Loading...Just to show how strange and, uh, detailed scholarship can be even in New Testament studies, I want to conclude this small thread on the five-chapter book of 1 John by discussing a textual variant in its text that I was obsessed with for years. It involves how different manuscripts word just one verse (1 John 4:3), and in fact just one word in that one verse, which is, as it turns out, only a four-letter word. Early in my career I wrote a 22-page article on this word. Ha! (I guess that’s over five pages per letter….)
The word is
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“And that is why he could begin doing his miracles then – not earlier – and to deliver his spectacular teachings.” Could works like the Infancy Gospel of Thomas have been written to counter views like these? After all, if Jesus could perform miracles as a boy, then he certainly couldn’t have gained his powers only at baptism?
Yup!
I personally believe that the spirit and body are supposed to be one, though with the spirit perhaps being the primary or greater influence. That we can/are supposed to fill our bodies with love, light, and positive energy, and so witness eternity and become eternal. This is what Christ did and how he became eternal and maintained his eternal nature.
Concerning the passage you quote from the Apocalypse of Peter, there are reports of people having discorporated, that is, having temporarily left their bodies when going through a particularly painful or horrid series of events. It doesn’t mean that the body is an awful, horrid thing that we need to disregard, trash, or throw away. It needs to be embraced and taken care of, but the spirit, that is a positive spirit, needs to take the lead in a certain sense.
(something I’ve learned from the bible is that spirit, or a spirit, can be negative or positive. So saying “spirit” doesn’t automatically mean something positive.)
The relationship between the spirit and the body is a big deal in the bible and the extra-canonical texts.
How do we get this right, without separating them into two totally separate blocks of being and understanding?
The mind/spirit/body problem has so far proved insoluble (at least to everyone’s satisfaction)
I feel like sometimes I “get it”. That is, I understand the mind/spirit/body relationship in a real positive healthy and balanced way. – – – Other times not so much.
There’s a lot of rhetoric out there that makes it really hard to come to a balanced and harmonious understanding of these things. – Condemning the body doesn’t help. Making it higher and more important than inner peace and psychology and inner spirit doesn’t help either.
I think that the spirit should embrace the body and take care of et, but the body shouldn’t control and overwhelm, and overshadow our inner spirit.
It’s real hard to put into words. I haven’t got it quite right in what I’ve said here. Perhaps it’s beyond words or outside of words.
In the context of Jews having the breath of God to animate them rather than a spirit, all the bibles I’ve seen Samuel is brought back from the dead like a spirit comtacted by a medium rather than awakened from a deep sleep.
Yes, people say that. But read the passage closely. He’s not a spirit. He’s actually even wearing the same clothes!
Hello Dr.Bart Erhman
Did the people who tell stories about Jesus use mnemonic devices?
There’s no reference to it in our sources.
Interesting. In my experience, current Christianity seems to lean more towards the Gnostic view of the separability of body and soul, though not of Jesus and Christ.
Do you think there really was a historical figure named Cerinthus, active in Asia Minor in the late 1st century, who (while heavily polemicized in later sources) likely held some form of early docetic beliefs?
Following that, do you think the historical John (whether the Apostle or the Elder) may have come into conflict with him, even if the specific stories about that conflict (like the bathhouse incident) are probably legendary?
Also, if John did oppose a docetic teacher, could 1 John reflect the perspective of the historical John who “heard, saw, and touched” Jesus, with the letter perhaps written by someone close to him, familiar with his broad theological position against Cerinthus, in order to combat the separatists addressed in 1 John?
Lastly, I’ve read that Polycarp’s letter to Philippians (7:1-3), while not explicitly quoting 1 John, shares similar verbal and thematic parallels with it. Are you convinced that Polycarp knew 1 John?
I suppose there was a Cerinthus. I doubt if either John ever had any connection with him. It’s possible that the Polycarp knew of 1 John, yes. (That would have no bearing on whether he knew the apostle John) It’s interesting that Polycarp is said to have been a disciple of John but he doesn’t quote the Gospel of John (he does quote a lot of other NT books)
Bart, you wrote: “Orthodox church writers such as Irenaeus, Hippolytus, and Tertullian…”
One should add that “orthodox” is a label which, if misapplied, can mislead. If we concede that the apostles’ doctrine was the correct one, and was upheld and accepted until their demise, then Irenaeus, Hippolytus, and Tertullian are “heterodox” church writers, to wit, they are heretics.
Thus, the clarification that (mainstream) Christianity is based on heresy is worth noting.
Presenting Yeshu as a hybrid was needed to push the Trinity idol and fulfills an anti-Christ criterion:
“Not acknowledging that Yeshua the Messiah came as a human being. This is the mark of the deceiver and the anti-Messiah.” (2 Jn 1:7, CJB)
That Yeshu was not fully God and fully man when he walked the earth, but «a man approved of God» (Acts 2:2) is shown by the parallelism between Heb 2:7 and 2:9. The former, quoting Psalm 8:5, refers to humans whom God made «a little lower than angels». The same description is applied to Jesus in v. 9, and the reason is that he had «joined our species», that he had become one of those who had been «made a little lower than angels» – humans, not hybrids.
I always emphasize that when historians use “orthodox” they do not mean it in the sense of “correct” or “true,” but in the sense of, “the side that ended up winning the debates”
I woke up this morning feeling like true Christianity doesn’t have anything to do with the bible.
Maybe I’m going to stick with that.
I lived in China for over 25 years & God “did not BLESS China” as it had we were taught the USA. BUT RELIGIOUS RIGHt has little to do with the Christianity I grew up in the 1970-80s
I grew up in the 1960-70s. Especially in the 60s there was a lot of antagonism between Christianity and all other forms of thinking. One couldn’t mix Christianity with science or psychology or any other ways of looking at things. Today, in most places, things are much better and much more open-minded. The Religious Right seems to be very slowly tagging along. Maybe someday they will catch up.
I don’t really want to criticize them too much. But I also don’t want to be bible thumped into having to go along with them either.
Dr. Ehrman, it makes me happy to see you cover Nag Hammadi texts! I think the Gnostics’ exclusivity contrasted with Paul’s outward-embracing posture in 1 Corinthians 9:19–23 helps explain why Gnostic Mandaeans remain a small group – but exclusivity can potentially preserve information.
“Therefore he laughs at their lack of perception,” – the Apocalypse of Peter seems to echo in the Qu‘ran’s Surah Ah-Nisah 157?
“…We killed the Messiah, Jesus, son of Mary, the messenger of Allah.” But they neither killed nor crucified him—it was only made to appear so. Even those who argue for this ˹crucifixion˺ are in doubt. They have no knowledge whatsoever—only making assumptions. They certainly did not kill him.”
I’ve found directional language like, “another Christ figure above the cross”, can do double-duty with both physical and spiritual meanings – this Christ/Anointed could have been watching from a higher location than Golgatha, like the Mount of Olives. “Since the body is the substitute” could be explaining the Mesopotamian-origin Substitute King Ritual.
Isaiah, nicknamed “the Fifth Gospel,” to me seems to iterate upon the Egyptian myth “The Destruction of Mankind”/”Myth of The Heavenly Cow” for God’s maternal judgement, and then *Mesopotamian* Ea “The Living [One/God]” myths for paternal salvation.
And here’s where I learned from you again, Dr. Ehrman – because I didn’t know until reading this post that there were epistles from the Johannine Community, on top of the Gospel of John!
omg 1 John 1:2: “The life appeared; we have seen it and testify to it…”
So with John the Baptist’s followers the Mandaeans, The Great Life is their deity Hayyi Rabba. (They distinctly contrast this with Yahweh.) Also called The Living One in their texts, Revelation’s Jesus seems to invoke that name:
Revelation 1:18
“I am the living one! I was dead, but now I am alive forever and ever…”
So, I found an online inscription for Ebla’s deity of nobles, Hayya Rabbu, meaning “The Great Living [God/One is implied by grammar, so scholars add that in brackets.]” It’s their same deity Hayya, “The Living [God/One]”, just exalted to Great.
In Ebla’s translation syllabaries, Hayya = Ea, the Mesopotamian water ablution deity and savior of mankind. And in Prologue to the Code of Hammurabai, Ea is “God of Righteousness” – to me echoing Melchizedek “King of Righteousness”, Qumran’s “Teacher of Righteousness,” and Genesis’ Mesopotamian antecedents.
Could Jesus educating on a Return to Tradition be more plausible than a tekton inventing many new traditions?
Early church fathers would, of course, translate 1 John 4:3 as “Every spirit that looses Jesus is not of God. This is the spirit of the antichrist, of which you heard that it was coming and now is in the world already.”
Gnosticism propounds a direct, unmoderated relationship with the divine — diminishing, if not obviating, the role of an intermediary church.
Salvation through personal knowledge rather than ecclesiastical dispensation was an existential threat to the aborning — and dogmatically hierarchical — RCC.
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world! 😎
The very first order of business for the newly recognized, imperially-empowered church was to put its authority beyond question.
At the conclusion of the Council of Nicaea Emperor Constantine issued an edict against any dissent from the decrees of his new Roman Catholic Church:
“If any writing composed by Arius should be found, it should be handed over to the flames, so that not only will the wickedness of his teaching be obliterated, but nothing will be left even to remind anyone of him…If someone should be discovered to have hidden a writing composed by Arius, his penalty shall be death.”
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere the ceremony of innocence is drowned! 😧