After posting on the (surprisingly good) eyewitness testimony to the miracles of the founder of Hasidic Judaism (the Besht) yesterday, I couldn't resist saying a bit more about it, not from a purely anecdotal perspective but from the academic perspective of scholars engaged in actual research on the matter, research that is virtually ignored by conservative Christian biblical scholars who have written entire BOOKS on eyewitness testimony but appear to know very little about it as a phenomenon. Here is another excerpt from my book devoted to the issue, Jesus Before the Gospels (HarperOne, 2016). (the book includes footnotes/references I won't include here for the post) ****************************** In the history of memory studies an important event occurred in 1902.   In Berlin, a well-known criminologist named von Liszt was delivering a lecture when an argument broke out.  One student stood up and shouted that he wanted to show how the topic was related to Christian ethics.  Another got up and yelled that he would not put up with that.   The first one replied [...]

Did the curtain in the temple really rip in half when Jesus died?  That’s what the Gospels say.  But can it be true? [[RECALL, in case you haven’t been reading each of the posts in this thread: I’ve been trying to show how experts in the phenomenon of “memory” can help us reflect on the Gospel traditions about Jesus.  Memory is a much wider and more expansive phenomenon than most people imagine.  Memories involve what we’ve done, what we’ve experienced, what we’ve learned, what we’ve heard, and what we simply recall about the past whether we ourselves experienced it and whether our recollections are just personal or collectively shared by a broader swath of our community (e.g., our “memories” of the Clinton presidency or of the Civil War)  . When seen in this broader sense, the Gospels contain some “historically true” memories of Jesus but also some distorted or fake memories.  In the current thread of posts I’ve been discussing key passages of the Passion narratives of the Gospels.  All these are taken from my [...]

Is it true that at Jesus’ trial, the Roman governor Pontius Pilate tried to get him off the hook by offering to let him loose, according to his annual custom, but that the Jewish crowd insist that he release to them Barabbas instead, a serious criminal? [[RECALL, in case you haven’t been reading each of the posts in this thread:  I’ve been trying to show how experts in the phenomenon of “memory” can help us reflect on the Gospel traditions about Jesus.  Memory is a much wider and more expansive phenomenon than most people imagine.  Memories involve what we’ve done, what we’ve experienced, what we’ve learned, what we’ve heard, and what we simply recall about the past whether we ourselves experienced it and whether our recollections are just personal or collectively shared by a broader swath of our community (e.g., our “memories” of the Clinton presidency or of the Civil War)  . When seen in this broader sense, the Gospels contain some “historically true” memories of Jesus but also some distorted or fake memories.  In [...]

In all the Gospels Jesus enters into the temple in Jerusalem and becomes enraged by what he sees there.  He overturns tables and drives merchants out and shuts down the operation.  Could this actually have happened?  Or is it an exaggerated – or completely invented – account?   [[RECALL, in case you haven’t been reading each of the posts in this thread:  I’ve been trying to show how experts in the phenomenon of “memory” can help us reflect on the Gospel traditions about Jesus.  Memory is a much wider and more expansive phenomenon than most people imagine.  Memories involve what we’ve done, what we’ve experienced, what we’ve learned, what we’ve heard, and what we simply recall about the past whether we ourselves experienced it and whether our recollections are just personal or collectively shared by a broader swath of our community (e.g., our “memories” of the Clinton presidency or of the Civil War)  . When seen in this broader sense, the Gospels contain some “historically true” memories of Jesus but also some distorted or fake [...]

Did Jesus really come into Jerusalem on a donkey to the acclamations of the crowd welcoming him as the coming messiah?  Or is that a distorted understanding of what happened?   [[In this thread of posts I’ve been trying to show how experts in the phenomenon of “memory” can help us reflect on the Gospel traditions about Jesus.  Memory is a much wider and more expansive phenomenon than most people imagine.  Memories involve what we’ve done, what we’ve experienced, what we’ve learned, what we’ve heard, and what we simply recall about the past whether we ourselves experienced it and whether our recollections are just personal or collectively shared by a broader swath of our community (e.g., our “memories” of the Clinton presidency or of the Civil War)  . When seen in this broader sense, the Gospels contain some “historically true” memories of Jesus but also some distorted or fake memories.  In my previous two posts I talked about the “memories” about Jesus’ trial before Pilate.  In the following posts I’ll discuss other key passages of [...]

In my previous post I discussed some of the important differences between our four Gospels in their accounts of  Jesus' trial before Pilate.  Just read them, carefully, compare them in detail with one another, and see for yourself!  I continue with that discussion here, and then look to see what we can say are (certainly? probably?) "distorted memories" of the event in our accounts.  This again is taken from my book Jesus Before the Gospels  (HarperOne, 2016). ****************************** Another difference in John’s account is that Jesus and Pilate have several extended conversations.  Jesus is not silent before the accusations, as in the other accounts.  Instead, he uses the charges brought against him to speak to Pilate about himself, his identity, his kingdom, and the truth.   As in Luke, Pilate tries to release Jesus three times, but “the Jews” will not hear of it: they insist that Jesus be executed.   Pilate finally brings Jesus outside and shows him to the Jews and tells them to “Behold your King.”  The Jews urge him to crucify Jesus.  Pilate [...]

In my previous post I showed how Christian missionaries – the vast majority of them not companions of Jesus or eyewitnesses to his life – were telling stories about Jesus as they moved around in the empire spreading the gospel in the early decades, before the Gospels were written (think Paul and his missionary companions, Timothy, Silvanus, etc – none of them from Israel, none of them having laid eyes on Jesus before his death).  The problems of word-of-mouth traditions are even more complicated than I’ve so far discussed, however.  Here is how I go on to discuss the matter in my book Jesus Before the Gospels (HarperOne, 2016). ****************************** It was not only these missionaries who were converting others, however.  The converts they made were themselves converting people.   Take another hypothetical but completely plausible situation:  suppose I’m a worshiper of the traditional Roman gods, living in the town of Colossae in, say, the year 50 CE.   The missionary Epaphras comes to town and I meet him at his place of business.  I’m a highly [...]

Here I continue my reflections on how stories about Jesus were floating around the Mediterranean world *before* the Gospel writers wrote their accounts (based on these stories).  I pick up here with the final paragraph of yesterday's post, again taken from my book Jesus Before the Gospels (HarperOne, 2016). ****************************** In other words, a story does not have to be written in the newspaper or broadcast on the evening news or even on modern social media to get around, very widely and very quickly.  Moreover, the vast majority of the people telling the story – just within three days – are people who were not eyewitnesses and did not get their information from eyewitnesses.   What do you suppose happens to stories when they are told, remembered, retold, and then remembered again, just within three days?  Or three years?   Or, as in the case of Jesus, 40-65 years?   How many changes would be made in them? One important issue, of course, involves the storytellers themselves.  Who was actually telling the stories about Jesus?   To [...]

I return now to questions about how early Christians “remembered” Jesus as they told and retold stories about him.   People often claim that the Gospels must be accurate because they are based on eyewitness testimony that was carefully guarded to ensure its accuracy.  But let’s think about that for a bit in realistic terms.  Here is how I discuss the matter in my book Jesus Before the Gospels (Harper One: 2016). ****************************** If during the 40-65 years separating Jesus’ life and the surviving Gospels, his sayings and deeds of Jesus were not memorized by his followers and then passed down, verbatim, through the church, and if they were not circulated accurately within informally controlled settings, how were they being told and retold? One obvious point to stress, which has not occurred to everybody, is this:  stories about Jesus were circulating even during his lifetime.  Moreover, even then they were not being told only by eyewitnesses.  When someone who saw Jesus do or say something then and told someone else who wasn’t there, it is impossible [...]

I've been discussing modern explanations of how the traditions about Jesus found in the Gospels could in fact be historically accurate even if they were passed on by word of mouth over the years and decades before anyone wrote them down.  The natural suspicion is that stories that get told and retold by different story tellers in different times and places year after year will change, somewhat significantly, and that some tales and sayings attributed to an important figure will be invented, with no historical basis at all.  It happens all the time. It probably has happened to you.  Someone says you did or said something and it’s just not true.   Most of them time when you find out about it you are not amused – especially if it’s someone who actually knows you.   At other times you might think it is indeed amusing. But isn’t it different with the ancient world, and especially with stories being told about Jesus?  In my previous posts I talked about the theory of a New Testament scholar (Gerhaardson) [...]