Canonical Gospels Archives - Page 29 of 35 - The Bart Ehrman Blog

The Gospel of John from a Literary-Historical Perspective

I have talked so far about several of the methods scholars use in order to study the Gospels of the NT: the literary-historical,redactional, and comparative methods. As I’ve stressed, each of these can be used for any one Gospel (or for any other piece of writing, in theory). In my textbook, when I come to the Gospel of John, I show how they all can be applied to the *same* book, before introducing an altogether different method known as the socio-historical approach. I will explain all this in a series of posts, starting with this one. ********************************************************** As I have argued, historians are responsible not only for interpreting their ancient sources but also for justifying these interpretations. This is why I have self-consciously introduced and utilized different methods for each of the books we have studied: a literary-historical method for Mark, a redactional method for Matthew, a comparative method for Luke, and a thematic method for Acts. As I have indicated, there is no reason for a historian to restrict him or herself to any [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:24:31-04:00March 8th, 2014|Canonical Gospels|

Jesus’ Birth: Some Comparisons

Here is another illustration of how the Comparative Method works with Luke, as described in my textbook on the New Testament. A personal anecdote. It was precisely the differences between Matthew and Luke in the birth narratives that led me to formulate the comparative method. Unlike the other methods I discuss in my book, this is one that is not widely discussed in scholarship. In fact, I had never heard of it until, well, I came up with it. But it occurred to me while thinking of the birth narratives (and genealogies) that it didn’t *matter* if Matthew and Luke had the same source for their narrative. If they did have, one could do redaction criticism on them; but they don’t have. Does that mean comparing their two accounts cannot yield results? I decided that in fact interesting results *did* matter. Their similarities and differences were important in and of themselves, and that this could be formulated into a method of study. (It may be that others had come up with a similar approach before: [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:24:31-04:00March 5th, 2014|Canonical Gospels|

The Comparative Method and Luke

In this post I continue discussing the “comparative method” of analysis (see yesterday’s post), by showing how it works in relation to the Gospel of Luke, again, as taken from my textbook on the NT. ********************************************************************* A Comparative Overview of the Gospel We begin by rehearsing several basic points that we have already learned about Luke's Gospel, in relationship to Matthew and Mark. Like them, it is a kind of Greco-Roman biography of Jesus. It too is anonymous, and like them appears to have been written by a Greek-speaking Christian somewhere outside of Palestine. He evidently penned his account somewhat later than the Gospel of Mark, perhaps at about the same time as the Gospel of Matthew. In the second century, the book came to be attributed to Luke, the traveling companion of the apostle Paul; we will consider the merits of this attribution in the following chapter. Perhaps the most obvious difference between this Gospel and all others from antiquity (not just Matthew and Mark) is that it is the first of a two-volume [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:24:31-04:00March 4th, 2014|Canonical Gospels|

The Comparative Method

With this post I am returning to my discussion of methods available for studying the Gospels. I will devote probably three posts to a method that I call the “comparative method.” Like the other two methods I’ve discussed (the literary-historical method and redaction criticism) this method is not *at all* concerned with establishing what really happened in the life of Jesus. It is a method meant to help one understand a Gospel as a piece of literature, to see what its *portrayal* of Jesus is. In my textbook on the New Testament I show how the method works by applying it to the Gospel of Luke. It could obviously be used for any of the Gospels – or for any other literature, for that matter. Here is how I describe it in the book, in relation to the method that it most resembles, redaction criticism (remember: in redaction criticism one sees how an author has changed his source – by what he has added, deleted, or altered – so as to determine what his overarching [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:24:31-04:00March 3rd, 2014|Canonical Gospels|

The Literary-Historical Method and History

COMMENT BY A READER: I like the “literary-historical” approach, but only up to a point, just so long as the claims of primitive history, the interpretations of bible scholars, and the anti-Semitic pronouncements of its religious authors, don’t outweigh or override the literature. After all, Jesus did NOT have personal biographers who took notes and reported what was going on throughout his lifetime. We only know of him as the protagonist within an ill-defined genre, someone carefully crafted after-the-fact in order to appear more god-like than human. Thus, it seems a mistake to treat the Gospel of Mark, or any similar ancient narrative (whether canonized or not), either as the legitimate retelling of history, or merely as one particular form of Greco-Roman storytelling. RESPONSE: Yes, it anyone thinks the literary-historical approach involves making historical claims about the narrative they have misunderstood what it is trying to do. Let me explain. There are numerous ways, of course, that one can approach the Gospels of the NT, just as there are numerous ways that one can [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:24:30-04:00February 25th, 2014|Canonical Gospels, Reader’s Questions|

Jesus’ Death and Resurrection in Mark

Here is my final post on Mark, following a literary-historical method. After this post I’ll have a reflection or two on the method, and then talk in much briefer fashion about other methods one might use to study the Gospels. ************************************************************ Jesus' Death as the Son of God It is clear from Mark's Gospel that Jesus' disciples never do come to understand who he is. As we have seen, he is betrayed to the Jewish authorities by one of them, Judas Iscariot. On the night of his arrest, he is denied three times by another, his closest disciple, Peter. All the others scatter, unwilling to stand up for him in the hour of his distress. Perhaps Mark wants his readers to understand that the disciples were shocked when their hopes concerning Jesus as messiah were thoroughly dashed: Jesus did not bring victory over the Romans or restore the kingdom to Israel. For Mark, of course, these hopes were misplaced. Jesus was the Son of God; but he was the Son of God who had to [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:24:15-04:00February 24th, 2014|Canonical Gospels|

Mark’s Suffering Son of God

In this post I continue my literary-historical study of Mark’s Gospels, and get to a very big point. After this will be one more post on Mark, in which I discuss the ultimate point. ******************************************************************** Jesus The Suffering Son of God Throughout the early portions of Mark's Gospel the reader is given several indications that Jesus will have to die (e.g., 2:20; 3:6). After Peter's confession, however, Jesus begins to be quite explicit about it. Even though he is the Christ, the Son of God -- or rather, because he is -- he must suffer death. Three times Jesus predicts his own impending passion in Jerusalem: he is to be rejected by the Jewish leaders, killed, and then raised from the dead. Strikingly, after each of these "Passion predictions" Mark has placed stories to show that the disciples never do understand what Jesus is talking about. FOR THE REST OF THIS POST, log in as a member. If you don't belong yet, JOIN ALREADY!!! We have already seen the first prediction in 8:31. When [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:24:15-04:00February 21st, 2014|Canonical Gospels|

Snake-Handling and the Gospel of Mark

Here is something to break up a bit my thread on the Gospel of Mark, studied from a literary-historical perspective (to be resumed in my next post). This current post is related to Mark but it’s well, different. There was a recent CNN report that some of you may have seen. I include it here, below, with the link to the site at the bottom. This practice in some southern circles (especially in the Appalachians) of handling deadly snakes as part of a worship service is based on the saying of Jesus in Mark’s Gospel, after his resurrection, where he tells his disciples that those who come to believe in him will be able to speak in foreign tongues (as happens in Pentecostal churches, e.g.), that they will be able to handle deadly snakes, and if they drink any poison, it will not harm them. Offhand, I don’t know what in additional to snake-handling churches, we don’t have poison-drinking churches. Maybe we do? I’m sure someone on the blog can tell me. In any [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:24:15-04:00February 20th, 2014|Canonical Gospels, New Testament Manuscripts, Public Forum, Religion in the News|

More on Mark

I started this thread by mentioning that when I teach my undergraduate class on the NT, I not only teach them about the four Gospels, but I teach them different *methods* for studying the Gospels – for example redaction criticism and “literary-historical” criticism. In my class I use the latter to explore the Gospel of Mark, and in order to illustrate here, on the blog, how it works (establishing the genre of a writing then seeing how that genre “worked” in the relevant historical period) I started showing how Mark can be interpreted as an ancient biography. But now that I’ve given several posts on that, I realize that I’m deep into the interpretation of Mark but haven’t actually pointed out the really important themes of the Gospel in its portrayal of Jesus. So that seems unsatisfying. I’ve decided to continue on to the end, and give the rest of my discussion of Mark from my textbook, to show what a fuller interpretation (which, of course, just scratches the surface) would reveal. This will take [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:24:15-04:00February 20th, 2014|Canonical Gospels|

More on the Beginning of Mark’s Gospel

In this post I resume what I began yesterday, an explanation of how the Gospel of Mark can be read as a biography of Jesus, with the “character” of the main subject shown in the stories told about him at the early part of the account. I’ve pointed out that Jesus is portrayed in a very Jewish light as the messiah, the Son of God (and I have said a few words about what that would mean to a Jewish audience). And then, in Jesus’ first actions, we learn more about who he is – specifically, what kind of Son of God. Again, the following is taken from my textbook on the New Testament. ************************************************************** Jesus the Authoritative Son of God The reader is immediately struck by the way in which Jesus is portrayed as supremely authoritative. At the outset of his ministry, he sees fishermen plying their trade; he calls to them and without further ado they leave their boats and family and hapless co-workers to follow him (1:16-20). Jesus is an authoritative leader; [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:24:14-04:00February 19th, 2014|Canonical Gospels|

The Beginning of Mark’s Gospel/Biography

OK, I won’t do this for all the Gospels, but I thought rather than trying to type up at length how the beginning of Mark’s Gospel portrays Jesus (on the assumption that since it’s an ancient biography, it will lay out the character of the subject at the very outset), I should simply reproduce what I already say about this in print elsewhere, in my Introduction to the New Testament. Here is the first part of that discussion. The second part I’ll give in my next post. **************************************************************** One of the first things that strikes the informed reader of Mark's Gospel is how thoroughly its traditions are rooted in a Jewish world view. The book begins, as do many other ancient biographies, by naming its subject: "The Beginning of the Gospel of Jesus Christ" (1:1). But readers living in the Greco-Roman world would not recognize "Christ" as a name; for most of them, it was not even a meaningful title. It came from the verb "to anoint," and typically referred to someone who has just [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:24:14-04:00February 18th, 2014|Canonical Gospels|

The Gospels as Biographies

In my last post I indicated that among the different ways to study the Gospels, one is what I call the “literary-historical” approach. This approach determines the literary genre of a writing, and then sees how that genre “worked” in its own historical context (as opposed to how a similar genre make work today). The Gospels of the NT are widely seen as examples of ancient biography. So it would help to know how biographies worked in Greek and Roman antiquity. There are numerous examples of biographies from the Greco-Roman world, many of them by some of the most famous authors of the Roman literary scene, such as Plutarch, Suetonius, and Tacitus. As I indicated in my previous post, and need to stress here, these biographies, understood in their own historical context, are different from the biographies we read today. Understanding the differences can be key to recognizing the way any particular ancient biography “worked,” including the Christian examples such as Mark (and the other Gospels). As I contrast ancient with modern biographies here, it [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:24:14-04:00February 17th, 2014|Canonical Gospels, Greco-Roman Religions and Culture|

How To Study the Gospels

I’ve been speaking about the importance of the differences of the Gospels. So far I’ve argued that these show that each Gospel has to be read for the message that *it* is trying to convey; no one should assume that the message of one Gospel is the message of another, that the portraits of Jesus are the same among all the Gospels, that none of the differences matter for much of anything because they can all be reconciled. That is to miss out on a real opportunity of determining the message of each of these authors. I think that’s important. These are important books. Whether you’re a Christian or not, no one can much doubt that the New Testament is the most important book, historically and culturally, in the history of Western Civilization. Knowing what it’s authors have to say really matters. And if you wear blinders when trying to interpret these books, you’ll simply see what you’re programed to see. And that’s not good. In my last post I argued that one of the [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:24:14-04:00February 15th, 2014|Canonical Gospels, Teaching Christianity|

Differences in the Gospels and Redaction Criticism

In my previous two posts I stressed that knowing that there are differences, even discrepancies, among the Gospels does not need to be considered in a purely negative light. There are very serious positive pay-offs. These differences/discrepancies open up possibilities for interpretation, because they (in theory) prevent a person from importing a meaning into a text that is difficult to sustain from the words of the text itself. When John says that Jesus died on the day before the Passover meal was eaten, but Mark says that Jesus died on the day *after* the meal was eaten (both are quite explicit), then the interpreter’s energy really should not be taken up with showing that they both are saying the same thing. They are saying different things, and not recognizing this means failing to recognize what each Gospel is trying to say. In this particular case, John almost certainly is the one who changed the historical datum (although, OK, this is debated). It allows John to portray Jesus as the “lamb of God” who is killed, [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:24:14-04:00February 14th, 2014|Canonical Gospels|

Similarities and Differences: The Synoptic Problem

In yesterday’s post I mentioned my New Testament class, and that one of the main lessons I’m trying to convey in it is that each of the Gospels has to be read for what *it* has to say. This requires the reader to bracket information that is conveyed in some other Gospel (or that they’ve heard before elsewhere), to see what the meaning of this particular text is. That shouldn’t be such a hard idea to grasp. If I write a book about Jesus, I don’t expect or want my readers to read my book in light of what some other author said (say, Reza Aslan or Bill O’Reilly), interpreting my views in light of the other person’s views, as if my views, as I state them, are not enough or sufficient. And yet people regularly read the Gospels as if Mark must mean the same thing that John does, or that this passage in Matthew makes best sense in light of that other passage in Luke, and so on. We don’t do that [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:24:14-04:00February 12th, 2014|Canonical Gospels, Public Forum, Teaching Christianity|

Discrepancies in the Resurrection Narratives

I’ve been having a great time with my undergraduate course this semester, “Introduction to the New Testament.” It has 240 students in it. I lecture twice a week, for 50 minutes at a shot; then for their third class period each student has to meet in a recitation group of 20 students, each one led in discussion by one of my graduate teachings assistants (four TA’s altogether; each one has three recitations). I meet with TA’s for an hour each week to talk about what we want to have happen in the recitations that Friday. The students taking the class, as I’ve pointed out before, have to do a two-page “position paper” each time in preparation for recitation. So far I think *most* (not all!) students are enjoying the course. A lot of them are finding it challenging – not so much because of its inherent difficulty as because of the perspectives being put forth in the readings and the lectures. We have spent a *lot* of time on the differences among the Gospels, and [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:24:14-04:00February 11th, 2014|Canonical Gospels, Teaching Christianity|

The Later De-apocalypticizing of Jesus

Yesterday I started mounting the case that rather than being a zealot interested in a military overthrow of the Romans to reclaim the land for God, Jesus was an apocalypticist who believed that God himself would intervene in history to destroy the forces of evil (presumably including the Romans; and certainly including the Jews who were not “on the right side”) to set up his kingdom. It is worth re-emphasizing that all over the map in our early sources Jesus speaks about the Kingdom of God. He does not speak about the Kingdom of Israel, or about the use of military force (I’ll get to the scattered exceptions eventually), or about “retaking the land.” This is a key point because Aslan thinks that for Jesus it was all about getting rid of the Romans and taking the land back; but Jesus doesn’t talk about that in our earliest sources – even the ones that Aslan cites (as I showed in earlier posts: unlike zealots, Jesus told his followers that they *should* pay taxes to Rome!). [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:23:43-04:00December 29th, 2013|Canonical Gospels, Historical Jesus|

A Third View of Jesus’ Body at the Resurrection

This will be my final post on the early Christian understandings of the nature of Jesus’ resurrected body. I have tried to show that Paul believed that Jesus’ actual body came out of the tomb, but as a spiritual, immortal body – completely transformed; other Christians, including groups of Gnostics, maintained that Jesus’ spirit lived on even though his body decomposed and ceased to exist (like all other bodies) In this final post I deal with another extreme in the opposite direction, one found already in the New Testament, possibly in order to oppose the idea that Jesus was raised only in spirit but not in body. Again, this is an extract from my forthcoming book How Jesus Became God. ************************************************************************************ The Raising of the Mortal Body We don’t know how early such full-blown Gnostic views came to expression in the Christian movement; they were certainly in place by the middle of the second century, and possibly earlier. But there were tendencies toward such views already in the New Testament period. If my reconstruction of [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:23:27-04:00December 1st, 2013|Canonical Gospels, Early Christian Doctrine, Historical Jesus, Reader’s Questions|

New Hermeneia Manuscript
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New Hermeneia Manuscript

Canonical Gospels, New Testament Manuscripts, Religion in the News

New Hermeneia Manuscript

Yesterday I provided background for my post of today by talking about the five hermeneia manuscripts of the Gospel of John that were discussed by Bruce Metzger in a publication in 1988. The reason that is now timely is that a new manuscript has just recently been identified with the same phenomenon. This time it is a Coptic manuscript that survives only in a fragment, of John chapter 3. The person who has identified it is Brice Jones, a PhD candidate in New Testament at Concordia University in Montreal. Brice is developing an expertise in textual criticism and the study of manuscripts, and this is a terrific discovery. Below is the notice that he sent around a few weeks ago reporting his find (in his own words, of course). FOR THE REST OF THIS POST, log in as a Member. Click here for membership options. If you don't belong yet, JOIN NOW!!! Yesterday I provided background for my post of today by talking about the five heremeneia manuscripts of the Gospel of John that were [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:23:14-04:00November 6th, 2013|Canonical Gospels, New Testament Manuscripts, Religion in the News|

Writers Who Contradict Themselves

In response to the question of why the authors of the New Testament sometimes contradict themselves, I’ve so far discussed two phenomena: (1) sometimes (as with Paul) an author changes his mind about something over time, and (2) sometimes an author (as with John) incorporates a number of earlier sources in his or her writing when these sources are sometimes at odds with one another, thereby creating discrepancies, or “literary seams” as I called them in my previous post. Now I deal with a third and final thing (there may be more explanations, but these are the ones I’ve thought most about). In my view, authors – not just NT authors, but authors in general (and whatever we can say about the writers of the NT, at least we can say they were authors!) – often simply are careless and don’t notice mistakes. This is not only true of authors, it’s true of readers. Very often, when I point out internal discrepancies, for example, in the Gospel of John or in the Book of Acts, [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:23:13-04:00November 1st, 2013|Canonical Gospels, Reader’s Questions|

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