Loading...Now HERE is an interesting interview (at least I thought it was). Pretty unusual, in any case. Garfield A. Reid of Dagger Squad is a lively and interesting interviewer, and the call-ins had intriguing questions.
The interview was entitled Jesus, New Testament, False Prophecies, and False Doctrines; it happened on Monday, February 8, 2021. See what you think!
Please adjust gear icon for 720p High-Definition:
Dr Ehrman, kind of unrelated question, but about the temple incident, I’ve seen many readings on the event (Assuming its historicity). I think that, at least for Mark, the point is to have Jesus enacting the destruction of the temple. That however doesn’t mean that the historical Jesus himself did it for that reason. So what, in your opinion, is the reason for Jesus doing it? The most common ones I know are:
– In line with Mark’s view, Jesus is enacting the destruction of the temple.
– Jesus is protesting some sort of unfair practice (maybe economic in nature) on the part of the temple authorities
– Jesus is enacting the coming of the kingdom of God in which the institution of the temple would become redundant and unnecessary.
– In line with the previous one, Jesus IS inaugurating the kingdom of God with this act, assuming that this action would crown his ministry and then God or his representative(s) would appear (kind of backfired, though).
I think I answered that one already?
Being a Brit I hope I can be excused for not having heard of the Dagger Squad, but a fascinating interview nonetheless. Thank you for posting.
Being an American, I never had either!
Very excited to hear about the new Great Courses lectures.
I guess this might be a possibility, although I don’t know of any direct evidence: there were a number of people in the same general area with itinerant ministries, preaching roughly similar things. They were confabulated into a single person. So some witnesses recalled what they heard of #1, and other witnesses attest to the activities of #2, and perhaps #3 got crucified. Meanwhile the others appeared here and there, and stories were told about them, and finally you got a composite– “Jesus”, who was raised from the dead. I suppose this might account for some of the inconsistencies in the gospel stories, since they would not all be about the same person. Too unlikely?
In my view, yes. 🙂
Speaking of daggers, in this interview, and elsewhere, you generally distinguish between apocalyptic Jews who expected God to intervene and more militant opponents of Rome who actively rebelled. Both the Dead Sea Scrolls and Josephus seem to combine these two currents into a more or less unified, militant apocalypticism. I’m sure there were all manner of various groups and different individual views on armed resistance to Rome, but don’t you think many (perhaps most?) would have enthusiastically wanted to fight on the side of the angels?
Yup, I completely agree. There were militant apocalypticists too. Militant non-apocalypticists; non-militant apocalypticists; and militant apocalypticists. But when explaining broadly I try to simplify it.
That WAS interesting. Still not sure who they are. So… what are your criteria for accepting interview requests from folks you don’t already know? (This is not leading to an interview request by the way, just curious.)
thanks
In that case, they paid my standard speaking fee!
Wide range of topics. One particular aroused my interest: Are modern day christians practicing their faith as it was practiced in a first century (or something like that)?
This is important question due to the fact that so many denominations claim to follow ”apostolic tradition”. Let’s consider for example Lords Meal. When and how it should be observed?
I was raised as JW and unlike the others, they celebrate lords meal only once a year. Why? They explain that Jesus’s words ”keep doing this in remembrance of me” means doing it annually every spring 14th of nisan. The day when the original passover was celebrated by the Jews. The group called ”quartodecimans” is taken as an example.
This quote from a history book is one prove for their argument:
“As regards the day for observing the Pascha [the Lord’s Evening Meal], the usage of the Quartodeciman churches of Asia was continuous with that of the Jerusalem church. In the 2nd century these churches at their Pascha on the 14th of Nisan commemorated the redemption effected by the death of Christ.”—Studia Patristica, Volume V, 1962, page 8.
If i remember right, Jesus himself did not mentioned WHEN one should observe Lord’s Meal.
My view is: absolutely not. Modern practices are not at all like those of the earliest Christians.
This is interesting topic and the one of the main reasons why i joined in this forum. I want to know more about early christianity. Not that i consider myself believer, but because i thought that i knew what true christianity is.
Ofcourse i knew nothing. I knew Just one version of it. Version of some 19th century american millenists.
With regards to the mythicists – I’ve read several books by Robert M Price (including “Bart Ehrman Interpreted”!) and others. An old one is “Pagan Christs” by J M Robertson, which I bought nearly 30 years ago. It’s over a century since he wrote it, so my Q is: Do his theories hold up in mythicist circles nowadays?
A lot of the mythicists simply recycle what their predecessors said many many years ago. Usually without acknowledgement but saying these things as if they were “true.” I dn’t know specifically about who uses Roertson that way. I probably did at one time when I was pouring over all these things. I will say I’m glad I’m not doing that now!
Bart: I’m curious about David Trobisch’s 2011 book “The First Edition of the New Testament.” (Sorry for the off topic comment, but I couldn’t find a more relevant post.)
His thesis, as I understand it, is that there was a popular edition of the New Testament published around 150 CE, and that all manuscript copies that we have are from that. This means (1) that the gap from first-century originals to this collection is a black hole in scholars’ knowledge because we have no earlier copies to compare with, and (2) the canonization process happened much earlier than previously realized. (Feel free to correct my fuzzy understanding as necessary.)
Are you aware of this argument? Your thoughts?
Yes, I’ve read the book carefully. THere is a black hole of mss whatever one makes of his thesis. I think that his arguments are highly flawed, I’m afraid….
I watched most of this interview, and it is certainly is different to the usual Bart Ehrman interview.
It may come out in the interview later (I’m still watching as I write this note), but where are you with Ralph Ellis’s claims that the Jesus of the text is actually King Izas Manu of Edessa? Garfield didn’t word it that way, but I think his question asking ‘who Jesus is most like’ was about confirming his historicity outside of biblical texts.
I’m aware that there are those who one might call ‘mainstream’ theological scholars who are critical of Ellis’s theories, but given that many are actually Christians themselves, it stands to reason that they’d hold some sort of bias anyways so what say you?
I’d say it’s nonsense. But people often hold to nonsense for reasons other than bias. They just don’t know enough (or much) and hey, makes sense! Right?!?