Loading...I provided a very brief overview of key aspects of how we got the canon of the NT (these 27 books and only these 27) in my previous two posts. Now I want to move into a deeper look found in my book Lost Christianities: The Battles for Scripture and the Faiths We Never Knew (Oxford University Press, 2003). This was the second trade-book (for general audiences) I wrote, and it is the one that launched my career writing books for non-experts.
The book is about the various forms of Christianity in the first several centuries (Ebionites, Marcionites, various kinds of Gnostics, various kinds of Proto-orthodoxy, etc.) and the books they used as their authoritative sacred texts. Toward the end of the book I have a chapter on how the orthodox canon emerged out of that mess.
I will be excerpting parts of the book here. This will take a few posts.
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So far as we can tell, all the Christian groups of the period came to ascribe authority to some written texts; and each group came to locate that “authority” in the status of the “author” of the text. These authors were to be closely connected with the ultimate authority – Jesus himself, who was understood to represent God. Different groups tied their views to apostolic authorities in different ways: the Ebionites, for example, claimed to present the views advocated by Peter, Jesus’ closest disciple, and by James his brother; the Marcionites claimed to present the views of Paul, which he received via special revelation from Jesus; the Valentinian Gnostics claimed to represent Paul’s teachings, as handed down to
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I have a slightly off topic question. Since the letter “J” wasn’t “invented until the 1600’s and Jesus’ Hebrew/Aramaic name was Yeshua, what were James and John or any other “J” names called back then?
James was IAKOB and John was IOANNAN. Sometimes “I” became J and sometimes stayed I. Languages work in mysterious ways.
Hello Bart/Dr Ehrman
What do you think? Or have you heard of the theory that The Rich man in the Lazarus Parable/story in Luke 16 is Caiaphas?
*High priests like him wore purple like it says in the parable/story in Luke 16
*Caiaphas also had 5 brothers like in Luke 16
*High priests also opened and closed the gates to the temple compoles
*High priests were also rich.
*Sadducean High priests denied the resurrection.
The theory that the ruch man is Caiaphas could also be confirmed by the fact that the “raising of Lazarus” in John 11 provokes Caiaphas to declare that Christ must die. Thus Caiaphas and Lazarus are also conjoined in John’s Gospel.
Thanks.
I think it’s implausible. I think the story goes back to Jesus himself; it would have been told during his ministry in Galilee. Jews in Galilee would have never seen the high priest and probably didn’t even know his name. In terms of the details you mention: purple was worn by rich folk generally; the rich man is not said to be a priest; he is not said to be in jerusalem; his house is not a temple; and Caiaphas apparently did not have five brothers (though his wife did).
Hello Dr.Bart Erhman
Why would people create a story about the tomb why just not let Jesus come out of the common grave?
Or was this a problem that his body would of being disposed and a tomb is just more practical.
Mayby people could of crated a story that he was but in a common grave but he quicly came out and rose again?
I suppose because one could check to see if a private tomb was empty.
Re; Jn21.24: The “beloved disciple” is said to have “written”…”these things”. Does “these things” refer to the previous verses or the entire book? Should “written” be taken literally or to mean testimony upon which the passage(s) were written? Lastly, is there a majority view within scholars of who the beloved was?
It could either the whole thing or jsut that part of it. Scholars debate whether the Beloved Disciple is meant to be an fictoinal figure, an example of the “true disciple” (that’s what I think), or an acxtual disciple. If an actual disciple, which? Traditionally: John the son of Zebedee. But lots of others have been proposed (from Lazarus to Mary Magdalene!)
I kind of like the more tantalizing Magdalene angle… problem is the male pronouns used. Unless people were going “trans” then, the author could be using wrong pronouns to throw the reader(s) off from the likely identity. If that’s the case, would provide fodder for another Dan Brown book!
How rare is the view that Jesus tomb story was made up among critical scholars?
Is it something that almost nobody hold or is it not so uncommon?
Good question. I don’t know. My sense is that most critical scholars are struck both by the fact that Paul doesn’t mention it and that the stories about it are at odds in many ways, making it dubious at least.
In the Greco-Roman world, logographers regularly collected oral testimony, organized narratives, selected relevant material, and shaped accounts according to accepted rhetorical and literary conventions, while preserving the authority and voice of the original witnesses. Authorship in this context was conceptual rather than mechanical: the authority of a text derived from the source of the testimony, not necessarily the individual who physically wrote it.
Luke’s prologue (Luke 1:1–4) explicitly distinguishes between eyewitnesses, those who “compiled accounts,” and his own role as a careful narrator who organizes prior material. This language coheres well with a model in which eyewitness testimony (possibly including that of Jesus’ earliest disciples) was first recorded and structured by literate intermediaries before being incorporated into a larger narrative synthesis. Such intermediaries need not have been formal legal logographers but could have functioned in analogous ways as scribes or literary assistants within early Christian communities.
While many disciples may have lacked formal education, this does not preclude their participation in the production of written tradition through oral testimony mediated by trained scribes. Ancient biographers and historians commonly relied on documentary sources, oral depositions, and prior written accounts when composing narratives.
I’m not sure where you’re getting this informatoin about Greco-Roman “logographers,” but probably from a modern writer who is speculating about it? I don’t know of ancient sources who talk about it that way. Same with this informaiton about “eyewitnesses” in antiquity. Have you read my book Jesus Before the Gospels. I spent two years digging deeply into all our sources of informatoin about such things.
While no ancient writer offers a technical “how-to manual” for logographers, surviving speeches describe the expectations under which they worked.
Aristotle (Rhetoric) treats forensic speeches as structured compositions involving narrative (διήγησις), proofs (πίστεις), and appeals to ethos, explicitly noting that speeches must be adapted to the speaker’s character and circumstances. Dionysius of Halicarnassus (Lysias) repeatedly praises Lysias for preserving the speaker’s individual voice and concealing professional artifice, demonstrating that audiences expected the litigant’s persona (not the writer’s) to be audible. Cicero (Brutus, De Oratore) likewise identifies plain style and character-appropriate diction as defining features of successful forensic speechwriting.
That logographers worked from client testimony isn’t speculation but a functional necessity presupposed by the genre, evident in the detailed, case-specific narratives of Antiphon, Lysias, and Demosthenes. In this context, “authorship” was understood less as mechanical inscription and more as the skilled mediation of authoritative testimony; a conception widely attested across Greco-Roman rhetorical and historiographical practice.
Dr. Ehrman,
Finkelstein, the scholar, in The Quest for the Historical Israel, said
Hebrew writing started around the 8th or 9th century BCE. Meaningful writing started around the 8th century BCE.
This is after the historical Labaya (who lived during Ancient Egypt’s Armana period); the biblical King Saul, King David, and King Solomon.
From what Finkelstein said, Psalms and Proverbs would not be meaningful Hebrew writing.
Question: In what language do you think Psalms and Proverbs were first written?
Question: Abraham came from Sumer but the language of Sumer did not influence the language of Ancient Hebrew.
Question: When Moses rewrote the destroyed Ten Commandments and the rewritten Ten Commandments were put into the Ark of the Covenant were they in the Ark that were to be placed into Solomon’s Temple?
If so, why would a scholar note consider those Ten Commandments meaningful Hebrew writing? I’m being told there is not historical connection between Moses and the first Temple because Abraham and Moses were theological developments after the ninth and tenth centuries BCE. Do you agree or have more to add?
1. I’m not sure what you mean about Psalms and Proverbs being “meaningful”? They certainly were written in Hebrew.
2. The stories of Abraham are probably not historical (maybe that’s his point).
3. Yes, the idea is that the ten commandments were in the ark that was placed in the temple.
Psalms and Proverbs would be meaningful writing but they were written after King David had died. Maybe they were written in Proto-Hebrew. Second, Moses’ copy of the Ten Commandments after he destroyed the first set, were written in Proto-Hebrew?
I’m afraid the authors of the Bible were not interested in those kinds of linguistic questions. Too bad! It’d be interesting to know what they thought. (They probably thought Hebrew was always the same from the time of Adam…)
You mention Abraham being from Sumer, but he was actually said to be from “Ur of the Chaldees.” That would tend to identify him as an ethnic Chaldean (speaking a western Semitic language, not unrelated to that of the Arameans) rather than an ethnic Sumerian (natively speaking the Sumerian language).
I’ve always thought this was interesting given the Chaldeans may have originated in the Levant then migrated east during the first part of the last millennium BCE. Eventually they took control of Babylonia (kings such as Nebuchadnezzar II were ethnic Chaldeans).
That would make this description of Abraham into an ancient form of name-dropping; he’s from a powerful regime/people who returned to their homeland after “making good” and establishing an empire elsewhere. In other words, it was a way for Hebrews to impress others with their (claimed) lineage.
Or something like that. Take my amateur speculation for what it is, amateur speculation.
I think this is the first time I’ve heard you express any reservations about calling 1 Peter a forgery. Is there a real case that the book is authentically by Jesus’s apostle Peter?
Yes, it is often thought to be by Peter. I explain why that is unlikely in my book Forged; if you want a full-scale explanatoin, I give it in my book Forgery and Counterforgery. The shortest version is that Peter almost certainly could not write, and the idea that someone else wrote it for him (as a kind of ghost-writer/secretary) is so far as we know unprecedented in antiquity.
Editorial note: Third paragraph from the bottom ends with “And these aut”.