(13 votes, average: 4.92 out of 5)
Loading...Do contradictions in a story show that it didn’t happen? When I first responded (a few days ago) to Mark Goodacre’s five points calling into question the traditional story of the discovery of the Nag Hammadi Library, I was intrigued to receive a number of comments suggesting I sure seemed to be inconsistent in how I dealt with historical accounts.
To wit: Why would I say contradictions in the Nag Hammadi discovery story (that Mark pointed out) DON’T show that the basic account is false — that is, didn’t happen — but I DO use contradictions to call the Gospel accounts of Jesus into question. Is this an agenda-driven inconsistency?
All right — fair question. First let me remind you that
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The elephant in the room, of course, is that we have visible proof that the Nag Hammadi library exists so it merely a question as to how it was discovered. If we had tangible proof of the Resurrection the accounts of the Empty Tomb would be a matter of mere detail. Unless one has a experience like that of Doubting Thomas, the Resurrection is a matter of faith. Not so with the the Nag Hammadi library.
Hi Bart,
Also, isn’t it significant that we have several authors in the case of the Gospels? Whereas, as it relates to the Nag Hammadi discovery story, we’re hearing the story evolved by the same authors over time. One is an evolution of memory; the other a direct authorial contradiction, no?
I think the idea is that each author of the NT has heard stories that evolved over time; yes, in this case you can compare them to each other, which you can’t do with the NH story, since there’s just the one account (If that’s what you’re asking?)
That also is a presumption. The stories could have been fabricated anywhere along the way, if not by the authors themselves. We have no trouble dismissing the sometimes bizarre accounts from the non-canonical gospels. By what basis could we claim that the canonical gospels were based on oral traditions and all others were fabricated? The proto-orthodox segment chose texts consistent with their ideas and preserved their writings, while destroying competing texts.
I’m not sure what you’re asking. Oral traditions are themselves often fabricated. (So it’s not a choice between oral tradition and fabrication). Are you asking whther the authors of the Gospels may themselves have fabricated their stories? They certainly could have done in some cases, but probably not a lot. For one thing, many stories are multiply attested in independent sources, which shows that no one of them made it up. That establishes a precedent for ealrier traditions in circulation used by the authors, which coincides with what one of the author explicitly tells us (Luke 1:1-4). So the burden of proof in each instance (one story or another) would be on showing that the Gospel writer made this one up on his own. See what I mean?
I understand the multiple independent attestation argument. You presented it well in your books. You agree that verbatim excerpts from Mark in other synoptics don’t qualify. It’s very plausible that the excerpts from the hypothetical ‘Q’ don’t qualify as independent from Q. Unless we discover other sources, we’ll never prove which other parts of the synoptics are excerpts from yet other sources (written or oral) or are original creations by the authors.
The problem with conceding sources as oral traditions (besides their untestability) is the implicit (often explicit) claim that these oral traditions originated with eyewitnesses and were faithfully preserved. The burden of proof belongs with any claim that anything in these gospels qualifies as historical evidence in any form.
Bivin and Blizzard also make the case for much greater prevalence of the use of Hebrew in Judea at the time, especially in religious dialog.
Right — I would never claim that the oral traditions began with eyewitnesses or that they were faithfully preserved. My book Jesus Before the Gospels takes the opposite view and mounts the argument for it.
I’m not familiar with the work of Bivin and Blizzard. Do they argue that a peasant in rural Galilee would be able to speak Hebrew? I would find that remarkable. (As opposed, say, to scribes living in Jerusalem; they speak Latin in the Vatican but no one in my hometown in Kansas did….)
You wouldn’t claim an eyewitness basis for the canonical gospels or their sources, but Fundamentalist Christians do. That was my point.
No, Bivin and Blizzard argued for already common use of Hebrew in religious dialog. That would likely center in Jerusalem. Gospel diarists wanted to portray Jesus as a sage of Second Temple of Judaism, so they showed him participating in traditional Jewish religious dialog among the sages. To do that, they took typical dialog among the sages and hastily translated them into Greek, putting them into the mouth of Jesus. They portray the public speaking of Jesus to be in backwoods Gaiilee to explain why no one heard of him, and why he never appeared in Jewish religious debates. The Jewish scribes would just read the sacred texts (mostly Torah) aloud. They weren’t Pharisees, so they had no authority to issue rulings about interpretation and practice of Torah. Pharisees like Jesus did precisely that.
I am a huge fan of your books and hope to meet you some day as I respect your work very highly! How often do you meet people? I would love to get my book signed.
I met my students just today! 🙂 Seriously, about the only way I meet people I’m not connected with professionally is when I’m giving a talk somewhere, or happen to be somewhere and have a blog dinner with people who want to get together. Otherwise, sigh, I’m mainly in my study….
I understand. I hope to meet you one day ! As I said I’d love to get my book signed. I’ll keep on the lookout for any time you may do events ! 🙂
Plausibility is a common factor that historians use to assess ancient hagiography and other similar accounts.
On the basis of plausibility, aren’t the easiest elements to dismiss in the gospel accounts the miracles, including the resurrection of Jesus?
Well, if something is reported that has never happened in the universe before or since, most people would probalby doubt its plausibility on general principles.
You have suggested when reading the Gospels that the reader must read *a* Gospel for *that* author’s particular POV, not read by combining Gospels or putting one author’s view into another’s narrative. The example you gave was the differences between the Death of Jesus stories in Mark and Luke – citing the importance of the differences in what Jesus said before dying, what the centurion said, and when the temple curtain split as being fairly significant contradictions. If Jesus was just “truly innocent” versus “truly the Son of God” or the curtain split before rather than after his death, reconciling these “facts” is important. And by reconciling, I mean one has to, at some point, choose one or the other, at least as far as impact on “faith,” (but not necessarily in terms of what life application we may get out of the Gospel stories). Or I suppose one could choose neither. Is there a way to fairly read these contradictions in all Gospels and have faith in the overarching tenets of Christianity remain intact? So far, I’m not seeing a way. And maybe I ask because I *want* to see a way.
It completely depends on what you mean by “overarching tenets of Christianity.” By far the majority of biblical scholars who read the New Testament this way are believing Christians. Christian faith doesn’t depend on the inerrancy of the Bible, unless the only Christian faith available is fundamentalism.
Thank you. Yes, you’ve read between the lines that I have been having discussions with a fundamentalist recently about inerrancy and faith v. works. I find the “exclusionary” nature of fundamentalism troublesome, but then I’m more of a universalist, I suppose.
Somewhat OT: Is it possible that Mark was originally written in Aramaic and then translated into Greek? I’m taking a course now on the DSS, and the professor asserts that one of his professors, an expert in Aramaic, said that when he read Mark in Greek, he “heard” the Aramaic structure underneath. (This doesn’t include the last part of Mark 16, of course.)
My alternative thought is that Mark was written in Greek by someone whose first language was Aramaic.
How do you see this?
I think neither. I’m not sure why he was hearing Aramaic structure (did he mean on the sentence level?). There were certainly sayings in Mark that were originally Aramaic, but comparative linguists are pretty unified these days that it was a Greek composition originally. (Of course, since we’re talking about scholars, surely some will disagree. But off hand I can’t think of anyone who does) (which, of course, will prompt someone to tell me about six of them!)
Yes, linguists agree that the canonical gospels were written in Greek. But Bivin and Blizzard (Understanding the Difficult Words of Jesus) make a good linguistic case that the SAYINGS attributed to Jesus were hasty translations into Greek from Hebrew. That would fit the ancient bios genre. If you thought Jesus was a sage of Second Temple Judaism, you would write stories portraying Jesus acting like one. And what better way to do that than to harvest some sayings of sages (mostly Hillel).
From Hebrew? Not Aramaic? Interesting. There wasn’t a lot of spoken Hebrew going on in Israel in the first century.
Having some difficulty with the point here. Unless the available testimonies/stories about the provenance of documents raise inculpatory concerns about them, whats the concern. Are not such concerns different from concerns about statements within the documents? In the case of the Gospels I am unaware of alleged independent contemporary stories of their autographs.
I”m afraid I’m a bit lost in your comment? Are you saying that it’s different finding contradictions between various accounts and finding implausibility within a one-and-only account? If so, then yes, it is different. But even with the Gospels we consider plausibilities of individual accounts without regard to contradictions from other versions (e.g. is it plausible that Matthew is right that Herod slaughtered the infants of Bethelem or that Luke is right that there was a world wide census of all people under Augustus?)
Agree.
Plus, if each gospel author wanted to promote and support some points but counter others, the only way to know is to compare. Example, when Luke states he wants Theophilus to know the “…certainty of the things you have been taught.”, the author by necessity subsequently accepts some aspects of Mark, and maybe Matthew, but counters other aspects by writing his story.
This does not equate to Luke’s version being more accurate than other versions. Only that the author of Luke is stating he thinks his version is more accurate because he has “…carefully investigated everything from the beginning.” Raising the questions of how a careful investigation was conducted, what ‘everything’ is, and when did the author consider the beginning to, well, begin.
The author of Luke could be commenting on the nature of Mark as a mythic story by presenting his view of what the mythic nature of the story actually means. The certainty of what Theophilus has been taught could be the certainty of what the mythical stories and persona represent. Does not need to be considered history.
“Herod slaughtered the infants of Bethelem or that Luke is right that there was a world wide census of all people under Augustus?)”
Interesting. Today, I read:
so who would fight was for Judah is all the baby males under 2 or 3 were slaughtered
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No, there was not a world-wide census under Augustus and King Herod did not slaughter all the baby boys two year and under.
As I understand it, you have said that early Jews did not say that their God was the only god, just that their God was the one that they should worship. It’s also my understanding that you have said that one of the reasons Christianity gained converts was the claim that their God was the only god, denying all others as false gods. When did primary-God-among-others (I don’t remember the technical term you used) change to only-one-God (again there was a technical term). Did Jesus play a part in that change, or was it his later followers? Have you discussed this in a book, or post here, or in the Misquoting Jesus series?
I think what I said was the originally Israelites were henotheists, insisting on worshiping only their god and no others. By the time of Jesus, my sense is that most Jews were monotheists,thinking there was in fact only one God. The first author to push that view strenuously was 2 Isaiah (the author of Isaiah 40-55), where he repeatedly insists that “I alone am God; there is no other”
The Judeans were originally living in a polytheistic world. Per Biblical Archaeology, Israel had a different set of Gods vs Judah and we see it in the Old Testament also. Omri and Ahab had a bigger empire although Solomon and David are praised. The Northern Kingdom always had a lot of Baal worshippers with Jezebel and even King Ahab was also an idolator. Judah had One God based on the Ten Commandments and Moses. By the time of Jesus, we had Herod the Great who though a converted Jew also practiced polytheism and built temples for Augustus and Persephone in Sebastia. These were coupled also with large construction projects around the Second Temple. The Hellenized Jews from whom Christianity partly arose respected a lot of the Hellenization that was prevalent and Roman Citizenship per Second and Third Maccabees sometimes also involved worship of Dionysus. Monotheism of a more tolerant kind was likely often practiced among the laity. While a more religious Jew may have been more Monotheistic.
I tend to believe that Jesus “did not become God”. Instead he became the Third Element of the Trinity, the Divine Son of God. The play on Petra is a reference to the Divine Son, be it Liber Pater, or the Nabaotaian God, worshipped by the descendants of Nabaoth. The Historicity imperative needs to be discerned ie the part of the New Testament that is historic but also the parts that are drawn to portray the Divine Figure and his teaching. Mark, Matthew, Luke and John probably had not heard about the Nag Hammadi texts like Thomas, etc. Historicity is not a goal of the Gospels, Trinitarian theology and the worship and start of a new religion is
Hey Professor Ehrman,
This is admittedly off-topic, but I was thinking about how John’s gospel and Gnostic ideas seem to have some kind of relationship. That led me to think about John’s view of Christ as the Word of God Incarnate. THAT, in turn, led me to think about Paul’s understanding of Jesus as an incarnation of a powerful angelic being (a view I was convinced of by Susan Garrett’s book No Ordinary Angel, and your work). How can we compare/contrast John’s incarnation Christology with that of Paul? How are ”The Word” and ”Angel of the Lord” connected? Are there are any books or articles you know of that explore this topic?
I deal with the similarities a bit in my book How Jesus Became God. Paul has a kind of “mixed” Christology — he has remnants of the earliest view that Christ was exalted to a divine status at his resurrection, but also the developing view that he was an incarnation (not his term) of a divine being. Thus Phil. 2:5-9. John had the incarnational view even more strongly, and nothing of an exaltatoin to a yet higher status after his death.
“Did Jesus have a last meal with his disciples? The accounts are contradictory, but that doesn’t in itself mean he didn’t have a last meal with his disciples, about which *something* can be known.”
Considering the person who first wrote about the last meal never knew Jesus during his lifetime and denied getting any information from those who did, doesn’t it throw into question whether it’s a historically accurate story?
It shows that one needs to do a careful assessment of all the surviving evidence before reaching a judgment — just as is true of every allegedly historical event. That is, all historical claims in ancient source have to be questioned. (E.g., was there a Paul?)
DR PAgels said that ST Paul opened, established more churches than any other [apostle?].
2) we are human and God is divine. Therefore we lack the capacity to understand the triune God.
I don’t think we can know how many Christian assemblies Paul founded or even claimed to found.
Dr. Ehrman covers the second point in his History of the Bible course from The Teaching Company. He said Gnostics almost universally interpreted Bible texts symbolically rather than literally. That of course means each person or sect can ‘interpret’ each texts however they choose. One can’t argue with them since the interpretation is subjective and not anchored by any fact. By the first century, some Jews did this with the practice of pesher. They gave texts from Tanakh whatever [often bizarre] meanings they chose. Early Christians (like the author of Matthew) did this to claim that many texts from Tanakh were prophecies about Jesus. Many modern Christians still do that.
Most directly to your second point, Gnostics taught that God was unknowable, but then proceed to say what they know about him. Again, many Christians to that still today.
“My view of the matter, in short, it is this: if you have two or more accounts of an event (say, something that Jesus did, or about the Nag Hammadi Discovery Narrative.), and these two have differences, that much would be expected. Everyone will tell stories in their own way. Not necessarily a big deal.”
Agree, the police deal with this all the time.
I’ve been told this is one of the best ways to reconcile the story of Jairus in Mathew and Mark. What are your thoughts?
Chronologically, Jairus told Jesus his daughter was near death (and this was recorded in Mark and Luke), and then when he got word his daughter was dead, he told Jesus the second time and used the phrase that is recorded in Matthew. Luke 8:50 corroborates this by stating that Jesus answered (replied back to) Jairus after he had learned of Jairus’ daughter’s death. In Mark and Luke the man begged Jesus to come while his daughter still lived, but in the Matthew account he was “worshipping” Jesus and believed that Jesus could resurrect his daughter. This would further confirm that Matthew omitted or condensed the first discourse with Jairus and focused on the second one after Jairus had been told of his daughter’s death.
I think if you read what Matthew and Mark actually say, in detail, you’ll see it doesn’t work. Mathew certainly did condense Mark’s account. That’s what leads to the contradiction.
Congratulations on the NINT conference. Very informative!
In the Hammadi thread, Dr Ehrman mentions that burying crucified dead was an anomalous Roman behaviour. Gaussian distributions, used in statistical mathematics to describe human characteristics, plot most of the observations at the mode and show anomalous readings outlying two standard deviations. Could not the covert request by Joseph of Arimathaea and Pilate’s consent, as recorded in Matthew 27,Mark 15,Luke 23, and John 19, be an anomaly in the usual practice of abandoning remains after execution?
Furthermore, Pilate’s scepticism that the death of Jesus occurred so soon and Pilate’s trickery-avoiding verification with the centurion, as in Mark 15:44, seem to meet, at least, the historian’s test of plausibility. Similarly, in Matthew 27:65-66, Pilate’s understandable reluctance to commit Roman administrative resources to guarding the tomb of a man whom Pilate, in the first instance, intended not to execute, seem contributory implicit evidence that the body of Jesus was at least inside a tomb after crucifixion.
Perhaps Dr Ehrman knows of reasons why all these texts are scribal corruptions or inadmissible in the historian’s court of inquiry.
I’d say you could make that argument without Gaussian distributions. But what would be your reason for thinking so?
OK, I get it now. If one version of “Jack and the Beanstalk” says he sold a cow for the beans, and one says he sold a sheep, it might have been a cow, a sheep, or even a chicken or a goat in the original story, but they can’t all be right. But that detail refers only to the content of the oldest version of the story. Whether the story itself is likely to be factual is judged by the incidence of magic beans growing a beanstalk up into the clouds, and/or whether there are any known reports of giants living in homes on top of those clouds.
Unless he sold both a cow and a sheep or he made two separate purchases…. (!)
Thanks for the interesting response about Gaussian distributions located in the October Hammadi thread.
Indeed! The mere existence of a mathematical concept can’t provide evidence about Roman practices in Judaea during the first century. My reference to the Gaussian distribution was simply to provide a tool for me to try and visualise two conflicting conclusions about the post-crucifixion disposal of the body of Jesus.
The texts I quoted from the canonical Gospels seem to provide some plausible evidence that the body of Jesus may have lain in a tomb and was, therefore, a statistical outlier to Dr Ehrman’s probably correct conclusion that the most frequent disposal of the crucified was abandonment rather than burial.
However, given the useful and informative work of the Ehrman Blog, the Ehrman books, the NINT conference, the online courses, and the “Misquoting Jesus” series, I’m sure Dr Ehrman has more pressing matters to contemplate than mathematically symmetric distributions!
Dr. Erhman,
You rightly point out that the gospel narratives seem to disagree on which day Jesus was crucified, the day of Passover or the day before Passover. However, I have yet to see you address the evidence that the original Jewish calendar, which was used by groups such as the Samaritans, Zealots, some Galileans, and some Essenes, survived through the second temple period. The original Jewish calendar marked days from sunrise to sunrise, unlike the official Jewish calendar, which marked them from sunset to sunset. Assuming the year of the Crucifixion was 33 AD, the Passover meal in this pre-exilic calendar would have fallen on the Wednesday of Holy Week. This would mean that Matthew, Mark, and Luke used the pre-exilic calendar to describe the Last Supper, while John used the official calendar. And in my view, this could certainly account for what now appears to be a minor discrepancy if one at all. In light of this, could this mean that Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John are all right despite John seemingly having a different date for the death of Jesus?
I know of no evidence that it was used by these groups, in particular among any Jews in Jerusalem. Spo that would be why I haven’t addressed it. (I mean evidence from ancient sources, not claims by modern writers) If I”m wrong, I’m always happy to be corrected, since I don’t have a horse in this race.