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Loading...I’ve been talking about how we remember things — or misremember things, or make up memories of things — as a way of getting to the question of how, in our heads, we think about what Jesus said and did. This is all part of my larger project that came incarnated (inletterated?) in my book Jesus Before the Gospels.
As I point out early in the book, we remember most things just fine, but we also often get things either partially or completely wrong. Memories can be frail, faulty, and false. And not just our individual memories, but also the “memories” we have as a society. In previous posts I illustrated the point by talking about social memories of Abraham Lincoln and Christopher Columbus.
But what about faulty memories of Jesus (see my last post if it doesn’t make sense to talk about “remembering” someone we never knew!). To get to this question, in my book, I talk about some of the modern representations of Jesus by current-day scholars and popular authors – for example, Jesus as political insurgent and revolutionary, or Jesus as a kind of proto-marxist, or as a kind of proto-feminist, or as an apocalyptic prophet, or as a divine guarantor of great success and wealth, etc.
In my book I introduce the question of how Jesus was remembered in antiquity I begin by discussing how figures connected with him were remembered. Here I deal with “memories” of the apostle Peter, Judas Iscariot, and Pontius Pilate by telling some of the stories in circulation about each of them, stories that today can be seen as apocryphal, but for some early Christians were the ways these people were remembered.
That takes me then to apocryphal stories about Jesus which, again, appear clearly to us as
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Two things. First as you mentioned in another post, people in different communities had different experiences with Jesus and therefore would have told different stories about him. At some point these stories came together but who knows what of them were true, what were exaggerated and what was added, deleted or compromised to make them all fit together?
Second, some story tellers never let the facts get in the way of a good story. And who do we listen to and whose stories do we remember? Those of the best story teller, the one who exaggerates and makes things the most interesting and would be the ones remembered, passed on and embellished. I don’t know how scholars would quantify that though.
I went to a catholic school for 8 years, we went to mass every week day and Sundays during the school year, and one of the priests gave very boring sermons, it was painful to listen to, and I couldn’t remember a thing he ever said ( except don’t go shopping on Sunday, this was when stores started to open on Sundays).
Bart, I oftentimes hear scholars talk about when and where the first usage of a certain translation of a particular Greek or Hebrew word appears in the bible or other literature. I was wondering if there’s a good resource for laypeople that would be useful for ascertaining such info to enrich our study.
Much love and respect!!!
Ah, that would be useful! But I don’t know of any resource like that. Maybe someone else does on the blog, who can tell us?
Certainly, it would have been possible for the disciples to have deliberately memorized the parables and major events as they witnessed them. If they had used memory techniques such as the method of loci, known for several centuries prior to Jesus, it would have been easy to commit them to memory and to maintain a canonical form. But a question arises: what took them so long to write any of it down? If these Jesus stories, both about and by, were so important why were they not quickly recorded in the surer form of memory, namely, writing?
I don’t think these Aramaic-speaking Galilean peasants had heard of Simonides or the Memory Palace!
Wasn’t it F F Bruce who suggested that Jesus was followed around by the First Century version of stenographers who wrote down everything he said?
Whoa. Really? If you find out where he says that, I’d love to know it!
In regards to invented memories I find an interesting contrast between Acts 10:41 which says the risen Jesus appeared “not to all the people but to us who had been chosen by God as witnesses, who ate and drank with him after he rose from the dead.” But in 1st Corinthians Pauls says Jesus appeared to 500.
This could be an invented memory, but it raises the question, did Luke have access to Paul’s letters? If so, why the discrepancy in how many people saw Jesus after the resurrection?
Good point. As to Luke: I don’t see any evidence that he knew Paul’s letters. If he did know them, he apparently didn’t know them very well!
Prof. Ehrman,
No doubt of the biggest challenges (to the historian as well as the original gospel writers I imagine) is reconstructing the context behind Jesus’ sayings from incomplete/conflicting data. (Is that why GThomas includes only sayings?)
For instance, we have two variations on the Sermon of the Mount, in Matthew and Luke. Context, imo, matters greatly to the impact and significance of the sayings.
Like, who were the audience? (Matthew 5:27 seems to imply that they are largely male and married) What do the parables tell us about them? (to me they suggest a good deal of social/wealth inequality) Are these sermons composites and summaries of things he said at different times/places to different people in different ways?
How cagey was Jesus being? On the one hand we have Jesus in court saying everything he preached was public, but earlier he admits to framing his parables so that only few will understand. Were their potential spies for Herod/Pilate in the audience, and knowing this, he’d have to be carefully ambiguous with all that coming kingdom talk that probably got his mentor into trouble. His statement about taxes seems similarly motivated)
I’d be interested to hear your thoughts on that last part!
Yes, the sermons (e.g., Sermon on the Mount; Sermon on the Plain) are composites; the materials appear largely to derive from Q etc.
Thanks for sharing this again! I’m really enjoying reading your book. I’m nearing the end. These posts on the book are good revision for me!
Hi Dr. Ehrman, I have a question about the “lamb of God” statement:
It is striking to me that the “lamb of God” metaphor of Jesus only appears in John, since the “death of Jesus brings ransom” idea is in other gospels and Paul, too. So, is it that the story chain likely to be: “Jesus is resurrected” -> “Jesus’s death is fulfilling something” -> “Jesus’s death is a ransom” -> “Jesus is the ‘lamb of God'”, as the earliest development of understanding of his death?
But that brings a dilemma to me for the Gospel writers: If Jesus needs to be “lamb of God”, he cannot have the “last supper” with his disciples since he needs to die before that meal. But if it is important for the supper to deliver the “this is my body” address, he “needs” to die the next day. As this is so obvious, would the early apologist (like church fathers) addressed this issue before modern time critical scholars?
Also, what is the modern reconcilers say about this? I see people reconcile Peter’s deny by saying Peter denied twice of thrice. Did anyone try to reconcile the death dilemma by saying Jesus died (and resurrected) twice?
Yes somethig like that appears to be the line of thought. But To be the lamb of God would not *require* him to killed on the same day as the Passover lamb. The Passover lamb itself, as it turns out, wsa not an atoning sacrifice. The reason for thinking of Jesus as teh Passover lamb was simply that (a) he died around Passover and (b) his death was connected with salvation (as was the lambs). But no, I’ve never heard of anyone try to reconcile John and Mark by saying Jesus’ was crucified on two occasoins.