Loading...As some of you know, my recording company, Paths in Biblical Studies (PBS) which normally produces online courses (www.bartehrman.com) held its third annual New Insights Into the New Testament (NINT) live/remote/recorded conference last week. The topic was the Historical Jesus, and we had eight speakers along with a keynote address by Elaine Pagels (you can see it all here:
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Has any scholar seriously suggested that Paul might have written one of the Gospels, or at least been its main source?
No, I don’t believe so. I guess it depends on how you define “scholar”…
Dear Bart, Congratulations for reaching your 70th year! I’m at the same stage in life. It is hard to believe how fast my life has gone after completing my PhD work and later, the decision I made regarding where I would go as a scholar and theologian. I’m sure you know how many years it takes to map out this terrain of life and to develop the inner wisdom to know who we are. I like it when you wear your round glasses! They match your wonderful personality. It doesn’t seem like our generation ages as quickly as our grandparents did. People who are in their 70’s now still rock n’ roll and drive hot cars. Even a few chicks wear miniskirts. May love and peace be with you as you enter your 7th decade. Please continue to reach out and help others explore their faith in positive venues. Sincerely, Tom Roberts, PhD, DD
Yup, I agree. We’re much younger than our grandparents at this age. Part of that of course is science, medicine, and technology. I sometimes think that another part is that our generation didn’t have it as hard, broadly speaking, as those before us, despite all the individual suffering that has happened since we first appeared on the scene….
Dear Bart, It seems that the battles over the historical Jesus and Paul never end – from Schweitzer, through Robinson through Bultmann to Karen King and, of course, Elaine Pagels and on and on. There is still the tension between the Gnostic and the extra-biblical literature and the Synoptic Tradition. If the Gnostic tradition is considered accurate, like Karen King argues, then the Synoptics would be problematic and vice versa. Differences in reality, the body, the nature of sin and an eschatological reality are at play here. Many scholars Doceticism in John but he doesn’t end up in Gnostic territory. The Gnostic writings do fill in some of the gaps in Jesus’ life but we don’t know their origins either. Hippolytus and other church fathers have various claims about these issues. Bart, you do not follow the textual corruption and reconstruction of your mentor, Bruce Metzger. I agree with you that it is impossible to reestablish a restored text without an original no matter how many manuscripts we have to collate. I don’t think this means that we cannot interpret NT text for general concepts. It simply means we cannot reestablish a word for word content. Sincerely, Tom Roberts
Thanks for your comments. I don’t think Karen King argues that Gnostic Gospels are more *historically* reliable for knowing what Jesus said and did does she? Maybe here and there, but only in very isolated instances? And I don’t think I disagree with Metzger about textual corruption and changes. He told me he liked both Orthodox Corruptoin of Scripture (it was my second book after publishing the dissertatoin I wrote under him) and Misquoting Jesus. I completely agree that even though we can’t know that we have gotten back to the “original” (a term that is hard to define and justify!) we can certainly engage in interpretatoin of the text!
“A few years later, Tacitus explains Nero’s persecution after the fire of 64 C,E. by noting
that the name “Christians” comes from Christus, who “suffered the extreme penalty”
under Pontius Pilate during Tiberius’ reign (Ann. 15.44). These are valuable
confirmations of basic facts (Jesus’ execution under Pilate; the existence and practices
of his followers).”
How does a comment from Tacitus at least 70 years after Nero, who is clearly reflecting the myth he was told by Christians about Christus equal a basic fact? The only fact that might be plausible is that the persecuted Christian said there was a Christus. Saying so though proves nothing as they could also be second or third generation derivatives of the original story tellers in Rome. I see no facts here to support anyone named Christus was ever executed at all, only facts of a rumor to such.
I’d say you have to look at Tacitus as one piece of evidence among many, making a cumulative argument. I agree his statement would not be persuasive standing on its own. But it almost certainly does show there were people named Christian in Rome in the days of Nero, and they were called that because they followed someone named Christ. Tacitus shows no evidence of having talked to Christians to receive this information. On the contrary, he’s our primary source for it (Christian authors don’t talk about the fire in Rome before him)
I would not quite agree that it shows that there were people named Christians in the days of Nero. It shows that such people were named Christians (he actually writes Chrestians) by the time of Tacitus, and that Tacitus ties their predecessors to the fire of Rome in Nero’s days; these may or may not have been known as Christians back then.
We probably cannot know either how Tacitus got his information about the purported fate of Christus under Pontius Pilate; he might have got it from some (lost to us) Roman source about what happened in Nero’s days, but it seems to me more likely he somehow got it via contemporary Christians, who certainly had preserved that information in Christian texts and traditions.
I think the main point of the passage in the current article was to indicate that this source confirms that by the early second century a “Christian” movement making reference to a person “Christus” executed under Pontius Pilate was known about in Rome. There is no mention of Jesus (of Nazareth) in this text though.
I think it is understandable that Paul didn’t write about what Jesus did and said during his ministry, but instead focused on the fact that the Lord had selected him to have a “near-death experience,” and for his soul/spirit to travel to heaven, meet with Jesus, and be instructed to “do a 180” — Stop persecuting Christians and instead travel about and seek converts to “Jesus Followers” from the gentile population. This was his proof that Jesus was an agent of God, and more important than Moses and the ancient Jewish leaders, and was used in his role as an evangelist.
Bill Steigelmann
I have yet to read your book on the non-canonical texts; it arrives tomorrow. I have listened to your Misquoting Jesus podcast on the Gospel of Thomas, and tonight listened to your Wonderium lectures on it. So, I have no well-formed opinions yet about it. But as I listened tonight, I was reminded of Plato’s Socrates and the Socratic method for getting to knowledge through questions, on the premise we already know the answers but need to find them within ourselves. If I remember correctly, he taught the message to know thyself. It reminded me of the “divine spark” some have. I’m thinking Quakers believe this too.
In a similar vein, the gnostic emphasis on reunification toward oneness, including saying 114 on gender, reminds me of Eastern religions. I’m no expert on them either, but it strikes me as Buddhist like.
Probably I will find many other spinoffs as I gain more exposure to Gnosticism.
Yes, Socrates is recorded as affirming the inscription over the oracle in Delphi, “Know Yourself.” Originally it meant something like: realize you are a mere mortal. But it came to take on the kind of self-knowledge we think of today: know who you really are….
The Gospel according to Thomas: I like the saying of being in this world as a passerby, but it seems extreme to divorce one’s feelings from family, and also contrary to the love commandments within orthodox Judeo-Christian ethics.
I guess I one of those seekers who wants to pick and choose from among ideologies that best suit my emotional, intellectual, spiritual character as I know myself, rather than believe any single one has the Truth. I’m okay with being an eclectic here on earth and leave my salvation to my fate, whatever it may be. Like the Latin tomb inscription you mentioned analogous to RIP: I came, I was, I am not, I care not (or whatever it was).
For me, listening to you is more interesting than watching Monday night football 😊
The nice thing is that both are recorded. (At least MNF is at my place…)
I am unequiped to weigh into the Morton Smith Mar Saba Secret Gospel(s) of Mark controversies. However, in hearing/reading about them, I am reminded of Mark 14:57 of the young man in the Garden of Gethasmine (sp?) who was following Jesus wearing a loincloth, which was caught, so he ran away naked. It certainly seems an “out of context “ passage. But it sounds consistent with alleged insertions at Mark 10: 35-45, 46 about a young man who loved Jesus and spent a special night with him having homoerotic insinuations.
And I have long been curious about the the disciple Jesus loved. Who was he? Why/how loved?
In my opinion/experience, spirituality and homoeroticism can become intertwined. On the other hand, perhaps we moderns are too quick to impose homoerotism on something that is highly idealized love: too much Eros, not enough agape.
Yes, Morton Smith deals at some length with the streaker of Mark 15. As to the disciple whom Jesus loved, it’s much disputed. I think he is a fictional character mean to be teh ideal disciple. But there is nothing erotic about their relationship in the text (he’s onlinly in John of course)
A minor correction to your lecture discussing, I think, the infancy gospels, and Jesus’s brothers, sons of Joseph from his prior marriage. You said they would be “half” brothers; no. Half siblings share a biological parent. They would be “step” siblings, sharing a family relationship but no biological parent. I know you know this. It was something I caught as a slight misstatement. I have an interest in genealogical/genetic genealogical studies as applied to my own families.
Thanks. Yes, I always get that messed up. But they certainly couldn’t be “half” brothers (as you indicate) since Joseph’s was not his father.
I see you have written a recent book about the creation of the NT canon. I haven’t read it. In the meantime, I have listened to your Wonderium lectures on Lost Christianities, and specifically tonight the first lecture on the creation of the canon. As you discussed it, how all the included books had to somehow have their authority directly from the life and teachings of the historical Jesus, or his apostles, you emphasized how Jesus himself cited certain well-accepted written Scriptures of orthodox/apocalyptic Judaism.
Jesus native language was Aramaic. He could not, so far as we know, read or write.
How did he get his religious education before he began his ministry? Was it in temple as a boy that he heard, memorized, and learned to interpret? Or did God instill his word in him whenever Jesus became his son? Do we have any sources that tell us how Jesus received his remarkable religious education prior to his preaching and teaching?
It’s actually the book I’m writing next. I deal with the issue a bit in other ealrier books (Lost Christianities e.g.), but not like I’ll be dealing withhere.
Unfortunately we know nothing about Jesus’s upbringing or education. Education normally took place inthe home (there were no schools, not even synagogue schools). So he either picked up a lot on his own or there was a local teacher who instructed him.
There are two episodes on your Misquoting Jesus podcast with Megan Lewis that I can’t get to download on my iPad. One is asking if Fundamentalists Actually Follow the Bible. I think I know the answer and care less about it than the other one–Archeology in the Time of Jesus. I realize you sponsored a course about this with a scholar, Jodi. But I wanted to hear the podcast about it.
Everything else seems to download okay.
Weird. I’m afraid I don’t know why that would be. Maybe try a different podcast platform?
Regarding the Gospel of Thomas, Coptic and Greek, found in your book, The Other Gospels: OMG, what a chore to make sense of many of them! I realize they are SUPPOSED to be mysterious, or paradoxical. But many strike me as containing non-sequitors. #12 says: The disciples said to Jesus, ‘We know that you will leave us. Who will be great among us?’’ Jesus said to them, ‘Whereever you have come, you will go to James the Righteous, for whose sake heaven and earth came to be’” Huh? For one thing, who is James the Righteous?
I realize there are many other issues about this early forged document. But my main question is this: has anyone tried to translate it (back) into Aramaic? Might Aramaic render it less puzzling? I ask on the basis of Aramaic translations of a few phrases in the canonical Gospels themselves that you have mentioned elsewhere (I think in Did Jesus Exist?).
It’s James the brother of Jesus. Yes, it’s a thought- provoking text! And some people have argued it was originally composed in Syriac (a dialect of Aramaic), but almost certainly not. Any translation into Aramaic is also going to be a bit mind-blowing in places…. I have my students choose three of the sayings that are hard to explain and try to come up with both a Gnostic and a non-Gnostic interpretatoin of them. Great fun.
About Paul: I understand he was Jewish and became Christian because of some personal experience in receiving the life of the resurrected Christ, then established churches among the Gentiles, who did not have to obey the Jewish practice of circumcising baby boys or eating only a diet that is Kosher, etc. But part of the apocalyptic Jewish tradition involved baptism by water, and Jesus was, and John also taught being baptized in the name of the Holy Spirit.
So my question is: was Paul ever baptized by water? Or would he say his conversion to Christianity was a baptism by Holy Spirit? Did he teach that the Gentiles must be baptized, or is all this developed by the early church elders?
More personally, my parents gave me an infant baptism (sprinkling)in a Methodist church. I didn’t do that for my kids. What was your personal baptism background?
We don’t really know about the practice of baptism (in the sense of a one-time event) prior to John the Baptist.
I was baptized (sprinkled) as an infant and then again (dunked) after my born again experience.
I just finished reading “History of Joseph the Carpenter “ in your book, “The Other Gospels.” On pp 94-95, Jesus replies to his apostles concerning Joseph’s death compared with Enoch and Elijah, who I gather were taken to heaven directly without dying. But he says the Antichrist will kill them, etc. I am baffled by this. Can you elucidate the meaning for me? The relevant passages are 31-32.
Ah, it’s a great passage! In a very interesting book. The deal is that Joseph, Jesus’s father, has died at the age of 111. They bury him. Jesus’s disciples don’t understand why he had to die. Surely he was as righteous and Elijah and Elisha who were taken out of the world without dying. Why didn’t God simply take Joseph as well? Jesus responds by pointing out that *every* human has to die because of the sin of Adam. So Joseph had to die. But what about Elijah and Elisha? They too will eventually have to die. And in fact whenever they thing about it, they know it’s gonna eventually happen, and they wish it had happened already. So Joseph in fact is better off than they — he’s gotten it over with!