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New Testament Gospels

The Jewish Emphases of Matthew’s Gospel: Part 3

In the current thread I have been posting about the Jewish emphases of Matthew’s Gospel, all in an attempt to move to an answer to the question of whether, in my opinion Matthew was himself Jewish. When I get done with these posts, I’ll explain what my opinion is and why I have it; I can tell by some of the responses so far to these posts that some people are in for a surprise…. In previous posts we saw that Jesus, in Matthew, insists that his followers keep the Jewish law – even better than the scribes and the Pharisees. But for Matthew, What is the real purpose of the law? We get a hint of Matthew's answer already in the Sermon on the Mount, in Jesus' famous expression of the Golden Rule. We know of other ancient teachers who formulated similar guidelines of behavior usually in its negative form -- that you should not do to another what you do not want them to do to you – as far afield as Confucius [...]

BDEhrman2020-04-03T18:24:42-04:00June 30th, 2013|Canonical Gospels, Early Judaism, Reader’s Questions|

The Jewish Emphases of Matthew: Part 2

In continuation of the question of the relationship of the Gospel of Matthew – both the Gospel itself and its anonymous author – to Judaism, I lift from something I wrote somewhere else at some point a while back: ********************************************************************************************************** Contrary to what many Christians have thought throughout the ages, for Matthew following Jesus does *not* mean abandoning Judaism and joining a new religion that is opposed to it. It is worth observing that even some Christians in Matthew's own day appear to have thought that this is what Jesus had in mind, that is, that he sought to overturn the law of Moses in his preaching about the way of God. For Matthew, however, nothing could be further from the truth. The keynote of the sermon is struck soon after the Beatitudes in the striking statement, found only in this Gospel: Do not think that I have come to abolish the law or the prophets; I have come not to abolish but to fulfill. For truly I tell you, until heaven and earth pass [...]

BDEhrman2020-04-03T18:24:48-04:00June 27th, 2013|Canonical Gospels, Early Judaism, Reader’s Questions|

The Jewish Emphases of Matthew

In evaluating whether Matthew was himself Jewish or not – the theme of my current thread — it is important to get a sense of his distinctive emphases in his portrayal of Jesus. Here there can be little doubt. The focus of attention in Matthew’s Gospel is on to the nature of Jesus’ relationship to Judaism. You see this off the bat in chapter 1. Whereas Mark’s Gospel begins with Jesus as an adult being baptized by John the Baptist, Matthew’s begins with a clear resonance of Jewish Scripture – with a genealogy of Jewish and Israelite ancestors. And before he begins the genealogy, Matthew tells us that it will be one that traces the line of Jesus back to David and Abraham (“The Book of the genealogy of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham”). And why does he highlight these two names in particular? Because David was the greatest king of Israel, whose descendant was to be the “messiah” (as Jesus is called here: Jesus “Christ”), and Abraham was “the [...]

BDEhrman2020-04-03T18:24:55-04:00June 26th, 2013|Canonical Gospels, Early Judaism, Reader’s Questions|

Was the Author of Matthew Matthew?

In my previous post I showed that the claim that Matthew, the tax-collector, was the author of the Gospel of Matthew (as we continue to call it) cannot be traced earlier than about 180 CE. It is not found in Justin, who lived in Rome in 150 CE and who quotes the Gospel – along with Mark and Luke – without indicating who wrote them. And the evidence of Papias (120-140 CE) is more than just ambiguous: he actually does not appear to be referring to *our* Gospel of Matthew when he says that the disciple Matthew collected the sayings of Jesus in the Hebrew language. In this post I want to give two reasons for thinking that the Gospel was not in fact written by Jesus’ disciple Matthew (and at every point it needs to be remembered that the Gospel does not *claim* to be written by Matthew; quite the contrary, not only is it anonymous: it speaks of Matthew as one of the characters in the story in the third person). FIRST point. [...]

BDEhrman2020-04-03T18:25:04-04:00June 25th, 2013|Canonical Gospels, History of Christianity (100-300CE), Reader’s Questions|

When Was Matthew Called Matthew?

For years I agreed with those scholars who claim that we have very early “evidence” that the Gospel of Matthew was actually written by Matthew, the tax-collector who was a disciple of Jesus. I no longer think so. Let me give some of the relevant information. The anonymity of this author – as is true for the other three NT Gospels as well, was respected by Christians for decades. When the Gospels of the New Testament are alluded to and quoted by authors of the early second century, they are never entitled, never named. Even Justin Martyr, writing around 150-60 CE, quotes verses from the Gospels, but does not indicate what the Gospels were named. For Justin, these books are simply known, collectively, as the “Memoirs of the Apostles.” It was about a century after the Gospels had been originally put in circulation that this book was called Matthew, and the others were called Mark, Luke, and John. This comes, for the first time, in the writings of the church father and heresy-hunter Irenaeus, around [...]

BDEhrman2020-04-03T18:25:12-04:00June 24th, 2013|Canonical Gospels, History of Christianity (100-300CE), New Testament Manuscripts, Proto-Orthodox Writers, Reader’s Questions|

The Identity of “Matthew”

In a previous post I dealt very briefly with the question of whether the author of the Gospel of Matthew was Jewish. I want to say a few more things about the issue, although I’m not planning on providing anything like an exhaustive treatment. It’s a complicated issue. At the end of the day, my view is that we simply don’t know. In this post I want to say something about what we know about the identity of the author more generally. We call this author "Matthew” because that is the name traditionally associated with the Gospel. The Gospel is called “According to Matthew” in all of the surviving manuscripts that have a title (i.e., all the manuscripts that still have their first page.) It is never called anything else – although the *form* of the ascription to Matthew differs in different manuscripts: e.g., is it entitled “According to Matthew” or “The Gospel according to Matthew” or “The Holy Gospel according to Matthew,” or something else? But in all the ascriptions, the person named is [...]

BDEhrman2020-04-03T18:25:19-04:00June 23rd, 2013|Canonical Gospels, Reader’s Questions|

Was Matthew a Jew?

QUESTION: I’m currently reading your book “Forged”…not sure whether I read this there or in the blog, but it puzzled me. You said the authors of Mark and Luke were not Jews? I’d somehow assumed the authors of all the Canonical Gospels were Jews – among the educated elite, of course, since they could write in Greek…. I’m sure the author of Matthew was a Jew, though very dissatisfied with some of his fellow Jews! RESPONSE: This comment is part of a larger question the reader had about Mark and Luke specifically – were they Jews? (I haven’t included the entire question here) I have dealt with Mark already on the blog recently, arguing that he probably was not a Jew. I’ll deal with Luke in a later post. Here let me say something very briefly about Matthew. I too tend to think that he was probably a Jew by birth and upbringing, who had converted to be a follower of Jesus. But not everyone agrees. FOR THE REST OF THIS POST, log in [...]

BDEhrman2020-04-03T18:25:52-04:00June 17th, 2013|Canonical Gospels, Early Judaism, Reader’s Questions|

Spong’s New Book on John: Part 2

Yesterday I wrote a post in which I began to discuss the recent Huffington Post article by John Shelby Spong in which he discusses his new book on John; the book is called The Fourth Gospel: Tales of a Jewish Mystic and the article can be found this address: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/john-shelby-spong/gospel-of-john-what-everyone-knows-about-the-fourth-gospel_b_3422026.html?ref=topbar Today I will finish out what I started to say yesterday. Let me say again that I have long appreciated Spong’s work and am sympathetic to his mission. He is trying to do from inside the church something very similar to what I am trying to do outside of it: help educated lay people outside the field of biblical scholarship see what scholars – believers and non-believers alike – are saying about the New Testament. Since Spong is operating within the church, however, and sees himself as a Christian, some of his perspectives and goals are different from mine. At the end of the day, he is interested in reforming Christianity in order to make it sensible for the twenty-first century. That is not my [...]

BDEhrman2020-04-03T18:26:20-04:00June 14th, 2013|Book Discussions, Canonical Gospels, Religion in the News|

Spong’s New Book on John

John Shelby Spong, former Episcopal bishop of New Jersey and highly controversial author (because of his skeptical views about the New Testament and traditional Christian doctrine) has just published a new book on the Gospel of John, called The Fourth Gospel: Tales of a Jewish Mystic. I have not read the book, but Spong has written an interesting article on it that appeared in the Huffington Post yesterday, at this address: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/john-shelby-spong/gospel-of-john-what-everyone-knows-about-the-fourth-gospel_b_3422026.html?ref=topbar In the article Spong summarizes the conclusions he advances in the book, based on an “intensive five-year long study.” He acknowledges that many of his findings are those that scholars have held for a long time. Spong himself is not trained as a biblical scholar but has made a very successful, and useful, career out of making scholarship known to a wider audience. So too, his goal in the book, in large measure, is to bring major scholarship to a general reader, a goal I obviously sympathize with deeply. The following are the points that he stresses in his HuPo article. I will [...]

BDEhrman2020-05-05T13:40:17-04:00June 13th, 2013|Book Discussions, Canonical Gospels, Religion in the News|

Jesus’ Inflammatory Words

QUESTION: Were the claims Jesus made about himself, or the comments he made about other sects or leaders within Judaism, likely to have produced an angry or violent response from devout Jews in Jerusalem during Passover? Were his comments any more "out of the ordinary" than others would have been making about, say, the Temple authorities or whomever? RESPONSE: A full answer to this very good question would take a full book. In fact, scholars *have* written entire books on it! So here let me just lay out my views on the matter – none of which is particularly controversial among critical scholars. (i.e., this is fairly standard stuff). First: I don’t think Jesus made any comments about his identity that would have aroused opposition among Jewish leaders or regular Jews when he arrived in Jerusalem for the Passover feast, a week before his death (or any time during that week). In no small measure that’s because I do not think Jesus’ proclamation – either during that week or at any time during his ministry [...]

BDEhrman2020-04-03T18:28:36-04:00June 6th, 2013|Canonical Gospels, Historical Jesus, Reader’s Questions|

Mark and the Resurrection

QUESTION: I heard a scholar (I think it was JD Crossan) saying that the absence of a resurrected Jesus in Mark's original gospel reflects the confusion and anxiety that forlorn Jews would have felt after the destruction of the Temple? Do you think this is the case? If so, how does it fit in with the belief (widespread among scholars, I believe) that the accounts of a visibly resurrected Jesus were in circulation long before 70 AD and probably came from Peter, Paul , and Mary M? RESPONSE: I don’t recall ever hearing this view before – so I’m not sure where you may have read it. I would have to read a fuller exposition of the view to make better sense of it, but off hand, I don’t think it’s plausible, for several reasons. First, a lot hinges on what is meant by “the absence of the resurrected Jesus” in Mark. People often get Mark’s account wrong by saying that there is no resurrection in Mark. That’s absolutely not true. In Mark, Jesus is [...]

BDEhrman2020-04-03T18:28:48-04:00June 4th, 2013|Canonical Gospels, Early Judaism, Reader’s Questions|

More on Mark and Peter

In answering the question about why it appears that Mark did not serve as the scribe/secretary for Peter, writing down Peter’s (Aramaic) recollections of his time with Jesus and putting them in narrative form in Greek, I already discussed the slender record of that being the origin of Mark’s Gospel, based on the discussion in Papias. Now in this post I want to discuss the direct evidence that suggests that this is not how Mark’s Gospel came into being. Here I will make three points. First – this will not seem overly convincing to some readers, but then again it’s not really my main point – there is in fact nothing in Mark’s Gospel to make anyone think that it is Peter’s version, any more, than, say the Gospel of Matthew or the Gospel of John. There is no first-person narrative, no recollection about what “Jesus said to me” and so on. Peter is one of the main figures – yes indeed. But the Gospel is not told from his perspective. FOR THE REST [...]

BDEhrman2021-01-20T01:01:21-05:00June 3rd, 2013|Canonical Gospels, Reader’s Questions|

Mark as Peter’s Scribe

QUESTION: Why are scholars almost certain that Peter did not give the general details of Jesus' life and ministry to his companion Mark, who faithfully recorded the details in Greek, in the style found in his gospel? I know you've said that someone such as Peter, aside from not knowing Greek, almost certainly wouldn't have had the ability to build the relatively sophisticated structure of Mark's gospel, but why couldn't Mark have "put form" on Peter's prosaic verbal account ? RESPONSE: This is a very good question, and as it turns out it is a bit complicated. The first thing to say is that one has to look for *evidence* if one wants to think, for example, that Mark is recording the traditions given to the author by Peter. The idea that he does so ultimately goes back to Papias. To begin answering the question, in this post I thought I’d talk about Papias and the tradition of the Gospels. And rather than write it all out from scratch, I’ve decided simply to reproduce [...]

BDEhrman2020-04-03T18:29:07-04:00June 1st, 2013|Canonical Gospels, History of Christianity (100-300CE), Proto-Orthodox Writers, Reader’s Questions|

What Judas Betrayed

In my last post I indicated that I would write, next, on what it was, in my opinion, that Judas betrayed. It is commonly thought, based on the NT evidence, that he indicated to the authorities where Jesus could be found apart from the crowds. Maybe that’s right, even though, as I indicated, I do have some doubts about it. Even if it is right, there may be more to it than that. I think the following data are worth bearing in mind, leading to the resolution of the question that I prefer. (At first these data may not seem relevant: but hang in there for a minute!) There is nothing to indicate that Jesus publically proclaimed himself the messiah or, more specifically, that he ever publicly announced that he was the King of the Jews during his lifetime. You find Jesus accepting the title messiah in the later Gospels, but the first time it becomes a public issue, in our earliest account, Mark, is at Jesus’ trial in 14:61-62. And never is the King [...]

BDEhrman2020-04-03T18:30:11-04:00May 25th, 2013|Canonical Gospels, Historical Jesus, Reader’s Questions|

More on Judas

Several people misunderstood what I was trying to say in my post yesterday about Paul’s knowledge of Judas Iscariot. It was probably my fault for not being clear enough. I was *not*, decidedly *not*, trying to argue that the tradition that Judas betrayed Jesus was unhistorical. Quite the contrary, for reasons I’ll explain in a second, I think this is a completely historical tradition. I was simply asking whether Paul himself knew about it. He may well have known about it. But he gives no indication in his surviving writings that he did – either because he was in fact ignorant about it, or because he assumed his readers already knew all they needed to know about it, or because he had no occasion to bring it up in his surviving letters, or for some other reason. But I do indeed think that – whatever Paul did or did not know about the matter – that Jesus was betrayed by one of his own, Judas Iscariot. In my judgment, this tradition passes all of our [...]

BDEhrman2020-05-22T09:46:35-04:00May 24th, 2013|Canonical Gospels, Historical Jesus, Reader’s Questions|

Jesus’ Rejection in Nazareth

OK, several readers have asked me why I don’t think the story of Jesus’ violent rejection in Nazareth, according to Luke 4:16-30, is historically reliable. The short version is that Luke has taken a story from Mark and expanded it significantly in light of his own literary and theological interests so that the account of the attempted assassination is not multiply attested and it does not pass the criterion of dissimilarity. It looks instead to be a story that Luke has come up with to make a point, a very important point, for his larger narrative. First thing to note (this is frequently noted!): Luke has changed the placement of the story. Mark, Luke’s source, places it almost exactly halfway through Jesus’ public ministry in chapter 6 (the ministry is chs. 1-10 of Mark). For Mark it is all part of the “misunderstanding” motif: Jesus’ family misunderstands who he is (they think he’s crazy), so do the Jewish Leaders (they think he’s possessed by Beelzebub), so do his townsfolk (they think he’s simply the local [...]

BDEhrman2020-04-03T18:31:12-04:00May 20th, 2013|Canonical Gospels, Historical Jesus, Reader’s Questions|

Persecutions for Calling Jesus God

QUESTION: If the pre-'resurrection' Jesus and, later on, his earliest (Jewish) followers had declared Jesus to actually BE God then wouldn't they have been kicked out of the synagogues from the start because of blasphemy? But since that did not happen (Jesus preached in synagogues and his disciples continued to go to synagogues after his 'resurrection' for a while) doesn't that indicate that the earliest Christian belief did NOT contain the claim that Jesus actually was God? RESPONSE: This is a very interesting question and it has made me think for a bit. As I look over all the material that we have, it appears to me that the early Christians *were* regularly kicked out of the synagogues for their claims about Jesus, but that Jesus himself never was. First let me give the evidence for all that, and then deal with an important and related second issue about what those claims were exactly (this is where I’m still feeling my way a bit). FOR THE REST OF THIS POST, log in as a Member. If [...]

BDEhrman2020-04-17T14:27:47-04:00May 19th, 2013|Canonical Gospels, Catholic Epistles, Historical Jesus, Paul and His Letters, Reader’s Questions|

Humans Who Become Angels

Here is the final bit on angels in the Jewish tradition, from chapter 2 of How Jesus Became God. Again, this is only in draft form, and it is nowhere near a complete treatment. There are entire books written on angels from a scholarly perspective – and a couple of very significant books on Christ as an angel or angel-like being. Here I have been able only to scratch the surface. But on the upside, if you scratch a surface well enough, it is possible to see what is underneath. This discussion will be significant later in my book since I argue, as you may recall, that Jesus was thought sometimes to have become an angel when he was taken up into heaven. ****************************************************************************** There are Jewish texts that not only speak of angels (or even God) as becoming human, but also of humans who become angels. Many people today have the view that when people die, they become angels (well, at least if they’ve been “good”). That is a very old belief indeed. In [...]

BDEhrman2020-04-03T18:38:21-04:00April 16th, 2013|Book Discussions, Canonical Gospels, Early Judaism, Hebrew Bible/Old Testament|

More on Divine and Human Angels

In chapter two of How Jesus Became God, I have some more things to say about angels who are sometimes called "God" and sometimes appear as humans (in addition to what I've already said about the "Angel of the Lord"). This is only a draft, but it should give an idea of what I have in mind. ********************************************************************************************************************* Other Angels as God and Human There are numerous other examples both in the Bible and in other Jewish texts where angels are described as God and, just as importantly, where angels are described as humans. One of the most interesting is in Psalm 82. In this beautiful plea that justice be done to those who are weak and needy, we are told, in v. 1, that “God has taken his place in the divine council; in the midst of the gods he holds judgment.” Here God Almighty is portrayed as having a divine council around him; these are angelic beings with whom God consults, as happens elsewhere in the Bible – most famously in Job 1, [...]

BDEhrman2020-04-03T18:38:28-04:00April 15th, 2013|Book Discussions, Canonical Gospels, Early Judaism, Hebrew Bible/Old Testament|

Angels as Divine

I received an inordinate number of responses to my post discussing Christ as an angel in Paul, many of them suggesting to me that I had not provided enough background to make sense of this identification (Christ as angel), in light of ancient Jewish beliefs. So here a discussion from early in the book about that, taken from my chapter 2. There is more to be said about angels as both divine and in human form, and I’ll say more later in other posts. But this at least gives some background – that to some may be a bit surprising. If the followers came to think of Jesus as an angel, they may have had passages and views like the following in mind. ****************************************************************************************************************** Angels in ancient Judaism were widely understood to be superhuman messengers of God who mediated his will on earth. It is striking that various angels sometimes appeared on earth in human guise. More than that, in some ancient Jewish texts there is a figure known as “the angel of the Lord,” [...]

BDEhrman2020-04-03T18:38:36-04:00April 13th, 2013|Book Discussions, Canonical Gospels, Hebrew Bible/Old Testament|

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