nazareth scholar: ‘No house from Jesus’s time found there.’”
Concerning this purported find, Salm further remarks: “Typically, no
evidence dating to the turn of the era (‘time of Jesus’) has been
forthcoming. In addition, the small excavation site was quickly covered up,
so that no subsequent investigation is possible. A recently opened pilgrim
center now rises on the site, known as the Mary of Nazareth International
Center — with boutique, restaurant and theatre!” In his article “Nazareth:
René Salm’s preliminary response to Bart Ehrman,” Salm also addresses the
claim regarding coins raised by Ehrman. Even if coins were found at
Nazareth, where is the ‘city?’
[328]
In a number of articles, Salm has addressed the various
criticisms of the Nazareth-myth thesis in general and his book in particular,
such as in the reviews by Ken Dark and by Stephen J. Pfann and Yehudah
Rapuano.
[329]
Other spellings, transliterations, and terms related to or
confused with Nazarene/Nazorean include Nazrene, Nazarean, Natsarene,
Nasaraean, Nasorean, Naassene, etc. For an extensive discussion of these
various terms, see the work of Robert Eisenman, who shows that the New
Testament character James the Brother could be deemed an “extreme
Nazarite.”
[330]
Eisenman, 1998: 243.
[331]
Eisenman, 1998: 249.
[332]
Price, 54.
[333]
Guignebert, 82.
[334]
Eisenman, 1998: 841.
[335]
Although the canonical gospels are frequently dated to the last
quarter of the first century, there remains no clear and unambiguous
evidence of their emergence in the historical record before the last quarter
of the second century at which point they suddenly begin to be discussed by
a number of Church fathers. For more information, see my books Suns of
God and Who Was Jesus?, as well as Walter Cassels’ excellent study
Supernatural Religion.
[336]
See the detailed scholarship of Cassels’ Supernatural Religion.
[337]
Eisenman, 1998: 250.
[338]
Barnstone, 91–92.
[339]
Price, 53.
[340]
“Nazarene (title),” en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nazarene_(title)
[341]
For a further discussion of Epiphanius and Nazareth, see
Eisenman, 1998: 243; 2006: 513; etc.
[342]
See my article “Did Jesus Fulfill Prophecy?” and the chapter
by the same name in my book Who Was Jesus? for examples of Old
Testament ‘prophecies’ or other scriptures used overtly in the New
Testament.
[343]
In his article “Jesse’s ‘Lineage Tree’ and Its Buddhist
‘Branch,’” Michael Lockwood points out the interesting correspondence
between this concept and that of Buddhism, including Aśōka/Ashoka’s
Buddhist medical missionaries. It is possible that these Buddhists noticed
this idea in Jewish scripture and assisted in the midrash that eventually led
to the creation of the Christian ‘branch.’ He compares this concept with the
‘shoot’ of the Bodhi tree under which Buddha had purportedly attained
enlightened that Aśōka reputedly sent to Sri Lanka.
[344]
The name Delilah means ‘feeble’ (H1807), apparently
referring to the waning moon, which ‘robs’ the sun’s rays and drains his
strength as she fades away. Delilah is also surmised to be the winter
months, again robbing the sun of its rays and strengths. Samson’s ‘life’ as
depicted in the Bible in 12 episodes has been dissected as representing a
solar year. See, e.g., James Edwin Thorold Rogers’s Bible Folk-lore, 96ff. In
the past century, much effort has gone into dismissing this entire body of
literature, but the grounds upon which this endeavor has been taken are not
as solid as proponents would like. Indeed, after the declaration that “solar
mythology is dead,” we now have a new crop of superb scholars like Mark
S. Smith and J. Glen Taylor to show that there is more to biblical solar
mythology than meets the eye. See, e.g., Yahweh and the Sun: Biblical and
Archaeological Evidence for Sun Worship in Ancient Israel: “Probably the
most provocative issue related to the nature of sun worship in ancient
Israel...is the specific claim that Yahweh was identified with the sun.”
(Taylor, 20)
[345]
For more on this subject of Mandaeans, Nazoreans and John
the Baptist, etc., see my book Suns of God: Krishna, Buddha and Christ
Unveiled (531ff). There is much reason to surmise that John the Baptist,
rather than representing a purely ‘historical’ figure, constitutes a
compilation of characters such as the Babylonian god Oannes the Water-god
and the Egyptian god Anubis the Purifier. Again, see Suns of God, as well
as my book Christ in Egypt for more information. We have seen Price’s
comment above about “itinerant carpenters.” In the Encyclopedia
Britannica (“Mandaeans,” 17:557), we read, “As regards secular
occupation, the present Mandaeans are goldsmiths, ironworkers, and house
and ship carpenters.” It is further suggestive that the Gospel of Philip
emphasizes the occupation of Jesus’ stepfather, Joseph, as a carpenter.
(Barnstone, 96) The same can be said of the emphasis on the carpenter in
the Gnostic/Mandaean Book of John the Baptist, in which we can see the
relationship between the allegorical carpenter and divinity: “Let me warn
you, my brothers, of the god which the carpenter has joinered together. If
the carpenter has joinered together the god, who then has joinered together
the carpenter?” (See G.R.S. Mead) The god or hero as carpenter is a
recurring theme in mythology. (See, e.g., Suns of God, 366ff.)
[346]
1 Cor 15:3 For I delivered unto you first of all that which I
also received, how that Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures; 4
And that he was buried, and that he rose again the third day according to the
scriptures.
[347]
Romans 6:1 What shall we say then? Shall we continue in sin,
that grace may abound? 2 God forbid. How shall we, that are dead to sin,
live any longer therein? 3 Know ye not, that so many of us as were baptized
into Jesus Christ were baptized into his death? 4 Therefore we are buried
with him by baptism into death: that like as Christ was raised up from the
dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of
life. 5 For if we have been planted together in the likeness of his death, we
shall be also in the likeness of his resurrection: 6 Knowing this, that our old
man is crucified with him, that the body of sin might be destroyed, that
henceforth we should not serve sin.
[348]
1 Cor 1:18 For the preaching of the cross is to them that
perish foolishness; but unto us which are saved it is the power of God. 19
For it is written, I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and will bring to
nothing the understanding of the prudent. 20 Where is the wise? where is
the scribe? where is the disputer of this world? hath not God made foolish
the wisdom of this world? 21 For after that in the wisdom of God the world
by wisdom knew not God, it pleased God by the foolishness of preaching to
save them that believe. 22 For the Jews require a sign, and the Greeks seek
after wisdom: 23 But we preach Christ crucified, unto the Jews a
stumblingblock, and unto the Greeks foolishness; 24 but unto them which
are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God, and the wisdom
of God.
[349]
1 Cor 8:6 But to us there is but one God, the Father, of whom
are all things, and we in him; and one Lord Jesus Christ, by whom are all
things, and we by him.
[350]
Gal 3:13 Christ hath redeemed us from the curse of the law,
being made a curse for us: for it is written, Cursed is every one that hangeth
on a tree: 14 That the blessing of Abraham might come on the Gentiles
through Jesus Christ; that we might receive the promise of the Spirit
through faith.
[351]
1 Peter 2:21 For even hereunto were ye called: because Christ
also suffered for us, leaving us an example, that ye should follow his steps:
22 Who did no sin, neither was guile found in his mouth: 23 Who, when he
was reviled, reviled not again; when he suffered, he threatened not; but
committed himself to him that judgeth righteously: 24 Who his own self
bare our sins in his own body on the tree that we, being dead to sins, should
live unto righteousness: by whose stripes ye were healed.
[352]
Isaiah 53:4 Surely he hath borne our grief’s, and carried our
sorrows: yet we did esteem him stricken, smitten of God, and afflicted. 5
But he was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our
iniquities: the chastisement of our peace was upon him; and with his stripes
we are healed. 6 … and the Lord hath laid on him the iniquity of us all. 7
He was oppressed, and he was afflicted, yet he opened not his mouth: he is
brought as a lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep before her shearers is
dumb, so he openeth not his mouth.
[353]
Col 1:15 Who is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn
of every creature: 16 For by him were all things created, that are in heaven,
and that are in earth, visible and invisible, whether they be thrones, or
dominions, or principalities, or powers: all things were created by him, and
for him: 17 And he is before all things, and by him all things consist. 18
And he is the head of the body, the church: who is the beginning, the
firstborn from the dead; that in all things he might have the pre-eminence.
19 For it pleased the Father that in him should all fullness dwell; 20 And
having made peace through the blood of his cross, by him to reconcile all
things unto himself; by him, I say, whether they be things in earth, or things
in heaven.
[354]
1 Cor 15:1 Moreover, brethren, I declare unto you the gospel
which I preached unto you, which also ye have received, and wherein ye
stand.
[355]
Romans 16:25 Now to him that is of power to establish you
according to my gospel, and the preaching of Jesus Christ, according to the
revelation of the mystery, which was kept secret since the world began, 26
But now is made manifest, and by the scriptures of the prophets, according
to the commandment of the everlasting God, made known to all nations for
the obedience of faith: 27 To God only wise, be glory through Jesus Christ
for ever. Amen.
[356]
1 Cor 2:7 But we speak the wisdom of God in a mystery, even
the hidden wisdom, which God ordained before the world unto our glory: 8
Which none of the princes of this world knew: for had they known it, they
would not have crucified the Lord of glory.
[357]
The key verses in Ascension of Isaiah are 9:14–15, but a
convincing placement of the sacrifice in a spiritual dimension is the product
of the analysis of their larger context, including even other chapters.
[358]
Editor’s note: Psalm 17, a lengthy work, contains lines such
as
[359]
There are two principal references to the demon spirits as
crucifiers of Christ. 1 Cor. 2:8 tells us of a mystery “which none of the
rulers of this age knew: for had they known it, they would not have
crucified the Lord of glory.” The phrase “rulers of this age” is a widely
accepted reference (including in ancient times) to the demon spirits. The
argument is whether they did it directly or, as defenders of an historical
Jesus maintain, through earthly authorities. The other is the reference to
“the god of that world laying hands upon the Son and hanging him on a
tree” in Ascension of Isaiah 9:14, which is a reference to Satan and his
minions doing so in the firmament, as the passage can be shown to indicate.
[360]
A location in the heavens is derivable from Ascension of
Isaiah 9:14, and with somewhat less obviousness from Colossians 2:15,
which presents a heavenly setting for the cross in which Christ is
triumphant over the demons and leads them in a captive procession. A more
involved argument for support for a heavenly setting can be derived from
the New Testament Epistle to the Hebrews.
[361]
Israel Knohl, The Messiah before Jesus: The Suffering
Servant of the Dead Sea Scrolls, S. Mark Taper Foundation Imprint in
Jewish Studies, translated by David Maisel [Berkeley: U. Cal. Press,
2002:200].
[362]
J.P. Migne, Patrologiae Cursus Completus, etc., Series
Graeca Prior; Patrologiae Graecae Tomus XLI, S. Epiphanius
Constantiensis in Cypro Episcopus, Adversus Haereses, Paris, 1863,
columns 389–390.
[363]
New Edition with a Supplement, compiled by Henry George
Liddell and Robert Scott, rev. by Sir Henry Stuart Jones, Oxford, 1968.
[364]
Edward Maunde Thompson, An Introduction to Greek and
Latin Palaeography [Oxford: At the Clarendon Press, 1912: 78, 79, 81]; M.
Edmond Saglio, Dictionnaire des Antiquités Grecques et Romaines d’Après
les Textes et les Monuments. Vol. 4 [Paris: Librairie Hachette et Cie, 1918:
1133–34; (on-line edition: Tome 4, Volume 2, pages 329–330, article
“Scriptura”]. Perhaps I overstretch a bit here. In that document the symbolis
used for the word chronos generally. Only once, in a poem of Solon, is
‘Time’ personified in Aristotle’s Athenian Constitution.
[365]
The translation is that of Alexander Roberts and James
Donaldson, The Ante-Nicene Fathers: Volume I. The Apostolic Fathers —
Justin Martyr — Irenaeus [Grand Rapids, Michigan: Wm. B. Eerdmans
Pub. Co. 1985: 339].
[366]
Professor Hector Avalos (personal communication) cautions
me that the eight-letter spelling XPEICTOC does not actually appear in
surviving manuscripts of the Greek text of Irenaeus. Rather, the seven-letter
spelling XPICTOC is to be seen. He warns me of the danger of
extrapolating backward before the evidence of actual manuscripts. Indeed,
Migne’s Patrologia Graeca volume of Irenaeus shows the seven-letter
spelling along with the eight-letter description of the word. Avalos directs
my attention to Migne’s footnote that indicates the possibility that the Greek
χ was double-counted because in Latin it is rendered as ch (= 2 letters) and
so Christos = 8 letters. Certainly this is possible, but I think it is unlikely.
The same Latin footnote cites Petavius to the effect that just as Sige had
been spelled Seige, so too Christos must have been spelled Chreistos.
Interestingly, the note cites the evidence of the compound acrostic in
Constantine’s oration at Nicaea, discussed here in the next section.
[367]
The Greek text of Constantine’s speech and the Sibylline text
was published by Fridericus Adolphus Heinichen in his Eusebii Pamphili
Vita Constantine et Panegyricus atque Constantini ad Sanctorum Coetum
Oratio. Eusebii Pamphili Scripta Historica, Vol. II [Lipsiae: Hermann
Mendelssohn, 1869: 225–226]. An English translation of Constantine’s
words by Philip Schaff and Henry Wace is reprinted in Eusebius: Church
History, Life of Constantine the Great, and Oration in Praise of
Constantine, Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers of the Christian Church,
Second Series, Vol. I [Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans, 1982: 561–
590].
[368]
Lost Scriptures: Books That Did Not Make It Into the New
Testament [New York: Oxford University Press, 2003: 31].
[369]
Herdersche Verlagshandlung, Freiburg im Breisgau, 1917.
[370]
American Atheist Press, 2008.
[371]
Page 164.
[372]
Desclée & C.–Editori Pontifici, Roma [no date; 1958?].
[373]
F. Grossi Gondi, Catacombe tusculane: Roma e l’Oriente
[1914: 298].
[374]
Syracuse Cemetery of S. Giovanni: Agnellos Silloge, I.
[375]
A Šnân nell’Apamene: IGLS, 1403.
[376]
“Essendo immortale, ha sofferto numerosi tormenti; Gesù il
Cristo.
Della razza di Davide ramo celeste; Gesù il Cristo.
Glorificato, (figlio) unico immortale, su tutta la terra: Gesù il Cristo.
Per pietà è discesso [from the heavens] sulla terra; Gesù il Cristo.
Maestro della vera vita per l’eternità (ap’aiwnoV): Gesù il Cristo.
…Gesù Cristo … nato da Maria … (?)
Eusebio ha tutto compiuto.
[377]
Ehrman insists — it’s one of his “Two Key Data” proving the
historicity of Jesus of Nazareth — that no Jewish group at the turn of the
era expected its Messiah to be crucified, or even to ‘suffer.’ Apparently
influenced by Bultmann, he avers that Christian apologetic use of the
‘Suffering Servant’ of Isaiah 53 etc. was ad hoc scripture mining to account
for the embarrassing ‘fact’ that Jesus was being called the Messiah but had
been executed like a common criminal. Christians never would have made
up the idea that their messiah had been executed if they hadn’t been forced
to do so. Thus, Jesus must have existed and been crucified.
Israel Knohl, however, as we have already noted, has shown that several
documents belatedly published from the Dead Sea Scrolls show not only
that the Qumran community expected a Messiah would have to suffer à la
Isaiah 53, one of its leaders — a certain Menahem — actually arrogated that
prophetic model to himself! [Israel Knohl, The Messiah before Jesus: The
Suffering Servant of the Dead Sea Scrolls, S. Mark Taper Foundation
Imprint in Jewish Studies, translated by David Maisel, U. Cal. Press,
Berkeley, 2002:200].
[378]
“Iudaeos, impulsore Chresto, assidue tumultuantis Roma
expulit.” Lives of the Twelve Caesars, Claudius 25.
[379]
“Impulsore Chrestro? Suetonius’ Divus Claudius 25.4 in
Sources and Manuscripts,” Liber Annuus 61 [2011: 355–376].
[380]
Harvard Theological Review Harvard Theological Studies,
Number 32. The “Christians For Christians” Inscriptions of Phrygia:
Greek Texts, Translation and Commentary by Elsa Gibson [Missoula,
Montana: Scholars Press, 1978].
[381]
Inscriptions Attesting to Chreistos
CFCIP Inscription 1. Chreistianoi Chreistianois [9]
CFCIP Inscription 2. Chreistianoi Chreistianois [11]
CFCIP Inscription 22. Chreistianoi Chreistiano[is] [56] [248/9 CE]
CFCIP Inscription 32. Chreistianoi [103] [from Akmonia]
CFCIP Inscription 33. Chreistianē [105] [from Akmonia]
CFCIP Inscription 34. Chreistianō [106] [from Akmonia]
CFCIP Inscription 35. Chreistianou [107] [from Akmonia]
CFCIP Inscription 37. Chreistianos [110] [Hierokaisareia, Lydia]
CFCIP Inscription 38. Chreistianōn [111] [from Apameia]
CFCIP Inscription 41. Chreistianos [117] [Eumeneia] [242/3 CE]
CFCIP Inscription 43. Chreistianōn [120] [Karapinar] [prob. 4th C
CE]
Unnumbered Montanist inscription. Mountanē Chreistianē [138]
[probably 4th C]
[382]
Inscriptions Attesting to Chrēstos
CFCIP Inscription 3. …rēstianoi …rēstianois [12] [a Roman cross
substituting for the chi]
CFCIP Inscription 6. Chrēstianois [17]
CFCIP Inscription 8. …rēstianoi …rē<s>tianois [19] [ca. 305 CE]
CFCIP Inscription 9. Chrēssianoi Chrēssianō [22] [ca. 305 CE]
CFCIP Inscription 10. Chrēstianē [24] [ca. 305 CE]
CFCIP Inscription 11. Chrēstianois [26] [ca. 305 CE]
CFCIP Inscription 12. Chrēstianoi Chrēstianō [29] [ca. 305 CE]
CFCIP Inscription 13. …rēstianoi …rēstianois [30] [ca. 305 CE]
CFCIP Inscription 14. Chrēstianoi Chrēstianois [32]
CFCIP Inscription 19. Chrēstianoi Chrēstianois [50]
CFCIP Inscription 20. Chrēstianoi Chrēst[ian]ō [52]
CFCIP Inscription 21. Chrēstianoi [Chrēst]ianē [54]
CFCIP Inscription 24. Chrēstianoi Chrēstianois [58]
CFCIP Inscription 27. Chrētianoi Chrēstianois [71]
CFCIP Inscription 28. Chrētianoi Chrēstianoi[s] [77]
CFCIP Inscription 29. [Chrēstianoi Ch]rēstianois [81]
CFCIP Inscription 30. Chrēsianoi [100]
CFCIP Inscription 44. Chrēstianou [121] [Apollonia]
CFCIP Inscription 45. Chrēst[iano?] [124] [Amorion]
[383]
Inscriptions Attesting to Christos
CFCIP Inscription 7. Christia[noi Christi]anois [18]
CFCIP Inscription 18. [Christi]anoi Christianois [49]
CFCIP Inscription 23. Christianoi Christianō [58]
[384]
Hybrid Readings
CFCIP Inscription 17. Chrēsteiano[i] [ 47]
CFCIP Inscription 5. Christianoi Chrēstianois [15]
[385]
Translated by F.I. Andersen, “2 (Slavonic Apocalypse of)
Enoch (Late First Century A.D.)” in: The Old Testament Pseudepigrapha.
Volume I. Apocalyptic Literature and Testaments, ed. James H.
Charlesworth [Garden City, NY: Doubleday & Co., 1983: 138].
[386]
Luke 2:11: For unto you is born this day in the city of David a
Savior, which is Christ the LORD (sōtēr hos estin Christos Kyrios).
[387]
New York: HarperOne, 2012. Bart Ehrman recieved a shorter,
earlier version of this chapter but seems not to have been able to answer my
claims, as no mention whatsoever of my arguments is to be found in DJE?
[388]
Ignat. Smyrn. Chapters 2–3] [The Ante-Nicene Fathers, Vol. I.
The Apostolic Fathers — Justin Martyr — Irenaeus, [Grand Rapids, MI:
Wm. B. Eerdmans (reprint), 1985: 87].
[389]
Bart Ehrman gives a thorough account of the scribal and
scholarly struggles over the ‘original’ wording of this verse on pages 62–67
of The Orthodox Corruption of Scripture. Concerning the reading “this day
I have begotten thee,” he writes: “…in the view of many scholars, it makes
little sense for Luke’s divine voice to declare that Jesus has become the Son
of God at his baptism when he had already been born the Son of God (from
a virgin mother) two chapters earlier [emphasis original].” Still a cautious
scholar, though, he adds: “Unfortunately, as happens so frequently with
arguments of this kind, it is difficult to see which way the knife is more
likely to cut.”
The metaphor seems apt and I would suggest a possibility beyond those
Ehrman discusses with regard to this verse. The adoptionist reading “this
day have I begotten thee” would not conflict with the virgin-birth account in
chapter two if — as in Marcion’s gospel — chapter two had not yet been
prefixed to the story. It seems to me that the adoptionist reading of Luke
3:22 is in fact the best reading and that it thus adds to the evidence
supporting the thesis that the genealogy and birth narrative are not original
in Luke.
[390]
Mark 15:34b; Matthew 27:46b.
[391]
Cranford, NJ: American Atheist Press, 2008.
[392]
Oxford University Press, NY, 1993.
[393]
The Ante-Nicene Fathers, Vol. I. The Apostolic Fathers —
Justin Martyr — Irenaeus, edited by Alexander Roberts and James
Donaldson [Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans Pub. Co., 1985].
[394]
According to Bart Ehrman [The Orthodox Corruption of
Scripture], “Most of the fathers from the early second century (Papias) to
the late fourth (Jerome) claimed that it [the Ebionite gospel] comprised a
truncated form of Matthew … written in Hebrew, one that lacked its
opening chapters, that is, the narrative of Jesus’ miraculous birth.” [51]
Referring to Adolph von Harnack in explanatory note 42 on page 102, he
explains further: “Thus, the adoptionistic Ebionites were commonly
accused of using a truncated form of the first Gospel. Moreover, the docetist
Marcion, who denied the virgin birth for entirely different reasons, used a
version of Luke that was similarly abbreviated (because Christ could not
have been a part of the material world, he could not have been born; he
therefore descended fully grown from heaven in the fifteenth year of
Tiberias Caesar).”
Nota bene: this is not during the reign of Augustus or the census of
Quirinius and is long after the death of Herod the Great in 4 BCE!
[395]
Agnes Smith Lewis, The Four Gospels in Syriac, Transcribed
from the Sinaitic Palimpsest [Cambridge University Press, 1894].
[396]
It is surely of significance that of the five times that Luke
mentions the name of the alleged home-town of Jesus, the first four occur in
the chapters that Marcion was accused of excising but which he claimed
were interpolations. In all the MSS surveyed by Reuben Swanson in his
New Testament Greek Manuscripts: Luke [Sheffield: Sheffield Academic
Press, 1995], the first four occurrences are spelling variants of Nazaret/th.
The fifth and last occurrence of the name — in Luke 4:16 — it is spelled
Nazara in the best witnesses. It would appear that the earliest toponym was
spelled Nazara or a variant thereof. Then, when the birth narrative was
added (and in later harmonizing manuscripts) the name had somehow
evolved into Nazaret/th. It appears more than ever likely that the town
was created for the sake of the birth legends. They, in turn, were
created to counter the Docetists.
[397]
“Forasmuch as many have taken in hand to set forth in order a
declaration of those things which are most surely believed among us, 2
Even as they delivered them to us, which from the beginning were eye-
witnesses, and ministers of the word; 3 It seemed good to me also, having
had perfect understanding of all things from the very first, to write unto thee
in order, most excellent Theophilus, 4 That thou mightest know the
certainty of those things, wherein thou hast been instructed.”
[398]
Bart D. Ehrman and Zlatko Pleše, The Apocryphal Gospels,
Texts and Translations [Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011].
[399]
This reconstruction is based upon reconstructions by James
Hamlyn Hill (1891), August Han (1823), and Theodor Zahn (1888).
(Marcionite Research Library, www.marcionite-scripture.info © Melissa
Cutter 2010).
[400]
In Book IV, Chapter vii of his Adversus Marcionem, Tertullian
dilates derisively concerning the “descent” of Marcion’s Christ:
Is it not too bad as well, that Bart Ehrman and an army of historicists
who have preceded him have been unable to dig up a Proculus to avouch
the birth, death, or ascension of Jesus of Nazareth — after centuries of
digging?
[401]
Nazareth is unknown to the Old Testament, the two Talmuds
(which name 63 places in Galilee, roughly one town for every 4.25 mile-
square piece of land), to Josephus (who fortified a town less than two miles
from present-day Nazareth and names 45 places in Galilee, roughly one
town for every 5.00 mile-square piece of land), and to all other ancient
sources. Moreover, archaeology reveals that Nazareth was not inhabited at
the time Jesus of Nazareth should have been living there. (See René Salm’s
The Myth of Nazareth: The Invented Town of Jesus, American Atheist Press,
Cranford, NJ, 2008) Ehrman rejects the archaeological evidence and argues
further that Nazareth was just too small and insignificant to be noticed, even
though (1) it was supposedly well enough known and notorious to give rise
to the saying “Can anything good come out of Nazareth?” [John 1:46; OCS
57; DJE? 189]; (2) it is called a polis by Luke; and (3) it is claimed to have
had a synagogue!
The Gospel of Mark already had described ‘the Jesus’ as a Nazōrenos or
a Nazōraios, an epithet that I think was derived from the Hebrew word
netser (‘branch’) — a word that appears in the messianic text Isaiah 11:1.
(“And there shall come forth a rod out of the stem of Jesse, and a Branch
shall grow out of his roots.”) When it became necessary to invent a home
town for a Jesus made of flesh and bones, it would have been natural that
someone bearing the epithet the Nazorean must have come from a place
called Nazara or even Nazareth. (The great variability in the MSS in the
spelling of both the epithet and the city names makes it hard to know what
specific etymology to pursue.) Also, I would argue, ‘Jesus of Nazareth’ is
an epithet like ‘Jimmy the Greek’ — with the important distinction that the
latter name describes a geographic and demographic reality, while the
former does not.
[402]
See discussion of Matt. 2:23 below.
[403]
“But you, Bethlehem in Ephratah, small as you are to be
among Judah’s clans, out of you shall come forth a governor for Israel…”
[NEB]
“And thou, Bethleem, house of Ephratha, art few in number to be
reckoned among the thousands of Judah; yet out of thee shall one come
forth to me to be a ruler of Israel.” [LXX]
The Bethlehem clan is mentioned in Esra 2:21:
The children of Bethlehem, an hundred and twenty-three” [KJV]
“The children of Bethlaem (huioi Bethlaem) a hundred twenty-
three” [LXX]
[404]
Aviram Oshri, “Where Was Jesus Born?” Archaeology, Vol.
58, No. 6, November-December, 2005.
[405]
Jodi Magness, “Holy Land Revealed,” The Great Courses,
The Teaching Company.
[406]
Sonoma: Polebridge Press, 1988.
[407]
Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1987.
[408]
See Bart D. Ehrman, Forged: Writing in the Name of God—
Why the Bible’s Authors Are Not Who We Think They Are [New York:
HarperOne, 20011: 239–40].
[409]
Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2000.
[410]
This is not to say that this verse does not fulfill another
function long understood, viz., creating a link to the Jewish scriptures. It
seems likely that the very attempt to Judaize primitive Christianity was for
the purpose of reifying and refuting a Docetic deity who previously had
existed only in mythic time and space.
[411]
John 1:45 Philip findeth Nathanael, and saith unto him, We
have found him, of whom Moses in the law, and the prophets, did write,
Jesus of Nazareth, the son of Joseph. 46 And Nathanael said unto him, Can
there any good thing come out of Nazareth?
[412]
See footnote 26 on page 226 for details.
[413]
“Capernaum — a Literary Invention,” Journal of Higher
Criticism, Vol. 12, No. 2 [Fall 2006:1–27].
[414]
Earl Doherty. Jesus: Neither God Nor Man. The Case For a
Mythical Jesus [Ottawa, Canada: Age of Reason Publications, 2009]
[415]
Bart D. Ehrman, Did Jesus Exist? The Historical Argument
for Jesus of Nazareth [New York: HarperOne, 2012].
[416]
The bones now venerated in the basement of the Vatican are
actually the bones of two men, an old woman, chickens, pigs, and a mouse,
as I have shown in my essay “Of Bones and Boners: Saint Peter at the
Vatican,” Through Atheist Eyes. Volume One: Religions & Scriptures
[Cranford, NJ: American Atheist Press, 2011: 99–122].
[417]
Details of how this came about can be found in my essay
“Where Jesus Never Walked” [ibid.: 49–50].
[418]
An account of the outrageous ‘archaeological research’ that
has been done at the present-day site of Telhum ̣ as well as proof that
Josephus did not in fact know of a town called Capernaum can be found in
ibid. [38–44] and in my technical paper “Capernaum — A Literary
Invention,” Journal of Higher Criticism, Volume 12, No. 2, Fall 2006: 1–
27.
[419]
Could there be a more appropriate place to curse a fig tree
than Bethphage — ‘House of Figs’ in Hebrew?
[420]
Frank R. Zindler, The Jesus the Jews Never Knew: Sepher
Toldoth Yeshu and the Quest of the Historical Jesus in Jewish Sources,
Cranford, NJ, American Atheist Press, 2003. It appears that Ehrman did not
read the copy of this book that I gave to him.
[421]
René Salm, The Myth Of Nazareth: The Invented Town Of
Jesus,[Cranford, NJ: American Atheist Press, 2008].
[422]
Aviram Oshri, “Where Was Jesus Born?” Archaeology, Vol.
58, No. 6, November-December, 2005: 42–45.
[423]
Eusebius, Historia Ecclesiastica, I, xiii, ca. 325 CE.
[424]
See my chapter “Bart Ehrman and the Body of Jesus of
Nazareth.”
[425]
Although an astral account of the nativity of Christ or Jesus is
to be found in the twelfth chapter of Revelation, it is so symbolic and
allegorical that nothing resembling biography can be gleaned therein. It is,
however, the sort of nativity narrative one might expect for a divine figure.
[426]
Robert W. Funk, Roy W. Hoover, and The Jesus Seminar, The
Five Gospels: The search for the Authentic Words of Jesus [New York:
Macmillan Pub. Co., 1993].
[427]
Robert W. Funk and the Jesus Seminar, The Acts of Jesus: The
Search for the Authentic Deeds of Jesus, [San Francisco,
HarperSanFrancisco, 1998].
[428]
Dennis Ronald MacDonald, Christianizing Homer: The
Odyssey, Plato, and The Acts of Andrew [New York, Oxford University
Press, 1994]; Dennis R. MacDonald, The Homeric Epics and the Gospel of
Mark [New Haven, Yale University Press, 2000].
[429]
Ben Edwin Perry, Aesopica: A Series of Texts Relating to
Aesop or Ascribed to Him or Closely Connected with the Literary Tradition
That Bears His Name, Vol. One: Greek and Latin Texts [Urbana, Univ.
Illinois Press, 1952: 326].
[430]
I was surprised to discover that John S. Kloppenborg, the
famous Q authority, was unaware of this Aesop borrowing. Neither his Q
Parallels [Sonoma, Polebridge Press, 1988] nor The Critical Edition of Q
with James M. Robinson and Paul Hoffmann [Minneapolis, Fortress Press,
2000] notes the Aesopic origin of Q 7:32b.
[431]
James M. Robinson, The Nag Hammadi Library, 3rd rev. ed.
[San Francisco: Harper, 1988: 8–9].
[432]
Thomas L. Brodie seems to have come very close to doing
exactly this. In his The Birthing of the New Testament: The Intertextual
Development of the New Testament Writings [Sheffield, England: Sheffield
Phoenix Press, 2004] he demonstrates massive dependence of the New
Testament upon the Septuagint version of Deuteronomy, Ben Sirach, and
the Elija-Elisha narratives of Kings. Having ‘come out of the closet’ as a
Mythicist, he summarizes this information in his personal, autobiographical
Beyond the Quest for the Historical Jesus: Memoir of a Discovery
[Sheffield, England: Sheffield Phoenix Press, 2012]. The “Epilogue” of the
book is a brief critique of Ehrman’s Did Jesus Exist?, and Brodie ends the
entire book with the comment, “Ehrman’s book is to be welcomed. Despite
its ill-founded version of history, it helps bring the issue of Jesus’ historical
existence and other important issues about the nature of belief and religion
to the centre of discussion.” Brodie is the Director of the Dominican
Biblical Centre at Limerick, Ireland, and remains a faithful Roman Catholic
as this book goes to press.
[433]
The absence of historical evidence of the Twelve is even more
significant than the lack of evidence for Jesus. After all, what exactly would
have been reported of Jesus if he didn’t do any of the miracles? The
apostles, however, had as their main function attracting the attention of the
Roman world. My essay “The Twelve: Further Fictions From the New
Testament” [Through Atheist Eyes, Vol. I: 81–98] examines this problem in
some detail. I don’t know if Ehrman simply did not read this essay in his
obviously hasty preparation for Did Jesus Exist? or if he was unable to
answer my argument and so avoided mentioning it.
[434]
“Nazareth was a little one-horse town (not even that; it was
more like a one-dog town) that no one had ever heard of, so far as we can
tell, before Christianity.” Did Jesus Exist?: 189.
[435]
When Herod Antipas founded Tiberias as a Roman city
sometime around 20 CE, he violated Jewish ritual law by building it on the
top of graves. At the time Jesus should have been traveling in the area, there
would have been great and noisy tumult concerning the propriety of Jews
living in the new city. Curiously, there is no record of anyone asking Jesus
for his opinion about the city, which is mentioned only in the Gospel of
John. In John 6:1 the Sea of Tiberias is mentioned simply as another name
for the Sea of Galilee. In John 6:23, the city of Tiberias is mentioned simply
as a departure point for boats needed in the narrative. The Sea of Tiberias is
mentioned once more in the anti-Docetic appendix added later to the
Gospel, in the first verse of chapter 21. Nowhere is there any hint that the
authors of this gospel had any real knowledge of the city and the religious
controversy engulfing it at the time Jesus should have been in the
neighborhood.
[436]
Photius of Constantinople. Myriobiblon Sive Bibliotheca. In
Vol. 103, cols. 65–66 of Patrologia Graeca. Edited by J.-P. Migne [Paris,
1857–1886].
[437]
I have argued [The Jesus the Jews Never Knew: 75–88] that
‘Brother of the Lord’ being understood as signifying ‘Brother of Jesus’ is an
anachronism dating from a later period when ‘Lord’ had become an epithet
or title of Jesus alone not just of Christ or Christ-Jesus. In the Septuagint —
the ‘Old Testament’ for most early Christians it would appear — the word
Kyrios (‘Lord’) was used as a pronounceable substitute for the
unpronounceable shem — the power-name Yahweh. In the Hebrew Bible,
the name is written as a so-called Tetragrammaton — the four
unpronounceable letters YHWH usually being written in Paleohebrew
script. When the Hebrew text had to be read aloud, under pain of death
[Leviticus 24:16] YHWH must never be pronounced correctly (i.e., Yahway
or Yahweh). Instead, the Hebrew word Adonai (‘my Lords’) was spoken in
its place.
When YHWH had to be transcribed into Greek, however, the magical,
secret name of God could not be spelled out with all its vowels showing. So
the substitute word ‘Adonai’ was translated into Greek as Kyrios. I have
argued that ‘Brother of the Lord’ probably referred to a brotherhood of
monk-like ascetics in special service to Kyrios-Yahweh. How this
brotherhood became associated with early Christianity is unclear.
[438]
Bart D. Ehrman, Did Jesus Exist?:120 et al.
[439]
A masterful analysis of the Stoic dimensions of the Epistle of
James is to be found in Logos and Law in the Letter of James: The Law of
Nature, the Law of Moses, and the Law of Freedom, by Matt A. Jackson-
McCabe [Supplements To Novum Testamentum 100, Atlanta: Society of
Biblical Literature, 2001]. Although the author accepts the historicity of
‘James the Brother of Jesus’ and the priority of Jewish Christianity, he
nevertheless demonstrates the pseudonymity of the letter. He concludes his
analysis on page 253 with the observation that
[440]
Bart D. Ehrman, Did Jesus Exist?: 189.
[441]
Bart D. Ehrman, Did Jesus Exist?: 189.
[442]
Ibid,: 191. It must not be thought that Ehrman is being
facetious or alone in his judgment here. Some years ago I polled my fellow
members of The Jesus Project, asking them the question: “If it could be
shown conclusively that present-day Nazareth was not inhabited at the time
of Jesus, would you continue to believe in his historical reality?” A large
fraction answered “yes” to the question.
[443]
Through Atheist Eyes, Volume One [Cranford, NJ: American
Atheist Press, 2011: 27–56].
[444]
Were it the case that Mark 1:9 (“…Jesus came from Nazareth
in Galilee…”) was not an interpolation (contrary to my opinion), then the
Jesus of Mark also could not have existed!
[445]
Because they are not defined with respect to specific times,
places, and physical properties, one is perpetually on a wild-goose chase
trying to find them. No matter where we might look, we are told that we
simply didn’t look in the right place or at the right time. All such gods are
the equivalents of undetectable gremlins. In the case of Jesus of Nazareth,
however, an exhaustive search is possible in principle, and René Salm has
done an exhaustive analysis of the Roman Catholic “venerated sites” owned
and operated by the Franciscans and has found no compelling evidence of
habitation at the turn of the era. Desperate claims are now being made that
the right spots haven’t been examined, and other parts of the Nazareth hill
are being claimed to show proof of habitation at the proper time. Alas, by
admitting that the venerated sites are not the correct locations for the holy
homes of the Jesus family, it must now be admitted that the Roman Catholic
Church was wrong in its profitable claim to the property deeds for Mary’s
home and Joseph’s workshop. Perhaps an Evangelical Protestant-run theme
park such as The Nazareth Village Farm Project will be able to stake a more
durable claim.
It is worth noting, moreover, that the Gospel of Luke makes the claim that
the Nazareth of Jesus had a synagogue at the top of the hill at the edge of a
cliff. [Luke 4:28–30] These details absolutely rule out present-day Nazareth
as the town of Jesus. Are there any hills in Galilee with first-century
synagogue remains atop them bordering a cliff? I don’t think so, but tour
guides carrying out archaeological research might be able to find one. Or
create one.
[446]
Two thoroughly annotated versions of this antigospel have
been reprinted as appendices A and B of my book The Jesus the Jews Never
Knew: Sepher Toldoth Yeshu and the Quest of the Historical Jesus in Jewish
Sources [Cranford, NJ: American Atheist Press, 2003].
[447]
Frank Parise, (editor), The Book of Calendars [New York:
Facts On File, Inc., 1982: 12–43].
[448]
Shlomo Pines, “The Jewish Christians of the Early Centuries
of Christianity According to a New Source,” Proceedings of the Israel
Academy of Sciences and Humanities 2 [1966: 237–310].
[449]
See the extended arguments and evidence of René Salm in his
The Myth Of Nazareth, The Invented Town Of Jesus [Cranford, NJ:
American Atheist Press, 2008].
[450]
Not having taken the time to read my explanation of the
tradition of Jesus living into his forties or even fifties [The Jesus the Jews
Never Knew: 127–29], Ehrman writes in his introduction to “The Letter of
Pilate to Claudius” [The Apocryphal Gospels: Texts and Translations (with
Zlatko Pleše, Oxford University Press, 2011: 511], “It is not clear what to
make of the anachronistic reference to Claudius as the emperor at the time
of Jesus’ death (rather than Tiberius; Claudius would not assume the throne
for another decade). The author of this letter, living so long after the fact,
may simply not have known the facts of Roman imperial history.” Actually
there appear to have been many attempts post hoc to locate Jesus in the
frame of human history. This is hard to understand only if he had actually
lived.
[451]
The Jesus the Jews Never Knew: 127–129.
[452]
John 8:56. “Your father Abraham was overjoyed to see my
day; he saw it and was glad. 57. The Jews protested, ‘You are not yet fifty
years old. How can you have seen Abraham?’” This is followed by the
apparently Docetic verses 58-59: “Jesus said, ‘In very truth I tell you,
before Abraham was born, I am.’ They picked up stones to throw at him,
but Jesus was not to be seen; and he left the temple.”
[453]
The Catholic Encyclopedia
(http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/03738a.htm), article “Chronology,
General,” section “Beginning of the year.”
[454]
The Egyptologist Margaret Morris (personal communication)
has informed me that 38 BCE corresponds to the year in which worship of
Octavian (Augustus Caesar) began in the Iberian Peninsula.
[455]
Frank R. Zindler, “What does it mean to be scientific?”
Through AtheistEyes: Scenes From a World That Won’t Reason, Volume
Two: Science & Pseudoscience [Cranford, NJ: American Atheist press,
2011: 110–126.]
[456]
Bart D. Ehrman, The Orthodox Corruption Of Scripture: The
Effect of Early Christological Controversies on the Text of the New
Testament [New York: Oxford University Press, 1993].
[457]
We are debating the historicity of Jesus of Nazareth merely
because the Orthodox won the war. If any one of the non-Jewish ‘heresies’
had won out, the notion that Jesus of Nazareth had ever been born would
then be the heresy. We have no reason to believe the Orthodox more than
we believe the Docetists or Gnostics. There is danger in believing any of
them. Caveat creditor!
[458]
Bart D. Ehrman, Forged: Writing in the Name of God — Why
the Bible’s Authors Are Not Who We Think They Are [New York:
HarperOne, 2011: 140–41].
[459]
The first passage is Mark 1:9, that says that “Jesus came from
Nazareth in Galilee and was baptized in the Jordan by John.” For important
technical reasons presented in my chapter “Bart Ehrman and Mark’s Jesus
apo Nazareth,” I have argued that this passage is an interpolation, but
Ehrman considers it authentic. The other passage is in Acts 10:38, where
the Lucan author has made up a speech in which Peter says “You know
about Jesus of Nazareth how God anointed him with the Holy Spirit and
with power.” (Readers may be warned that in reading the KJV books of
Mark and Acts many more occurrences of the word ‘Nazareth’ are to be
found, but they are mistranslations from the Greek text which uses titles
that should be rendered Nazarene or Nazorean. Interestingly, Ehrman has
also made such a mistake at least once. In his translation of “The Letter of
Tiberius to Pilate” (The Apocryphal Gospels: Texts and Translations, Bart
D. Ehrman and Zlatko Pleše [Oxford U. Press, 2011: 532–33]) he mentions
“Jesus of Nazareth.” This, however, is a KJV-type mistranslation of Iēsou
ton [sic] Nazōraiou — ‘of Jesus the Nazorean.’
[460]
Did Jesus Exist?: 43.