(18 votes, average: 4.89 out of 5)
Loading...I have been discussing at some length the rise of Jewish apocalyptic ways of thinking. I decided to do so not only because it’s so interesting and important on its own terms (which it is, at least for me) but also because I wanted to talk about the apostle Paul’s understanding of salvation (how do you get it?) and I realized that I couldn’t do that without talking about apocalypticism.
My reason for talking about Paul’s view of salvation was because I wanted to ask if he had the same as Jesus. A rather important issue and actually controversial. But I realized I couldn’t discuss either without discussing Jewish apocalyptic thought. Hence the thread. You don’t need to have read all the preceding posts to make sense of this one and the ones to come; but if you end up wondering more about some of the things I talk about, the posts are there in case you want to check them out.
I have not dealt with the theological views of Paul and Jesus in relation to one another for a very long time on the blog (eight years ago!) (although recently I did talk about the equally interesting question of how much Paul actually knew about the life of Jesus). When I did so all that time ago, it all started in response to a question. And here it is!
QUESTION:
There is no doubt that Paul had visions of Jesus. And as we all agree the gospels (and Acts for that matter) were written AFTER Paul and certainly influenced BY Paul. In one way or another they reflect his way of thinking (to a certain degree).
Wouldn’t it be possible that the story of visions started with Paul only and was incorporated into the gospels because… well, how could it be that Jesus appeared to Paul and not to his disciples?
I find it suspicious that there are such deep discrepancies in the different accounts of Jesus post-resurrection appearances….
In other words: Couldn’t Paul be the sole starting point of this vision thing?
RESPONSE:
This question gets to the heart of a very big issue: what was Paul’s role in the development of early Christianity. Is he responsible for starting it? Was he the first to claim that Jesus had appeared after his death, as the risen Lord of life? Is Paul the real founder of Christianity? Should we call it Paulianity?
Maybe I’ll devote a post or two to that question, as it is completely fundamental to understanding the beginnings of the Christian religion. In this post I’ll deal with the question this reader has asked directly; my answer will, of course, be related to the larger issue.
So my basic view is that Paul could not have been the sole source for the idea that Jesus was raised from the dead. I have a very big reason for thinking that he was not, and a subsidiary reason for it. There are probably lots of other reasons, but these two stand out in my mind.
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There seem to be some weak links here. For instance, I don’t think there is an explicit statement on Paul’s part, as to why he got so incensed by the Jesus movement. Wouldn’t the movement’s assertion that Jesus was the Messiah be sufficiently blasphemous? And I think some scholars even question the actual extent of Paul’s “persecution”. We know he boasted, so he could have simply been waging a personal vendetta against a few people who offended him. Did he “arrest” anyone? Were his actions sanctioned by any higher Jewish authority? That’s all questionable. The last reference to: “last but not least” might be better interpreted as “last of the apostles but not the least of the apostles”. I don’t see a solid basis for taking the statement as last of those who witnessed a risen Jesus. Beside, Paul wasn’t promoting a bodily resurrection– his Jesus was a spiritually transformed Jesus. James Tabor deals with these issues in some detail.
The weak links are because I laid out the views but not the evidence. E.g., the issue is what ABOUT the claim that Jesus was the messiah would be considered blasphemous. Certainly not — as many people think — the very idea that some living human could be called the messiah. That was no plasphemy at all. As to resurrection, Paul most definitely believed that Jesus was raised in the body. The body was spiritually transformed, but it was precisely the glorified *body* that appeared, not, say, just his soul.
Would it have been blasphemous to the Jewish authorities for people to worship someone they believed had been the Messiah when he was killed (permanently) in a humiliatingly way?
Based on the Jewish beliefs about the Messiah, I have trouble picturing how Jesus still had followers after he died if they didn’t believe in the resurrection. For his followers to continue, IMO they needed a way to prove to others Jews their belief that Jesus was the Messiah was true and that required something powerful, like believing he was resurrected.
I’m not sure if it was technically blasphemous but it was religiously outrageous and an affront on God. And yes, I agree — no one would have believed that Jesus was the messiah after his death apart from the resurrection.
Paul seems to quote something in Philippians 2:6-11 although it doesn’t mention the resurrection directly. Do we know anything about the document or oral tradition that he was quoting from?
If you do a word search you’ll find some posts on it. Look for Christ Poem and you’ll see.
Hi Bart,
Regarding the resurrection, we know our earliest manuscripts show Mark ending at 16:8. We also know our earliest evidence for the long ending (16:9-20) around the 2nd century.
I was a young Christian when I realized the older manuscripts did not contain the long ending. That led to realization that these words were written by Men, not any god And that there were no physical appearances of the risen Jesus in the earliest manuscripts of Mark. The only hint of a resurrection were words spoken by the young man in the tomb. [I am amused that Mark claims the women told no one, yet we are reading about it.]
I then recalled that least two other gospels used Mark as a source, meaning they were possibly corrupted.
So here is the question: How much influence did the long ending have on the gospels attributed to Matthew and Luke? Is the long ending cited in Mark or Luke? If so, how does that affect claims that Matthew and Luke are dictated or inspired by Jehovah (or whichever god) was doing this?
Okay, that’s three questions, not one. Sorry.
Don Rowlett
P.S. I just bought Gold memberships for two evangelical acquaintances. Thank you!
Matthew and Luke don’t knjow the longer ending, and did not appear to influence either one of them. THose who believe in inspiration do not think that the Gospels have to coincide with one another in their stories, but rather that God used individual authors to tell different parts of the story.
As to the P.S., many thanks! May your tribe increase!
While it’s not absolutely impossible, I think it’s highly improbable that Paul went to the length of inventing a story that he was persecuting Christians who believed Jesus was resurrected. It’s even more improbable, given his personality, that he would say other people saw Jesus resurrected first. Where would he even get the idea to invent such a thing? Then there’s the problem with him inventing an argument with Peter and Jesus’ brother James.
Also, since there was a church in Rome that Paul didn’t start, it would require someone from one of Paul’s churches to have gone to Rome before him to start a church there. I imagine his letter to the Romans would have been much different if he had known that happened.
Too many holes for this to be plausible.
I agree that the visions of a risen Jesus happened before Paul. In fact, it seems to me that Paul “invented” his visions so that he could say that he was taught by “the Christ.” It seems that many people did not believe Paul and did not trust him. Likely because they thought he was making up his visions as well.
Mr. Ehrman, does any early Christian writer/church father or any pagan opponent of Christianity (such as Celsus, for example) make any reference to Paul’s showing-off in his epistles? Because it is indeed glaring sometimes.
Not that I know of; nothing is coming to mind. Lots of modern readers have felt that though.
Give the Pauline chronologies I’ve seen there doesn’t seem to have been enough time between the death of Jesus and Paul’s conversion for Christianity to have spread far enough for Paul to have encountered it. How many Christians would there have even been at that point?
What about the possibility that when Jesus made his fateful trip to Jerusalem he left behind a substantial community of followers in Galilee and those are the ones Paul encountered? Surely the gospels are wildly exaggerating Jesus’ notoriety but perhaps his ministry in Galilee was successful enough to create a community that outlasted him, bolstered by resurrection claims?
Thanks
Paul converted about three years after Jesus’ death; travelers from Judea could well have gotten to Cilicia in a few weeks; in a couple of years there’d be nothing surprising about news about a new religion reaching there and affecting people, I should think. Yes, it’s possible that Paul met believers from GAlilee, but of course if they didn’t know about the death and resurrection they would not have had the new faith; and if word reached them in Galilee and they handed it on to Paul then the people who handed it onto them could just as easily themselves passed it on to Paul. Since Paul doesn’t mention anythng about every visiting Galilee it’s usually thought he encountered the Christians on his home turf.
I saw a Christian argue that the ending of Mark implies something different than we think.
“The women didn’t tell anyone” would then mean not telling anyone except for the disciples. Just like when Jesus healed the leper and he instructed them to not tell anyone except for the high priest.
Is there any truth to this view? Why or why not?
Also, do you think the disciples actually fled after Jesus died?
Why or why not?
IF you believe they did because of the principle of embarrasment, why doesn’t that apply to women at the tomb?
In the first casee Jesus *does* tell him to tell someone, and presumably he did. In the second the women are told to tell the disciples and the Greek is emphatic, they didn’t tell *anyone* *anything*. So I think it’s pretty unambiguous they didn’t tell anyone. And yes, I think the disciples fled back to Galilee, as Matthew suggests — probably getting out of town right away for fear of their lives. I’ve posted on the women at the tomb before to explain why it’s not at all embarassing. On the contrary, it supports a common them in the early traditions of Jesus.
Do you think that the disciples fleeing really happened because of the principle of embarassment?
Or are there other reasons? If so, What are they? 🙂
It’s because: 1) our earliest sources indicate or suggest that Galilee is where they had visions of him (Matthew and Mark); 2) it makes sense they would have fled for their lives instead of hang around, especially since they were not from Jerusalem and had never been there before and had no reason to say; and 3) they would have been going back to Galilee that day anyway, since Passover was over and everyone was going home. I think they just got out a few hours ahead of most, and possibly in some haste.
Aah I understand, thank you.
Yet I still wonder: how is that different from the women finding the tomb? They are also found in the early stories and that situation makes sense aswell.
So what are the reasons for not believing that that actually happened?
Apart from the fact that a burial in a tomb is not quite likely.
Each story has to be evaluated on teh basis of its own characteristics following critical criteria. In the case of the women, it’s true the story is found in all the Gospels. It’s interesting that Paul never mentions them. More to the point, the story presupposes that there really was an empty tomb to be visited, and that is more difficult to establish; if peopel wanted to demonstrate that the tomb was empty, then they had to have someone go see. And since, as I’ve indicated, in the earliest traditions the disciples had left town already, that left the women.
So we have the story of the disciples fleeing and the story of the empty tomb both going back to the earliest sources.
If we believe the story of the disciples to be true why shouldn’t we believe the empty tomb to be true? Apart from the fact that an honorable burial wasn’t all that likely for people like Jesus in that time and place.
When deciding what happened historians do not use a single criterion; if everything in the earliest sources is what actually happened then there would be no need for historical research. You would just say that it happened because it’s in the earliest sources. On those grounds, everything found in Mark and Matthew, for example, really happened. INstead historians engage in a careful and critical analysis of each historical claim to see if there is any reason to accept it and any reason to reject it (as historical). There are lots of reasons to suspect the stories of the women finding an empty tomb, and no reason that I can think of to suspect the disciples didn’t go home.
It came to my mind, that the women at the tomb didn’t say *anything* to *anyone* is exactly the point the author of Mark wanted to make. Because it implicates, if it wasn’t by those women, the resurrection DID NOT spread by the word of mouth in the first place BUT by the diciples SEEING the risen messiah themselves.
Seems like a smart move enhancing the percepted validity of the resurrection.
Is that what the author was probably aiming at?
I think it’s more widely thought that the ending is completely consistent with mark otherwise becuase in his Gospel the disciples never understand who Jesus is — and at the end, they never do come to an understanding. The women don’t do what they’re told, that the disciples are to meet Jesus in Galilee. Nothing in the text suggests they ever do meet him there, in my reading.
We know from at least the time of Joseph Smith that there’s always been a certain kind of person who makes up religious claims for the purpose of increasing his personal status. There’ve been thousands of these upstart religious leaders, and today we generally call them “cult leaders.” They invariably fit a psychological profile of a deep need to lead others and to say literally anything to their followers for the purpose of their primacy, including claims that they experienced miracles.
The Christian world reads Paul with the presupposition that he was sincere and honest to the last jot. Being that I’ve studied cult leaders (in all religions) for many years, I’m not so sure about Paul. His insistence on the title Apostle, his miraculous conversion story, and his general insistence of being The orthodox authority of his day on every topic. These claims of supreme legitimacy are common to cult leaders, yet we assume Paul’s views must be honest and authentic because….he was Paul.
Good points raised, I agree 1 Cor 15:3-8 is a big hint that he received it from Peter and James.
Bart, I’m puzzled by this claim: “we have multiple, independent attestation of “visions” of Jesus by his followers soon after his death (not three years later): Mark, M, L, John, and … Paul!”
The usual dating for Mark is around 40 years after the death of Jesus—the other gospels even later. I was under the impression that you were on board with the standard dating of these documents. Granted, it’s possible these are based on earlier sources, but is it not also possible that these documents are post-Pauline and products of the massive influence he had on emerging Christianity?
THey are definitely post-Pauline. The issue of “independent attestation” is not whether one source is later than another but whether it appears not to have been influenced in any way by the other, and I’d say that Mark, M, L, John, and Paul are all independent of one another in that sense. Our difficulty is imagining that books published years earlier would not have been widely known, but htat was a very common feature of the ancient world.
It seems to me that all that needs to be said is that there were accounts of Christ’s resurrection before Paul’s vision (hallucination) of the resurrected Jesus. Why did the disciples and the women who followed Jesus have to all have visions also? To begin with, these eye witnesses didn’t themselves claim in a verifiable or separately recorded way that they had these visions. It was claims largely made about them. So we have accounts, which could have been lies about the resurrected Christ. It is plausible that Paul had such a vision since what else could convert him from a persecutor to a follower? All these people having a shared vision at different times has a plausibility issue.
Yup, they could have been lies. I certainly don’t think all the disciples and the women had visions. My hunch is that one or two thought they did, and that the others believed them, leading to the stories. Paul certainly claims he did, and I think it’s much more likely that he was self-deceived than that he lied. The plausibility issue is a big one, but it would be bigger if those claiming to have visions did so without the “knowledge” that someone else had before them.
“I think it’s much more likely that he was self-deceived than that he lied”
To be self-deceived, would that mean that Paul is stating something that did not happened but internally, he believes that it did?
In other words, we know that Paul was not visited by a risen Jesus as the Christ and taught Paul. But if Paul actually believes that this happened, then he is self-deceived?
I suppose anyone who thinkks they saw something that wasn’t really there is self-deceived; but it happens all the time so I wouldn’t say he’s a unique case, maybe just more convinced by degree than by kind, if you see what I mean.
I agree Bart!
Fascinating as always. Is there a possibility that the ‘visions of Jesus’ were calculated frauds and that the seers we deceived?
It’s certainly possible, so one would need to look at whatever evidence there is of intentional fraud.
Stephen’s statement that God does not dwell in a temple built by hand was considered first blasphemy. Jesus Christ was of the same opinion. This is why Jesus Christ was killed. Paul thought this was blasphemy before he became a Christian. The second is the law of of Moses. Jesus neither adheres to nor supports this. This was followed by his disciples. This was considered the second blasphemy.
You also have made the point that the idea held by a not insgnificant subset that “Paul-invented-Christianity” had to be false because there were Christians in places that pre-dated Paul. It is hard to believe that Priscilla, Aquila and Apollos never preached a resurrected Jesus until the met Paul.
Tangentially : Acts records Paul as being at Steven’s stoning. Paul never writes about it. Is your suspicion that Paul was there there or is it your suspicion that he was not?
I’m not sure the stoning of Steven is a historical event at all. Certainly the way it’s narrated in Acts carry out Luke’s own literary and theological interests….
Since the stoning of Steven was not historical, was the story written in order to introduce Paul as someone against the Jesus movement?
That was one main reason. Another is to get out the emphasis Stephen himself makes in his very long sermon about the relation of God to his peole Israel and the Jewish leaders’ rejection of that message.
Since Stephen is not historical, do you think he represents someone in particular?
My sense is that his views were shared by a group of Christians, maybe lots of them (who were gentile), and that Luke was one of them. I don’t think he represents someone who had been martyred by the Jewish leaders.
I have to ask how we can be so certain that Paul (as Saul) persecuted the early Christians for believing in the resurrection? If Acts is to be believed, the Jews of Jerusalem stoned Stephen for saying that the Temple would be destroyed (Acts 6:14). Now, while they speak of Jesus in the present tense, that seems to me to be the minor aspect. Certainly Stephen in his speech makes no mention of the resurrection, only accusing the Jews of having killed Jesus and of not following the law. Have I read this right?
Also, as far as I have found, Jewish authorities punished people for actions, not belief. Paul wanted his readers to think he was persecuted for his beliefs, however, so he slanted his letters that way.
You might say that Saul was acting on his individual prejudices against the belief, not on behalf of the authorities, but even so, what is the evidence that Saul persecuted Jews specifically for believing in the resurrection?
(Regardless, your other arguments make it clear that Paul didn’t invent the resurrection.)
Yes, I’d say that he persecuted followers of Jesus for their “beliefs” is a kind of shorthand. He was persecuting them, I think, for worshiping him.
Does Paul (as Saul) ever say (or does someone say on his behalf) just why he was persecuting the early Christians? Or is that based on his later claims that, as Paul, he was (in his eyes) being persecuted for his beliefs?
In either case, it still seems to me that it’s an extrapolation of “worshiping Jesus” as specific evidence of a pre-Pauline belief in the resurrection.
He doesn’t say what he was doing exactly; but since there would have been no such thing as “authorization” from authorities, it may simply be that he was attacking believers in Jesus, possibly physically (maybe even just beating people up?)
Dr Ehrman
Back in those days if you believed a man was yhwh, would you have been allowed to go into the jewish temples and perform aninal sacrifices? acts says that christians continued to sacrifice at the temple,right? Can you confirm that taking a person as “fully man and fully god””would have been blasphemy and the jews would not have allowed them to sacrifice at the temple
I’m not sure what you’re asking. I don’t know of anyone in the ancient world who was thoght to be YHWH.
1. does acts say christian jews performed animal sacrifces at the jewish temple?
2. if they considered the messiah as yhwh, would they have been allowed to sacrifice at the jewish temple?
very thanks
1. No, just that they worshiped there. 2. They didn’t consider Jesus YHWH.
Bart,
I have been working on my own hypothesis and I wanted your opinion on it. My hypothesis is that the early “visions” of Jesus were grief-induced, both individual visions such as Peter and James as well as “group sightings” which then turned into a belief that Jesus really had come back in bodily form when the disciples of Jesus discovered that the tomb of Jesus really was empty. However, my hypothesis is that while the disciples of Jesus believed that Jesus had come back to life in some form, it was Paul who convinced them that Jesus had risen from the dead and had a body that was glorious, immortal, and imperishable (as per the creed in 1st Corinthians 15). Now, just to be clear, I am not claiming that the above hypothesis is unique to me or that I am the first person to propose any or all of the above. In fact, I think I have read in more than one place that the followers of Jesus had visions him that were grief-induced. It occurred to me that an empty tomb might have convinced them that they hadn’t seen just Jesus’ spirit but his actual body.
I wouln’t be at all surprised if the visions were grief induced, though there would be no way to know. But I’m pretty sure that if apocalyptic Jews saw someone alive again after being dead they did not think they were seeing some kind of soul or ghost, but a body, since for apocalyptic Jews a person could not return to life apart from a body. So that’s why I think the earliest followers of Jesus thought his resurrection was bodily. And it is they, rather htan Paul, who appear to have generated the story of an empty tomb.
“So that’s why I think the earliest followers of Jesus thought his resurrection was bodily”
Do you think they believed that his corpse had been resuscitated or that he been resurrected in a new body like Paul did? Because if they believed in a new body, then why would they need to spread stories about an empty tomb?
For Paul the “new” body was the “old” body transformed. It wasn’t a different body. So the body itself was no longer like or where it had been before the transformation. We have no indication of whether the disciples had precisely that view, but as apocalyptic Jews they certainly thought that if the body came back to life and was animate again, it didn’t remain in its burial place. That was the whole point of the resurrection of the dead in Judaism: peoples bodies came back to life nad left their places of burial.
The «Paulianity» adherents normally claim that Paul also invented his past opposition to his invented Jesus followers.
I would assume that Pharisees and Paul originally didn’t like Christian because they had stolen their eschatology from Pharisees.
I recall the Jewish historian Josephus wrote that Sadducees didn’t believe in after-live at all, Essenes believed in immortality of the soul but not in the resurrection of bodies that was the belief of the Pharisees.
Paul’s version of Christianity seemed to offer the same reward, resurrection of bodies and favorable final judgement as did as Pharisees, but without the need of following the rigid Mosaic laws.
Paul could have seen Jesus resurrection as a living proof that you don’t need to follow the Pharisean teachings abut the Mosaic law to reach the same end goal.
That could have even been Pau’s motive to invent the story about the Jesus resurrection, couldn’t it?
I don’t think Pharisees or Paul were the source for the apocalytpic views of Jesus’ followers. Jesus himself had them (and certainly didn’t know Paul), as did the Essenes, and the anonymous authors of all our apocalypses, including Daniel, and so on. But yes, I’d agree that Paul certainly came to believe that the resurrection of Jesus showed that the Law per se would have no bearing on salvation. But I don’t see how he could have invented the story if others were saying it before he converted.
Bart, the years that Paul would have been persecuting Christians was not a time when the Roman Empire was “promoting” it, right? If so, where did he get his authority to persecute them?
My sense is that this was not an official persecution of any kind, sponsored by religious or governmental authorities. It was probably Paul just causing problems, possibly simply by taking Christians out and beating them up.
I think Jesus’ had to have been resurrected to have credibility as a Messiah. Acts tell us that Paul himself rose Eutychus and would have known that Peter raised Tabitha so belief in the resurrected Jesus was no great leap.
If Jesus had raised the widow of Nain and Jairus’ daughter it would raise questions if He himself were not raised (like Jonah to whom He compares himself). Those raisings performed by Jesus were necessary to establish Him as at least equal to Elijah and Elisha etc.
The doubting Thomas episode in gJohn seems to be a response to the objection that if Jesus did appear after rising why have I never met anyone who’s seen Him – a faith is more virtuous if it not based upon seeing Him!
Does Paul believe that Jesus was buried? If yes, does Paul believe he was buried in a tomb or does he believe he was buried in a mass grave of some sorts? I know both Mark (and Matt and Luke-Acts) and John independently have independent traditions that say he was buried in a tomb but what about Paul?
Yes, he explicitly says he was buried (1 Cor. 15:3-5); he doesn’t say what kind of burial place it was.
Does the Greek used in 1 Corinthians 15:4 for the word “buried” offer any hints as to specifics related to burial and how and where Jesus was buried? Or is it a generic word that could be applied to a mass grave equally with a tomb?
Also, is 1 Corinthians 15:3-4 an early creed of some sorts that predates Paul? In other words, is Paul quoting here?
Yes, Paul appears to be quoting an earlier creed. And the word used means to be given a burial, normaly meaning some kind of proper burial (but including cremation and other ways of disposing a body with intention)
It seems evident in my mind that the writer of Matthew is totally disagreeing with Paul and exposing him as a liar. Matt 24:4-5, 23-27.
4 And Jesus answered and said unto them, Take heed that no man (Paul) deceive you.
5 For many shall come in my name, saying, I am Christ; and shall deceive many…….
23 Then if any man (Including Paul) shall say unto you, Lo, here is Christ, or there (That mysterious light.); believe it not.
24 For there shall arise false Christs (Whoever was talking in that light…Satan.), and false prophets (Paul), and shall shew great signs and wonders; insomuch that, if it were possible, they shall deceive the very elect.
25 Behold, I have told you before.
26 Wherefore if they shall say unto you, Behold, he (Jesus) is in the desert; go not forth: behold, he (Jesus) is in the secret chambers; believe it not.
27 For as the lightning cometh out of the east, and shineth even unto the west; so shall also the coming of the Son of man be. Matt 24.
“… we all agree the gospels (and Acts for that matter) were written AFTER Paul and certainly influenced BY Paul.”
We all agree that Mark’s gospel was written after the Paul letters.
But do we all agree that Mark was influenced by Paul?
They are very different…
I have been long pondering what was the significance of Jesus’ death and resurrection for his contemporaries. As Jewish writings did not consist the Hellenistic concept of Hell, there was no need to save anybody from the Hell. As Jesus was not the first nor the last person resurrected in the Bible, that would not have made him the Messiah, let alone the God. But it could have been a sign that Jesus’ teachings (morale and sacraments) were superior compared to other sects and religions. That would have made the other sects and religions to persecute Christians and that would have force Christians to go underground. That is what happened.
I would say there’s a difference between Jesus’ resurrection and the others in the Bible who came back to life. They were “resuscitated,” not “resurrected” — that is, their bodies came back to life for a while and then died again, as in a Near Death Experience. Jesus was thought to have been taken up into heaven — in part becusae unlike the others, he was raised and clearly was not here on earth any more to talk with. So he must have gone up. That made him a divine being. I talk about this at some length in How Jesus Became God.
What do you think bout The Secret Book of James?
In it Jesus is still living after 550 days after he rose from the dead. In addition, all the disciple are able to follow Jesus where ever he is going to return:
‘Five hundred fifty days after he rose from the dead, we said to him, “Did you depart and leave us?”
Jesus said, “No, but I shall return to the place from which I came. If you want to come with me, come.”’
This is very early text (100-150), isn’t it. Why should we exclude writings left outside the Bible when assessing what the early Christians could have believed?
I think these days it is usually dated toward the end of the second century (see Meyer, The Nag Hammadi Scriptures). In any event, historical scholars absolutely use extra-canonical writings for just this purpose, to see how ideas about Jesus and theology generally were developing in different times and places among different people. That’s why there is such a vibrant interest in texts such as this.
Dr. Ehrman,
Was Adam created to die, or to be eternal, and then at the fall became susceptible to death? Is this what Paul was talking about in 1 Cor. 15…that resurrection took Jesus and then later believers back to the spiritual body Adam once had?
In Genesis Adam is created from the dust with the understanding that he will return to the dust. That’s why God has to prevent him from eating of the tree of life.
This is puzzling… I thought Adam & Eve could eat from every tree except Knowledge of Good & Evil — if they ate from that tree “they would die.” They ate from it and were banished from the Garden so they couldn’t also eat from the Tree of Life & live forever in that state. The end result of knowing Good & Evil was returning to dust. I am missing something!
I don’t think that was the end result of eating the fruit. The end result was being expelled from Eden. They were always going to die. The discrepancy is that God had told Adam that he ate of the fruit he would die that very day. Didn’t happen. He kicked him out of Eden instead. I guess that’s a good thing, since otherwise none of us would be here….
Thank you so much for the reply!! (VERY sorry to answer late!!)
As I reviewed the story, I was thinking that for the first time (in my 80+ years!) it was starting to make some sense to me: Adam was put into the garden to work it; so long as he implicitly obeyed instructions, all would be well. [It does sound to me it was going to be ok to enjoy Tree of Life, but I may be wrong!] But! Adam did not obey — he enjoyed Knowledge of Good and Evil — & could now decide for himself whether he thought something God told him to do was good or bad — he wouldn’t be just automatically carrying out instructions — “he has become like one of us, knowing good and evil” — so he had to be blocked from the Tree of Life so he wouldn’t be challenging the gods. Banished, they’d not be living forever, therefore there needed to be replacements — Eve would be giving birth, and suffering thereby. I may be wrong & will keep thinking! MANY thanks for dialog!!!
Dr. Ehrman,
So God creates Adam to be mortal; is that because he knew Adam would sin? Is Paul telling us that because of Jesus’ sinlessness Jesus was given an immortal body upon resurrection, in contrast to what Adam was given?
It’s apparently just because only God is immmortal and he was creating something other htan God.
Dr Erhman, if Adam was created to die, then what was all the fuss about regarding eating the fruit of the tree of knowledge? Didn’t God say ‘but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat from it you will certainly die.’
Doesn’t that mean that not eating the fruit would result in eternal life?
I don’t think so. He tells him that he will die on the *day* he eats of it (which, didn’t happen, as it turns out). So it was a threat of imminent death, not eventual death. He was already designed for eventual death. The problem with the tree was humans were not made to exercise moral judgment. They were innocent and meant to stay that way. They were in teh image of God, but with knowledge of good and evil they would be *too* much like God. Hence the punishment. Why God put the tree there in the first place is an interesting question, and much reflected on by readers over the centuries (to see if Adam could obey even the simplest injunction?)
Dr. Ehrman,
Per 1 Cor. 15:45
So it is written: “The first man Adam became a living being”; the last Adam, a life-giving spirit.
What did Paul mean when he compares Jesus to “a life-giving spirit.”
Is this a quality of a body that is super-natural? Or is he trying to say something more complex?
I think he’s saying that Christ is not a mere mortal but is one who can provide life to others.
Hi Dr. Ehrman. In one of the above comments you mention that you’ve written about the women finding the empty tomb and how that wouldn’t be embarrassing. I’ve typed “the criterion of embarrassment” and the “women at the empty tomb” in the search bar but to no avail. Do you happen to know any other way I may find that topic on the blog? Thanks!
Search for “Who Would Invent”
Dr. Ehrman,
Is this correct?
“There were several other Jewish movements, messianic movements, prophetic movements, during the one or two centuries on both sides of Jesus’ career. Routinely they ended with the violent death of the central figure. Members of the movement (supposing they got away with their own skins) then faced a choice: either give up the struggle or find a new messiah.”
Yup.
Dr. Ehrman,
So it is true that Jesus was rather unique, that instead of his brutal death being the end of his movement, as by all accounts it should have been, this mysterious belief in his resurrection by his followers made him exceptional. Do you think this is a fact that both scholars who are believers and scholars who are not believers can agree upon?
Yes, the belief of others is what made Jesus different, not his teachings and the events of his life.
Dr. Ehrman,
When Paul uses the term “Lord” in reference to Jesus, is he putting Jesus on the same level as God?
Probably; see Philippians 2:6-11; God gave Jesus the name above every name.
Dr. Ehrman,
As far as Paul placing Jesus on God’s level: What do you think of these examples? Would these things have been unusual for Jewish monotheists?
The early Christians prayed to Jesus 1 Cor. 1:2
Jesus was pre-existent and active in redemption 2 Cor. 8:8-9, Rom. 8:3, Gal. 4:4
Jesus active in creation 1 Cor. 8:6
I think that Paul does think of Jesus as a pre-existent divine being who became human and then as a reward for his faithfulness to the point of death was elevated to the level of God and so was worthy of worship, as Phil. 2:6-11 makesclear I think. I do not think passages such as Gal 4:4 say anything at all about his pre-existence.
Dr. Ehrman,
What was it about Jesus that was so special and remarkable for Paul and the early disciples; why weren’t they just as captivated by Enoch and Elijah who allegedly were assumed right into heaven?
Probably because Jesus was a known historical figure who had lived just a couple of years ago; the disciples personally knew him, of course, and Paul knew he was alive a few hears before. THat’s very different from figures who had lived centuries earlier.
Dr. Ehrman,
(This is in re the claim that “spiritual body” is a contradiction of sorts, and means something non-physical):
Does the Greek work in the same way as the English in this example: i.e. “spiritual body” where the adjective “spiritual” describes, but does not diminish the noun “body?”
Yes, it’s describing what the body is made up of; in this way of thinking, PNEUMA (= spirit) is a kind of *stuff*. It’s more refined than the course stuff making up our bodies now, but it’s still a kind of stuff.
Dr. Ehrman,
What do you think of the claim that “spiritual” in “spiritual body” is not saying that the body is composed of spirit, but that it’s the spirit (i.e. the holy spirit) that enlivens the body?
I’d say the view is not looking carefully enough at what Paul says.
Dr. Ehrman,
Do you agree with E.P. Sanders here?: “…’spiritual body’ excludes a ghost (which would be called in Greek simply a ‘spirit’, pneuma).”
Definitely.
The replies to this blog post have covered quite a bit of ground, much of it unrelated to your original post. If I can go back a bit…
Paul wrote his letters (the ones accepted to be genuinely his) before any of the canonical gospels. He wrote about persecuting the church in Gal 1:13-14, 1 Cor 15:9, and Phil 3:5-6. The rest of what we “know” about his persecution of the church comes from Acts, as written by the author long after the events would have actually taken place based on what he had heard from others.
The author of Luke/Acts could have embellished Paul’s writings (or used stories he had heard) about persecuting the church into the stories about it in Acts, as he likely did about the other writings about Paul in Acts. It all came after Paul’s letters were out there as a roadmap for the stories.
I would think Paul was persecuting the faith primarily because it proposed that salvation could come from outside the Law. That would have been enough blasphemy to offend him and make him persecute believers. I don’t think it precludes his possible invention of the resurrection…but then I’m no expert!
Some have argued that. But I don’t think Paul himself gives much indication that this was the problem he had. He does say that the law itself claims taht anyone who hangs on a tree is cursed by God; my sense is that if Paul knew Jesus was cursed by God then he also knew, as a necessary corollary,that he was certainly not the messiah of God.
It’s an interesting discussion – and not one we can easily prove one way or another. I’m just digging in deeper into his possible influence on the author of Mark in particular, which is something I personally have never looked into. Any suggestions for reading?
YOu might start with my chapter in The New Tesatment: A Historical Introduction to the Early Xn Writings; at the end of the discussion I provide bibliography for further reading.
I assume you are referring to Chapter 22: Does the Tradition Miscarry?
Paul in Relation to Jesus, James, Thecla, and Theudas…?