Loading...Here’s an intriguing question I got a while back, with my response.
QUESTION:
What do you think of the idea symbolized by the Joseph of Arimathea character that there may have been closeted sympathizers or even fellow travelers of the Jesus movement among members of the Sanhedrin?
RESPONSE:
It’s a good question. My sense is that it is virtually inconceivable that there were followers of Jesus, closeted or otherwise, in the Sanhedrin. For a lot of reasons. The main one is that according to our earliest accounts, Jesus’ entire public ministry was spent teaching in Galilee. He was unknown in Jerusalem (I know that John puts him there earlier on several occasions, but that’s a later conceit). I think the first time anyone in Jerusalem had ever even heard of Jesus was when he caused the ruckus in the Temple the last week of his life. So he almost certainly had no followers among the aristocratic elite there.
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In addition to that, I think the later Christians who told stories about Jesus wanted their hearers/readers to “know” that Jesus had a wide and deep influence. And there developed an entire tendency to show that even among his enemies (both Jewish leaders and Romans) there were closeted or not-so-closeted believers among them, either ones who believed in secret or who came to believe once they had an experience of his presence. Off the top of my head, there is the following:
- The Centurion at the cross. In Mark’s Gospel the centurion who has just crucified Jesus, after the curtain of the temple rips in half, confesses, “Truly this man was the Son of God” (Mark 15:39). Not only is this implausible, historically, on its own merits, the passage clearly serves a Markan function. Or rather, several functions. For one thing, no one else in this entire Gospel (except for the unnamed woman who anoints Jesus for his burial in ch. 14) has recognized that he is the Son of God precisely because (not despite the fact that) he has to suffer. But this outsider (not one of the 12!) does. Moreover, there is clear literary artistry at work here. The only other place in the entire Gospel where the word “rips” (Greek: SCHIZO) occurs is at the baptism, where Jesus comes out of the water, sees the heavens “rip” open, and the dove descending, and hears the voice. And what does the voice say? It foreshadows what the centurion will later say: “You are my beloved Son.” See the parallel? The two voices (and the ripping) come at the beginning of Jesus’ ministry and the end. Mark is saying something about this: the two passages need to be read in relationship to one another. I.e., it is a Markan creation.
- The second robber on the cross in Luke 23. In Mark, both of the criminals being crucified with Jesus mock him. In Luke, only one of them does; the other sides with Jesus and asks to be allowed into the Kingdom. Jesus tells him he will appear in paradise that day. This idea that one of the robbers converted gets played out in later Gospels, where he becomes the first person ever to enter into paradise, as described, for example, in the Narrative of Joseph of Arimathea (for a translation, see my book, done with Zlatko Plese, The Other Gospels)
- Nicodemus . In the Gospel of John, a much later account, of course, we have Nicodemus, a “Jewish teacher” who confesses that Jesus has come from God and who, even though at first he can’t make heads or tails of what Jesus is talking about (John 3), comes as a secret follower at the end to anoint his body (with a hundred pounds of myrrh and aloes! John 19). Nicodemus is almost certainly not a historical figure.
- Gamaliel. In the book of Acts the famous rabbi Gamaliel, though not an actual follower of Jesus, is portrayed as someone sympathetic to the Christian cause,and he utters one of the lines that informs the entire narrative of the book. He tells the other Jewish leaders to leave the Christians alone, “for if this plan or work is of human origin, it will be destroyed; but if it is from God, you will not be able to destroy them. You may, in fact, be found to be fighting against God.” (Acts 5:38-39)
- Pilate! Pilate himself, of course, is portrayed as increasingly innocent in the condemnation and death of Jesus, as you read through the four Gospels. And in later Gospel traditions (I give the accounts in the book mentioned above, The Other Gospels) he regrets what he had done to the Son of God. And confesses Jesus to be a greater miracle worker than any of the Roman gods. And comes to believe in him. And becomes a Christian saint!
In short, the Christian story tellers had a long and noble tradition of telling stories of those who were opposed to Jesus coming to believe in him. The tale of Joseph of Arimathea falls under the rubric, I think. I don’t think there’s any real historical chance that he was both a member of the Sanhedrin and a believer in Jesus. And, in fact, I think he was actually an invented figure, not a historical person.
Maybe I should repost on that!
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Totally off topic, sorry. I was listening to your most recent podcast about ‘What does it mean to be a Christian’ and you said in answer to a listener question that the Jewish concept of the ‘soul’ was really that when you died your ‘soul’ was no longer existent. Did they have a concept of the animating ‘spirit’ being different from the ‘soul’? What about the various OT passages that talk about Sheol as the abode of the dead, such as when Saul asked to speak to Samuel? Can you clarify? Really enjoyed this podcast episode by the way. I don’t know how you have time to do the blog and the podcast and all the other things you do in addition to your faculty duties.
I discuss all this in my book Heaven and Hell. There is not always a distinction between soul and spirit; and Sheol appears to refer to the grave/tomb/pit a person was buried in, not a communal gathering place like the Greek Hades.
RE: Jesus’ trips to Jerusalem
Supporting your line of thinking, as far as I can tell from the research I have read so far, there were plenty of jews that visited Jerusalem during Passover but most were from Judah and not nearly as many from Israel since the distance/cost was more significant and the jews from Israel were still not seen as ‘pure blooded’ jews like those in Judah. It seems it was not many decades before Herod the Great, under John Hyrcanus, that jews from Israel/Galilee were at serious risk if they went to Jerusalem with a ‘mixed’ family history to try to enter the temple to present a sacrifice of their ‘first fruits’ or simply tried to temporarily or permanently resettle near Jerusalem.
Is there any history of when the jews from Israel started to become more accepted in their travels to Judah/Jerusalem?
In other words, would Jesus and his disciples still of had reasons to consider a journey to Jerusalem risky simply because the jews there (incl. the Sadducees and Pharisees) were going to consider them second-class (or worse) jews from Israel? There certainly was still plenty of discrimination occurring in that region on all sides.
Interesting. You say the second robber “…becomes the first person ever to enter into paradise.” That’s a new one to me. In the history of the world, no one ever went to heaven before this?
Depends whom you ask! But in traditional Xn tradition, no one could go to paradise until Jesus died.
Hi bart
In Galatians 2 Paul says “They added nothing to me”
could this mean that they did not agree on everything and Paul rejected they thoughts for exaple the christologys?
IT means they didn’t ask him to do or think anything differently from what he already was.
In preparation for the Last Supper all synoptics relate Jesus sending disciples into town to set up the venue [Mk 14 (13–16), Mt 26 (18,19), Lk 22 99-13)]. One gets the impression Jesus had “connections” in the city to obtain such a last-minute reservation (not to mention it was apparently free!). How could this happen if he was “unknown” in Jerusalem?
Good question! Maybe God had laid the path for him?
Hi bart
Pauls seems to think that all the apostles saw jesus but that would be pretty unnlikley acroding to math if only apout 15 % of people have visions of passed ones. The problem is he talked to Peter and surely he asked from him if all the apostles saw jesus but according to your theory all propeply did not.
Dr. Ehrman, I would like to have your opinion about Dr. Tom Wright’s interpretation (or translation) of the passage in Luke dealing with the census at the time of Quirinius. His translation appears in his book “The Bible for Everyone” according to what he says in the link below:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6-f4taPmORc
Sorry to diverge from the topic of the post.
Thanks.
You’ll need to summarize his view for me; the Greek is not particularly ambiguous here: it is a present partidciple which indicating that this was the “first census” whil Quirinius wsa the governor of Syria.
Gamaliel is definitely in on it, per Early Church tradition.
Everybody feeding 20,000 (plus women and children) is state-sponsored.
And everyone leading hundreds of thousands out of Avaris, the Land of Goshen is state-sponsored.
And I even mean it in the literal sense of state:
For Jesus’ era:
Rome is federal
Nabataea has the marital alliances with Antipater and then Herod Antipas
Judaea is rural county
For Moses era:
Egypt is Federal
Avaris is State
Canaan is rural county
We folk get our records from what the elite left behind in the dirt and some oral interviews of third parties who witnessed “magic” events written down in crude Greek
But the rich Ancient Near East was obsessed with documentation — which goes back 5,000 years. And they absolutely believed keeping this knowledge to certain lineages only was a virtue. It is those people who are likely sponsoring the son of a handmaiden to a Lord (Jesus, same role as Ishmael).
They likely used soft power in trying to keep Jewish nationalism “zealots” from bottlenecking the famous passage of trade from India through Egypt to Rome. Theyoffer an “adopted into greatness” ethnic Jew (classic Sargon of Akkad move) — the Herods having no observable Jewish lineage until Agrippa. But culminates in the Great Jewish Revolt and they close down Jerusalem and move the passage North.
My NIV “the new student BIble” has an Insight into Gamaliel. It says that Saul of Tarsus was a student of this rabbi Gamaliel. What the source of that Insight was; the Bible doesn’t say, but it’s the Bible I had to use in school, grades 5-12.
From the viewpoint that both the gospel of Luke and Acts were specifically written for a defense of Saul of Taurus:Apostle Paul because of the events of Acts 21:38 where he’s charged with terrorist crimes of leading a revolt of 4000 men.
I think Gamaliel in chapter 5 of Acts is saying to the Sanhedrin, “hey let these guys go. Saul of Tarsus will take care of it for us.” The stoning of Stephen occurs in chapter 7.
From this viewpoint, I don’t think Gamaliel was trying to help the Apostles.
Since Saul was the student of Gamaliel, why doesn’t he either mention what he witnessed, his neighbors witnessed or Gamaliel experienced?
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What did Gamaliel say about Jesus’ appearance?
Gamaliel: “He is the picture of his mother although his hair is a little more golden. He is tall and his shoulders are a little drooped. His eyes are blue. He is not a great talker unless there is something brought up about heaven and divine things when his eyes light up with peculiar brilliancy.”May 3, 2004
What did Jesus look like? – The Mercury
Hey Bart! I hope it’s okay to post this here. I was just listening to the latest episode of the Misquoting Jesus podcast. You had mentioned John 10:30 where Jesus said “I and the father are one”. You had mentioned that the word used there for “are” means something along the lines of “we are”. This implies therefore that Jesus was not saying that he was God but that God and him were in agreement with all he taught and believed. This seems to be the case as I looked up the ancient Greek. One question I have though, is that a few verses later the Jews attempt to stone Jesus because they said he claimed to be God. It seems the Jews did not understand 10:30 to mean that Jesus and the father had the same beliefs but that he actually was claiming to be God. How does one make sense of this?
My interpretatoin is that he is claiming to be equal with God, and to that extent is indeed making a divine claim for himself; but he is *not* claiming to be identical with God. They are separate persons but “one” (that is equal).
On the Centurion at the cross…. A Centurion, really? Even a Hastastus Posterior, least senior Centurion of the least senior cohort, would have been overkill for an execution. Likely a contubernia of 8 legionnaires led by a decanus had the duty.
Just curious. Do you think the centurion’s words in Mk 15:39 are intended as a confession or an insult? I think Mark intends these words as a sarcastic insult, “Really? This man was a son of a god?” But for Mark, it would be ironically true. Another example of everyone misunderstanding Jesus in Mark. Matt and Luke clearly make the centurion’s words to be affirmations, but that’s not clear in Mark. Mark includes many other insults against Jesus (Mk 3:21, Mk 3:22, Mk 3:30; Mk 6:3), and Matthew alters or omits all of those except the Beelzebul insult (Mt 12:24). And a similar thing happens here. Thoughts?
The trick is knowing what Mark wants his reader to think the centurion has in ind AND what he (Mark himself) means). In some ways maybe it’s like the crown of thorns. Those putting it on Jesus’ head are mocking him, but he really IS the king, despite thir mockery.
In this case (centurion’s confession) it’s also plausible though that Mark is trying to portray the centurion as really “getting it” (sinc ehe says this when he sees how Jesus has died), that the Son of God had to be executed, something no one else in the narrative understands.
I have a small problem with the argument here in this post:
1# We have a serious puzzle related to early Christianity: Jesus’ teaching did pass and flourish from its local limited domain (the Jewish Community) to a foreign domain (the Greek-Roman world) in less than 20 years. Any logical solution for this puzzle would probably require the assumption that Jesus did possess a high level of charisma.
2# From the gist of the 4 gospels, we can conclude that Jesus went in preaching from a village to the next village, which I assume it wasn’t the normal practice for the Jewish religious authorities, as I am assuming here that the practice at that time was for the preacher to settle in a place waiting for the people to come in.
So, if we have “today” a person with a high level of charisma and he is preaching from a place to another, then we should expect a good number of followers.
3# Galilee was an integral part within the Jewish community in Palestine, and Nazareth wasn’t in the middle of nowhere there. Nazareth was 6km from Sepphoris (the Capital). So, there were constant Jewish travelers, merchandisers and visitors to and from Galilee.
—–>
——>
4# John the Baptist was preaching in Galilee, but it seems that he did have followers in many different parts in Palestine.
5# We have a very good case-study; Sabbatai Zevi. He claimed to be the Messiah in 1663 AD and in less than 3 years he had thousands and thousands of Jewish followers.
However, the Ottoman authorities brought him in and gave him 2 options: Either he will be executed, or he will convert to Islam. I would like here to “imagine” that they clarified to him: that this time, they will be guarding his grave for more than 3 days just to make sure that history will not repeat itself. It seems that the spirit of courage failed him this time and Zevi converted to Islam, and surprisingly, hundreds of his followers converted to Islam with him.
He didn’t have super charisma, but still, he managed to have thousands of followers even in Europe which he didn’t preach there.
###
So, the argument that Jesus didn’t have followers in Jerusalem because he didn’t preach there doesn’t seem to me to be a very valid argument.
Good points about the Centurion and the others, Bart. But, specifically in the Gospel of Mark, does Joseph of Arimathea properly belong in their company? Mark presents him as a member of the council, and as expecting the coming Kingdom of God (Mark 15:43); but also – along with all the rest of the council – as condemning Jesus to death (Mark 14:64). Nowhere does Mark propose Joseph as a secret follower of Jesus.
Paul states as an accepted fact that Jesus had been buried (1 Corinthians 15:4); but that in turn implies that someone had buried him. Maybe the Romans did it themselves; but – given the universal Roman aversion to coming into contact with crucified bodies – this seems unlikely. Allowing for the counterpart Jewish religious command against leaving bodies unburied, it would not seem impossible, once Pilate had released their bodies, for all three of those crucified that Friday to have been interred through the agency of the council. Indeed the later Mishnah proposes that the council maintained prepared burial chambers specifically for this purpose (Sanhedrin 5.6)
Perhaps Joseph was a historical council member, simply doing his job?
I’m not sure what you mean about the Roman aversion to coming into contact with crucified bodies. It happened all the time.
The problem of thinking that Joseph was just doing his job is that it implies that he and the other council members were doing this for everyone, every day — the two others who were crucified that day, the five or six in the days preceding, the dozen or so over the next week, over and over again whenever someone was crucified, and yet it is never mentioned in any of our records. Seems unlikely to me.
I also (following my previous comment) would like to discuss the Gospel of John being “a much later account”.
I have discussed my thoughts previously in your post (dated May 8, 2024) about the possibility that John 1:1-34 was inserted later to the original Document, and I am going here to tackle this matter from a different angle.
I think it is a valid observation that recalling an event shortly after it occurs will be more vivid and detailed compared to recalling the same event after a considerable amount of time. For example, if there has been an incident in your department and you discuss it the next day, the details in your description would be vivid. However, if you talk about the same incident after 10 years, your description will likely be more abstract and focused on the main points.
To summarize, I would say that the level of vividness in oral traditions would decrease over time.
—–>
—–>
Now … for the sake of argument, let us temporarily accept that John 1:1-34 is an insertion into the original document and let us remove it. Additionally, let us take out the few other verses that contradict one of the main themes in John (that Jesus is totally and completely submissive to God). This will leave us with a document that I will refer here as “Core-John”.
It is my impression that Core-John is much more vivid in detail than the Synoptic. Now … there might be more stories in the Synoptic than John (I am not very sure), but it seems to me that the vividness in the stories of John is more than the Synoptic.
If we could agree that this observation is valid, then I can say with confidence that there is a good probability that Core-John was written much before Mark.
That certainly has not been my experience with oral traditions today; just the contrary.
What evidence is there that Jesus was unknown in Jerusalem?
If he was just an unknown Galilean peasant, who arrived in Jerusalem with a dozen followers and declared that he would become king after an imminent apocalypse, he should have been considered insane.
He could have simply been killed if he was a nuisance and no-one except his disciples would have noticed.
In that case, crucifixion makes no sense. Why draw attention to an idiotic claim when the city was full of Passover pilgrims?
It is more probable that the disciples could have persuaded people that Jesus had been resurrected if they had outside support rather than being out begging in the streets. Anyone providing support would have kept quiet from fear of reprisals.
I guess the evidence is that our sources portray him as an unknown lower-class day worker from a hundred miles away teaching only in rural areas; in our three earlier sources his first appearance in Jerusalem is the week he was executed. So it’s hard to figure out how he would have been talked about down there, especially among the elite.
Professor, wouldn’t Jesus have to have had SOME influential friends in Jerusalem? Somebody had to arrange for the donkey to be tethered exactly where it was for Jesus to find it . . . without anyone yelling “thief!” Somebody had to send the MAN with the water jug (always supposed to be a woman) to lead Jesus to the Upper Room for the Last Supper and someone had to sponsor it, pay for the food and drink, etc. (VRBO? AirBNB?) How about the Beloved Disciple, who beat Peter into the temple courtyard and just waltzed on in because he was known to the High Priest? (If you subscribe to the theory that the B.D. was Lazarus, since the High Priest wasn’t likely to know John the Galilean fisherman, Lazarus and his sisters also had a home in Jerusalem. Last Supper there?)
If you take these accounts as historically accurate, yes, that would be a conclusion to draw.
I’m not sure we can entirely discard the historicity of Joseph of Arimathea.
He is mentioned in all the synoptics and in John; of course, this does not mean he is historical, but it points to a pre-Gospel tradition. Mark and Luke considered him a ‘member of the council,’ and Luke explicitly states that he ‘had not consented to their [the Sanhedrin’s] decision and action’ (Mark 15:43, Luke 23:50-51).
Additionally, we have Acts 13:27-30, where Luke says that those who ‘took him down from the tree and laid him in a tomb’ were the same people who ‘condemned him… and asked Pilate to have him executed.’ So, in apparent contradiction to what Luke says in his Gospel, it was not just Joseph of Arimathea, but the Sanhedrin itself that was responsible for Jesus’s burial.
How could such a strange story arise?
I have always thought that the Sanhedrin’s involvement in Jesus’s death was fabricated, possibly inspired by the death of James, which occurred a few years before the writing of Mark’s Gospel (Antiquities 20.9.1). So, maybe the historical Jesus was not as opposed to the Sanhedrin as the Gospels suggest, and Acts 13:29 is closer to reality than Acts 13:28.
Charrua:”[Joseph of Arimathea] is mentioned in all the synoptics and in John; of course, this does not mean he is historical, but it points to a pre-Gospel tradition.”
Matthew and Luke are are too dependent on Mark to treat as corroboration. John certainly has an independent core, but scholars (e.g. Raymond Brown, and D. Moody Smith) believe there to be significant influence by the synoptic tradition.
This raises a question I have for Bart: how useful is the Gospel of John to critical scholars for deriving probable history- particularly from that independent core?
“Matthew and Luke are are too dependent on Mark to treat as corroboration. John certainly has an independent core …. significant influence by the synoptic tradition.”
100% agreement.
In fact, I think the author of John knew the synoptics. In relation to Jesus’s resurrection stories, there are more agreements between Luke and John than between Luke and Mark/Matthew. I have a drafted platinum article entitled “The Synoptic Gospels of Luke and John” exploring this thread: the witnessing by Peter of the empty tomb (in both Luke and John, coming in a rush), the two angelical figures (one in Mark/Matthew), the insistence on the fleshly nature of the risen Christ (Luke 24:38-40 and the skeptical Thomas in John), and certain common phrases like “Jesus came and stood among them and said, ‘Peace be with you!’” (Luke 24:36, John 20:19).
But in relation to Joseph of Arimathea, I doubt the author of John would include this character only based on the synoptics. As for why I doubt this, it’s going to take more than 200 characters!
(About your question regarding Bar, I guess when he reads ‘in reply to’ and sees it’s not him, he skips the comment… but that’s just a guess.)
I am 68 … and a cradle Catholic, of extremely liberal bent (the catechism conscious clause is my out!) for at least the last 30 years (and possibly 50, brain is going, cannot remember!) … I have been under opinion – from a priest / Catholic someone who told me this … that “Lazarus” / brother of Martha & Mary … was really a high priest, named Eleazar. It seemed very sensible to me that there were highly placed people in the management of Judaism of the 1st century … that would have been more liberal than others – there are SO MANY nuances to Christian and Judaic interpretation. WAS there an Eleazar? Could that supposition be true? On a familial level, I’d also ask “why weren’t Martha / Mary / Lazarus … married? was the story abbreviated in the same way I’d abbreviate my family tales if telling them to you, vs. another family member?” etc.
There was an Eleazar show was the son of Aaron, and the chief priest after him, in the time of Moses (say 1300 years before Jesus), and another Eleazar the high priest about 300 years before Jesus. But no, Lazarus is not portrayed as a priest (see John 11), let alone the high priest.
Dr. Ehrman, Tom Wright appeared in Premier Unbelievable?, hosted by Justin Brierley, and said that “Luke is often translated to say that this is the first census at the time when Quirinius was gorvernor of Syria.” He claims that the greek word protos, with a genitive, can mean “before”, and translates the passage in Luke 2:2 as saying “this was the first census before the one when Quirinius was governor…” I’d appreciate your comments.
Well, Tom is nothing if not creative! Not sure I ever heard *that* one before. I don’t see how he gets there. PROTE here is an adjective, not a preposition (the words “the one when” — which Tom is using as the object of the preposition — are not there); the adjective agrees in gender, number, and case with the noun “census” and so goes with it to mean “the first census.” The phrase “while Quirinius was governor of Syria” is a genitive absolute (which by definition does not have a syntactical relationship with the terms “census” or “first”), and since it is a present participle it is indicating that he was ruling at the same time as the census. So in short, I don’t see how Tom can be right on this one. I wonder if he’s ever given any examples of this construction in ancient Greek that support his construction.