Loading...In a recent post I tried to show that the author of Luke-Acts (same person; let’s call him Luke) presented an “exaltation” Christology — that is, that he thought Christ was not originally a divine being but had been exalted to divinity at some point of his existence; but unlike most of our other sources, he affirms *different* moments when this happened: at Jesus’ birth, his baptism, and his resurrection. (See the post if this is not ringing a bell: https://ehrmanblog.org/the-oldest-view-of-christ-found-in-only-one-greek-manuscript-of-luke/ ).
I ended the post by saying I would explain how Luke could have it all three ways. And as a reader pointed out to me, I never posted the post! So here it is. I dealt with this specific issue on the blog some years ago, and I may be older now, but I’m no wiser, at least as far as this question goes. Here’s what I said then and would continue to say now:
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Does Luke present a (strictly speaking) consistent view of Jesus throughout his two-volume work of Luke-Acts?
I raise the question because of the textual problem surrounding the voice at Jesus’ baptism. I have been arguing that it is likely that the voice did NOT say “You are my beloved Son in whom I am well pleased” (as in most manuscripts; this is what it clearly does say in Mark’s version; Matthew has it say something different still); instead it probably said “You are my Son, today I have begotten you.”
In the past couple of posts I’ve suggested that this wording – found in only one ancient Greek manuscript, but in a number of church fathers who quote the passage (these fathers were living before our earliest surviving manuscripts) – makes particular sense if the Gospel did not originally have chapters 1-2, the accounts of Jesus’ birth. In yesterday’s post I gave the evidence for thinking that originally the Gospel began with Jesus’ baptism.
But if I’m wrong about that (and hey, it won’t be the first time), then don’t we have an irreconcilable problem on our hands? Because that would mean that Luke first says that Jesus is the Son of God because of his miraculous birth, where God is literally his father (this is explicitly stated in 1:35) but then says that he is the Son of God because God adopted him to be his Son in 3:22.
My view is that even if…
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Since Luke says up front that he’s gathered his gospel from different sources, isn’t it possible that some of the seeming discrepancies just reflect the content of those different sources? Luke may have harmonized them in producing his “orderly account” or seen no actual discrepancy that needed harmonization.
Yup! Very possible.
Luke 23:32 «Two other men, both criminals, were also led out with him to be executed.»
Abel was the first human to ever die! His blood cried out to the Lord from the field, «Remember me!» The Lord then rebuked Cain, and Cain answered:
Genesis 4:14 LXX «If thou castest me out TODAY (σήμερον G4594) from the face of the earth, I shall be hidden from thy presence(…)»
Just as Cain was cast out from the presence of the Lord that day, so was Abel invited into Paradise that same day(from a theological point of view).
Luke 23:43 «Truly I tell you, today (σήμερον G4594) you will be with me in paradise.»
The first human to ever die became the first to be resurrected, and led into paradise. Cain was cast out from the presence of the Lord. What a strong theological view it would have been to believe in.
Cain felt the Lord was unjust when the Lord didn’t accept his sacrifice, only Abel’s. But as the good thief said: «We are punished justly, for we are getting what our deeds deserve.»
Cain didn’t fear the Lord enough to refrain from even killing his own brother.
From The Testament Of Abraham.
The chief-captain Michael said, Do you see, most holy Abraham, the terrible man sitting upon the throne? This is the son of the first created Adam, who is called Abel, whom the wicked Cain killed, and he sits thus to judge all creation, and examines righteous men and sinners. For God has said, I shall not judge you, but every man born of man shall be judged. Therefore he has given to him judgment, to judge the world until his great and glorious coming, and then, O righteous Abraham, is the perfect judgment and recompense, eternal and unchangeable, which no one can alter. For every man has come from the first-created, and therefore they are first judged here by his son(…)
Hebrews 11:4 By faith Abel brought God a better offering than Cain did. By faith he was commended as righteous, when God spoke well of his offerings. And by faith Abel still speaks, even though he is dead.
Maybe it just didn’t take the first time. :o)
Dr. Ehrman,
From a textual standpoint, why would scribes have changed the wording if they had already (presumably) added the first two chapters at some point to deal with the idea of Jesus being the Son of God at birth? Or is this the result of multiple versions of the Gospel being transcribed by multiple scribes in different locations?
As a side question – is there a certain geographic “sweet spot” in terms of where the earliest and best texts currently come from?
Thank you! Long time listener/reader, first time commenter!
If we were talking about the same scribe, it wouldn’t make much sense. But we are talking about various scribes who didn’t now each other or work together in their copying of the Gospel. And yes, almost all of the oldest texts (on papyrus) have been discovered in Egypt. Starting in the fourth century are parchment mss, and they could have been produced (and theoretically survived) in other places. It’s almost impossible in most instances to decide where a ms was originally made though….
Prof,
will you consider posting on the Christology of the Letter to the Hebrews as part of this series of posts on NT Christology? I think it’ll be interesting to compare what Hebrews has to say on this topic to the other high Christologies in the NT. (I performed a search on the blog but didn’t find any extended discussion on this epistle.)
Interesting idea. I don’t think I”ve ever done that.
“Exalted” Christological view indeed! But is there ANY evidence supporting a position that Luke’s exaltation reached John’s?, i.e. a pre-existent logos active in creation with his father, equally divine before any of his human time on earth was spent? And if not…isn’t there PLENTY of evidence that Luke himself was an adoptionist of sorts, only later to be labeled heresy? Great Sunday and Wednesday zooms, Professor, and sorry i’m on the road and can’t make this sunday’s! peace-
My view is that Luke does not at all have an incarnationist Christology and that if later church fathers actually realized what he was saying they would have claimed his views deficient at best.
Isn’t a simpler explanation that “Luke” had various sources (as he says at the start of the gospel) and some had Jesus born the Son of God, others at His baptism, others at His resurrection, and Luke simply included them without any editorial tinkering?
Yup. But since he changed sources in other ways (see what he did to Mark, generally), it would be interesting that he didn’t change these passages in particular.
Isn’t he just quoting scripture to show God had previously claimed to have a son, rather than intending to indicate the moment the scripture was fulfilled?
Yes he is quoting scripture. To show that it is true: “this day I have begotten you.” That’s the fulfillment.
But if he’s quoting it as a fulfillment on so many different occasions, the best explanation is not that he is constantly contradicting himself, but that he doesn’t mean the fulfillment is occurring at that particular time.
“this day I have begotten you” was spoken by God long in past.
His birth, baptism and resurrection are all just manifestations of a previous statement by God.
Dr,
I have two questions
In the gospel of john, it is reported that , “destroy this temple and in three days i will raise it up”
but then it verses 22 it says “he was RAISED up”
refer to john 2:19-22.
can this mean that god brought jesus back to life and then jesus simply got up like everyone gets up from a lying position? in other words, john is not saying that jesus took part in bringing himself back to life like god did, he simply got up from his straight position on the floor?
2:22 specifically says he was “raised from the dead” not that he “was raised from the floor”
can the word “raised” mean to get up from a straight position?
jesus said “i will raise it up”
so if jesus was in a lying position , did he raise himself from that position?
it says ” he was raised up” by who?
By God.
so when jesus says, “i will raise it up”
he means the father brought him back to life/raised him, then jesus “raised himself” like we all raise our bodies?
Some passages say that Jesus “was raised,” others say that “he arose.” No passage says both. In this one Jesus does the raising.
if i died and was raised to life, i then raised myself back on my feet, would i use the same greek for “raise” for my act on getting back on my feet and gods act in raising me to life?
in both cases raise has been used,but gods act and my act are different.
but in greek , are the different acts noticeable for the word “raise”?
As I’ve been saying: when it says someone was raised “from the dead” it means something different from saying someone was raised “from the sidewalk” The verb is the same, but it means something different.
sorry for keep on bothering but as you have realized english is not my first language and i am kind of slow.
so do you agree then that the verse does not have to be interpreted to mean that jesus resurrected himself, simply raised himself?
I”ve forgotten which verse we are referring to, but in almost (or in every?) case it says either htat Jesus was raised (i.e. by God) or that Jesus arose (without an indication of who did the raising)
Do you think that Luke developed this “becoming” at different points in Jesus’ life and death in response to multiple interpretations of when Jesus became lord, savior, son of god, etc. that were floating around among Christians at the time, e.g. birth, baptism, resurrection? The idea is that he was saying that you don’t have to pick one point at which Jesus became anything. All of them are valid.
Or do you think that he likely did not know any Christian views of Jesus outside his own limited community of Christian friends? You know it is not like he had the Internet to do research!
Yes probably. And possibly because those views were embodied in different sources he had and used.
As to the Internet. Yup, that would be miracle indeed…
Your 3 lectures on Luke are my favorites. They also touch on a turning point in the history of Christianity – the emergence of someone who knows what to do to get it all going – Marcion. Luke’s language is the most elegant and refined in the writings of the NT. But still far from FJosephus. It is harder to imitate than Mark’s, but it is possible especially if the counterfeiter is from the era and writes in his own language. Thus, a script that cannot be verified with the author is susceptible to modifications, extensions or even the creation of new works. Even the Secret Mark seems to be such a problem, and it is accused of a 20th century forgery or an 18th century forgery.
A forger who is to write in his own language in his own age does not need tools like Stahlin’s work. Easy work for professionals.
The Apostolic Church ministry went out in pairs. These (mostly men) would change partners every year or two – an older with a younger. Nine companions are recorded for Paul – Sosthenes, Barnabas, Timothy, Silvanus, Aristarchus, Ephaphras, Demas, Titus and Sopater. I presume Luke was one of the senior preachers as he isn’t recorded as being a companion to Paul. Like most preachers he never met Jesus. Luke’s Gospel is a compilation of eye witness accounts, widespread stories or early written accounts.
But moving to Luke’s Acts we read more of a personal account, despite him trying to keep outside the picture. The last story of the maritime journey to Rome has always interested marine historians. I don’t think Luke was a tourist on that journey. He could have been arrested with Paul and maybe others.
These men lived together and died together – you would not have seen daylight between them concerning doctrine.
Interesting that you think that people who live and die together necessarily agree on everything.
Not at all on the current topic, but is there a way to submit questions that we’d like to you comment on in the future?
I’ve recently become interested in the raptorial (ἁρπάζω) imagery of 1 Thessalonians 4:17 and its possible relation to 1 Thessalonians 5:2. What was Paul thinking?
This is the venue to do it! Paul seems to think Jesus will return from heaven, his followers dead and alive will rise up in the air to meet him, and then escort him down to heaven into his new kingdom here on earth. (The image appears to be that of a king coming to a city under his domain: the elders and aristocrats go out to meet him and escort him to his palace)
So dr bart did jesus say anythinh about lgbt becuase gay was forbid in OT but jesus already gave atonement to make all those old rule like food , cirmcumcision, sacrifices, and head covering like jewish woman today do is nolonger a rule ?
No he didn’t. These categories of sexuality were unknown to him.
I’ve heard you say a lot of times that we don’t have the original manuscripts of most NT books. I’ve also heard you say the apostles could not have written any of the books of the NT because they were illiterate and the books attributed to them were written in Greek. If we don’t have the original manuscripts, how can we tell they were written in Greek?
They use Greek forms of thought and syntax that almost certainly be different if they were translations from books written in Aramaic (the only other real option). Or so linguists who know both languages well have long insisted.
Is there a Christology implicit in the Book of Revelation? What is it?
It’s filled with Christology! STarting with the lamb who was slain to the soldier who slays, and lots of other thngs.
Will you deal with it in this article series? Please?
I wasn’t planning on it, but I can think about it for later (it doesn’t really follow the thread I’m on just now)
Professor, have you ever had a conversation with a Christian student in your class along these lines? Exploring the diversity and/or inconsistences in the Gospel of Luke is a positive experience academically but produces a lot of religious and spiritual anxiety. Maybe even a lost of faith.
It may do. But surely Christian faith is not faith that Luke is internally consistent! That might be a *fundamentalist* faith, but it’s not something Christians historically have focused on, at all. (It’s Christianity, not Biblianity!)
I haven’t heard the term Biblianity before, but Bibliolatry, often.
Yes, that’s the term for “worshiping the Bible.” Bilianity is my neologism for “a religion that is about the Bible”
Professor, is it the consensus that the scribal change at 3:23 (begotten to well pleased) occurred with the addition of the infancy narrative beginnings lster to harmonize with it ?
Not at all. Most scholars think 1-2 are original (I think).
Since Jesus originally spoke Aramaic, how much of the meaning was changed/lost/misinterpreted in translating what he said into Greek, especially considering those two languages are from different families? Could this have implications on core doctrines(in Aramaic it would mean a different thing, for example?)
There are places where the meaning has definitely been changed, but nothing that would affect any core doctrines.
“In the past couple of posts I’ve suggested that this wording – found in only one ancient Greek manuscript, but in a number of church fathers who quote the passage (these fathers were living before our earliest surviving manuscripts) – makes particular sense if the Gospel did not originally have chapters 1-2, the accounts of Jesus’ birth. In yesterday’s post I gave the evidence for thinking that originally the Gospel began with Jesus’ baptism.”
While it is an attractive theory that the Gospel of Luke did not originally have chapters 1-2, Bart, there does seem to be an issue of parsimony to contend with. If someone (even ‘Luke’ himself), were later to have inserted a birth narrative into this Gospel, then I would have expected it to be a lot more similar to the corresponding birth narrative in the Gospel of Matthew.
I would rather propose that the birth narrative in Luke is a whole-cloth theological composition from the outset; largely reworking ‘wonderous birth’ material from the Hebrew Bible in the style of the Septuagint Greek. And mostly those theological themes do seem to prefigure themes in the Gospel proper.
It’s an interesting point, but it presupposes that an ancient editor of Luke would be familiar with Matthew and added the story to that end. That makes sense to us because we know Matthew so well and assume that early Xns as a rule must have as well. But John almost certainly didn’t; none of the other authors of the NT show that they did, and there’s not much evidence that Matthew was widely known until later. But even if others did know it (for which there is very little evidence; probably Ignatius did; possibly the Didache?, maybe others — it’s widely debated) I really don’t think we can say that someone living in, say, Ephesus in, say 95 CE, would have been *likely* to have known Matthew and that if he did, he would have modeled his infancy narrative on it. Of course if he did know it he would not have thoguht it was “Scripture” but another retelling of Jesus’ birth. And he himself had hear tellings of it that he preferred.
Thanks Bart; that makes it a good deal clearer.
I had understood your proposal that chapters 1 and 2 of Luke were subsequent to the rest of the gospel, as implying that they were added some decades later. Whereas 95 CE is pretty close to the current consensus ‘average’ date for composition of ‘Luke’s’ gospel proper. If the ‘nativity story’ author is a contemporary of the ‘gospel’ author, I am not sure that it adds a great deal of value to separate the two contributions to the final text – any more than does a separation of the various hands sequentially contributing to the final form of the Gospel of John.
But I would really be interested to hear your views on the reception history of the various Gospels. The tricky question being how the Gospel of Mark – which was sufficiently widely disseminated in the 1st century CE that both ‘Matthew’ and ‘Luke’ appear independently to have accessed texts that were remarkably consistent with one another (and indeed with the text that came to be incorporated into the four-gospel tradition); but which largely drops out of view into the 2nd century CE.
Yes, the Mark business is very interesting indeed, for just the reason you state. Very odd. One big question of course is whether Papias knew “our” Mark, or if he just knew that there *was* a Mark. I don’t think he’s talking about our Mark with any personal knowledge of it, or at least that he shows no actual evidence of knowing it; and Justin doesn’t meantion it even though scholars claim he does when he speaks of the Memoirs of Peter. I think by far the best explanation is that he is referring to the Gospel of Peter; I can’t remember if we’ve had that conversation or if you read German, but I think Pilhofer’s article is decisive; I talk about it in Forgery-Counterforgery, pp. 324-27.
Thanks Bart;
What do you think of Darrel Hannah’s 2008 study, claiming first-half 2nd century allusions to all four gospels in the Epistula Apostolorum?
‘THE FOUR-GOSPEL ‘CANON’ IN THE EPISTULA APOSTOLORUM’ Journal of Theological Studies.
Hannah argues that the prospective dating (in the Coptic version) to the ‘Coming of the Father’, as expected 120 years after the Pentecost following Easter; implies a date for the Epistula some years (likely decades) before 150 CE. Depending, of course, on how aware the early followers of Jesus may have been of their own chronology relative to that of the Passion.
But as I read Hannah; his demonstrated allusions to John in the Epistula are most frequent; followed by Matthew, then Luke. With Mark only alluded to clearly in a couple of instances (chiefly at Mark 16:1).
He also maintains – though less securely in my view – that no other ‘gospels’ can with confidence be detected within the Epistula.
But the recent establishment of the reliability of the oldest Ethiopic gospel text has greatly enhanced the potential value of the Epistula; as we can now be sure that it has not been conformed to the Ethiopic Gospels.
I looked at it when it came out and didn’t find it convincing, but I don’t remember all the details. Generally, people thing “Gospel of John”! whenever they see language or images that are similar to John. I find that problematic for large numbers of reasons. I think it ignores how much Christian literature was available at the time — many hundreds of writnigs produced (thnk of the letters going back and forth). Why should we thnk that the few that survive are necessarily the only influences?
I have a question, off-topic, but I didn’t know where else to ask. If Jesus was both God and man, does it not follow that God (not Jesus) was also both God and Man, if they are one and the same?
Not in trinitarian thinking, no. Each person of the God head has distinct qualities. It is only the Son who became incarnate, e.g.