In response to my post yesterday about whether the author of Mark was a Jew, in which I said no Jew would make the claim that Mark does, in chapter 7, that “all Jews” washed their hands before eating — a claim that is simply not true — a couple of astute blog members have pointed out that there is another text, certainly written by a Jew, the Letter of Aristeas (about the how the Septuagint — that is, the Greek translation of the Old Testament — came into being), from the first century BCE or earlier, says something very similar about “all Jews” washing their hands. Hmm…. I’ve only read the Letter of Aristeas about 75 times. You’d think I would have noticed that. But alas.
So, for the first time in recorded history, I’m going to cover and atone for my abject shame by removing the post. Ugh. Many apologies for the false information, the fake news, and the alternative facts.
The cover-up is always worse than the original offense. Better to keep the post with strike-throughs and continue the interesting discussion about whether or not any of Mark’s intended audience might have been Jewish, including possibly even Mark or some of his sources. It is a very interesting question and not so black-and-white as has sometimes been assumed.
I certainly don’t mean it to be a cover up. That would have involved simply deleting it and all references to it. But I’m loathe to leave it up because more people would read it and not think to read the retraction, and that would do more harm than good.
I was only joking about the cover-up. Using strike-through to indicate the incorrect statement would certainly prevent further spread of misinformation and otherwise allow a very interesting discussion to continue.
It’s an interesting idea. I need to think about it! I’d be loathe to do it without writing some more on the question, which would take some digging around….
Maybe leave it up and post a subtraction message before or after the article?
I liked your previous post much, but I also liked your honesty much more!
You wrote that Jesus’s morality was centered around living the Kingdom – in the Kingdom there would be no sickness, so heal the sick; in the Kingdom there would be no poor, so help the poor, etc. Do you think Jesus believed what Matt says in Matt 22:23-30 (there will be no marriages in Heaven), and what moral consequences regarding life now would come from this? Did he expect his followers to be chaste and celibate?
I think he did believe there would be no marriages in heaven, but he never told his followers not to get married, so far as we know. Even Paul allowed that it was acceptable (even if not optimal)
My understanding is that this letter is 2nd or 3rd century CE which makes it probable it was after the Bar Kokhba revolt (132-136 CE). If this is correct, then it was written at the time of the rise of the Pharisees to prominence in Jewish life and the development of the synagog worship system to replace the Temple (now destroyed). This is a major change taking place in the Jewish worship system. Is it possible that at that time the handwashing was now prominent among Jewish peoples but maybe not so much in the time of Jesus?
Where are you getting information that it is 2-3rd c. CE? It’s usually dated late 2nd c. BCE
Fair enough but where does that leave the argument that the author of Mark was not a Jew?
Up in the air for now! I need to come back to it.
OK but is there no consensus out there already on the matter?
My sense is that most feel he was a gentile.
Many of your detractors will use this as an excuse to say “See? These guys don’t know what they’re talking about! They contradict themselves?” But I see this as a clear sign of intellectual integrity. And this is how actual human knowledge advances. By trial and error. Not by confidently asserting things we dont know and then digging our heels in when facts disagree with us. Many times it’s the theists who wont budge from a position no matter how much evidence they have against them. Their cognitive dissonance won’t allow it because they’ve invested so much personally into their faith. So thank you for having the intellectual honesty and courage to publically admit when you get it wrong. I applaud that.
Was the entire post about “all Jews” washing their hands?
It was the denouement! (AS the one argument I used)
No one is perfect. But “perfection” as much as possible is having open, honest educated discourse and the blog certainly provides that. So what might have been a mistake is really just proof that the blog meets its goals!!!
Would that more in the world exhibited this level of intellectual honesty.
Just curious… are there other reasons that you think the author was not Jewish? I tend to think the author was Jewish (regardless if it was John Mark or Adam Sandler) because of subtle Jewish allusions such as the rare Greek word “magilalon” in 7:32 alluding to Isaiah 35:5-6 LXX, but maybe that happened from oral tradition? Thoughts?
My view is that gentile Christians were already learning to read the Bible in very subtle ways. Note what Paul assumes his pagan converts were capable of grasping in 1 Corinthians (“the rock is Christ” 10:4)!
At least you didn’t say that in public debate and apologize 4 years after like Dan Wallace. It could have been worse don’t you think?
I suppose it was a simpler case. But yup, I get the point!
To say the obvious, it was highly commendable of you to make the retraction you did–to be driven by evidence.
Nonetheless, attributions of authorship (guesses as to basic facts about authorship) are a big deal in New Testament scholarship and introductory texts. So I wonder: now on balance, where does Ehrman stand? Is it “Mark was most likely gentile,” “Mark was most likely Jewish,” or “this one we really had best not call one way or the other”?
Ehrman needs to blog again on the question! But it’ll take a bit of digging, and he’s deep into the Apocalypse of Peter just now….
Dr. Ehrman, admitting an error is a hallmark of one who is genuine in their work and instills more confidence in the author to the critical reader. My take away is that any bias you may have (we all have some) is way down on the scale as you try to present an accurate portrayal of a complex period in history. I am not finished I have read Forged, Triumph, and am in the middle of How Jesus became God. I would like to ask perhaps you can point me in the direction at least; Do you know of any colleagues that have taken a similar historical approach similar to your own on the development of Islam and the prophet Mohammad (PABBUH)? I would like to begin reading such works.
No, not really, and for some very obvious reasons. But a good place to start would be with my colleague Carl Ernst’s book on Reading the Qur’an.
I’m reading a book called Muhammad and the Believers by Fred Donner. Donner seems to be a prominent expert on the Quran and early Islam.
This was refreshing. Thanks fot the honesty and intellectual integrity. That approach works well in a marriage as well ????
Bart,
Absent the hand washing issue, do you have any opinion or other relevant threads of evidence pertaining to whether or not the author of Mark was Jewish?
I need to post some more on that!
If a Jew could say that “all the Jews washed their hands,” maybe the Pharisees were more influential than generally thought.
At least that htis author maybe thought they were. (Not the same thing!)
This one and only time, I think I can speak for everyone here when I say it’s a relief to know you make mistakes too.
😉
Ha!
See why we have a high regard for you!?
You wouldn’t if I did this every other day!!
I wondered why you never got around to answering my question from yesterday.
John 4: 25-26
The woman said, “I know that the Messiah” (called Christ) “is coming. When He comes, He will explain everything to us.” Jesus answered, “I who speak to you am He.”
Did the Samaritans have a Samaritan Messiah since they were so separated from the Jews, such that a Samaritan Messiah would not be considered a Jewish Messiah?
Original Question: I forgot your position on whether or not Jesus thought he was the Messiah “of this world” as opposed to having a kingdom “not of this world”.
= = =Maybe Matthew claims Jesus to be the Messiah:
Matthew 16: 15-17
(15) He [Jesus] said to them, “But who do you say that I am?” (16) Simon Peter replied, “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.” (17) And Jesus answered him, “Blessed are you, Simon Bar-Jonah! For flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father who is in heaven.
Don’t recall seeing it. No, Samaritans did not have a separate messiah; and yes, Jesus (in his own view and that of his disciples) was very much a messiah of *this* world. Yes, Matthew saw him definitely as the messiah.
Aristeas has been mentioned on the blog before. I’m assuming the question comes from this portion of the letter:
“And as is the custom of all the Jews, they washed their hands in the sea and prayed to God and then devoted themselves to reading and translating the particular passage upon which they were engaged, and I put the question to them, Why it was that they washed their hands before they prayed?”
This section is about handwashing for prayer—not eating.
E.P. Sanders mentions eating rituals and this letter several times in his book:
“The peculiarity of the Jewish diet was almost as famous as observance of the sabbath. In Palestine there was agreement on IMMERSION, though we can only guess about the frequency with which ordinary people immersed.” (Judaism, pg. 388)
“How far HANDWASHING had spread we do not know. The explanation in Mark 7.3 that ‘the Pharisees and all the Jews’ wash their hands seems to indicate that the author could not expect all his readers to know of the practice.” (Pg. 388)
“…the later Houses of Hillel and Shammai applied handwashing to their own cups of wine on sabbaths and other holy days. There is no indication that they washed hands before other meals.Later rabbis debated whether or not hands should be washed before all meals, on the whole regarding it as not compulsory. This weighs very heavily against the idea that before 70 all Pharisees hand washed their hands before every meal….
Scholars treat handwashing as proof that the Pharisees wished to live ‘like priests in the temple’. Handwashing, however, is not a priestly rule; it is not even biblical. Priests, before eating holy food, IMMERSED. Further, the Pharisees did not wash their hands to protect their own food from impurity, but rather the priests’ food, which shows perfectly clearly that they did not think of themselves as eating in priestly purity.” (Pg. 688)
Here’s what you said to the commentor:
“Bart June 11, 2017
I hope Tim McGraw doesn’t think that every Jew washed his hands in the sea before they ate. What of those who didn’t live near the sea? (!)
I’m talking specifically about Mark’s claim that “the Jews” always “washed their hands” before they ate a meal. Your other references have to do with ritual cleansing pools (miqvoth) in which Jews would occasionally immerse themselves as a ritual act. That happened throughout Palestine…But it’s not the same as washing hands before meals (something some Pharisees did).”
I couldn’t fit everything on one comment, so here’s Mark’s excerpt from Chapter 7—
“Now when the Pharisees and some of the scribes who had come from Jerusalem gathered around him, they noticed that some of his disciples were eating with defiled hands, that is, without washing them. (For the Pharisees, and all the Jews, do not eat unless they thoroughly wash their hands, thus observing the tradition of the elders; and they do not eat anything from the market unless they wash it; and there are also many other traditions that they observe, the washing of cups, pots, and bronze kettles.) So the Pharisees and the scribes asked him, “Why do your disciples not live according to the tradition of the elders, but eat with defiled hands?”
I haven’t read the entire Letter, but the section I found about handwashing and “All Jews” referred to prayer, not eating rituals. If the recent comments are anything like the one I saw on the blog, it seems that they’re equivalating Artisteas’s, All Jews—handwashing—prayer to Mark’s, All Jews—handwashing—eating.
I don’t think Aristeas provides support for Mark being a Jew unless there was a different passage mentioned?
Well, what you didn’t do was to try to correct your error by “spin” or by presenting “alternative facts.” I am still naïve enough to think that facts matter and maybe some people can even change their minds with convincing evidence.
Apologies for resurrecting this.
I assume the default position before your post and after the retraction, was ‘we don’t know if he was a Jew or not’.
Assuming you were correct in your assessment i.e. no retraction was required, are you suggesting that the evidence available meant the Mark was ‘almost certainly’ a Jew. If that were the case, the sounds like it would be a historical fact if true. I was under the impression that historical facts required far,far more evidence than that.
Any thoughts?
No, I don’t know of any good evidence to suggest Mark was definitely a Jew. I’d say the probabilities strongly slant the other way, since by the time he was writing, most followers of Jesus were gentile.
Sorry Bart, I am not being very clear here. I was NOT asking about the religious status of Mark.
I was referring to Deane’s Blog where he quotes your original post (before you retracted it) as saying – ‘But today Bart has made a more dubious claim: that the author of the Gospel of Mark “almost certainly was not” a Jew.’
Were you suggesting in your first post, that the preponderance of evidence available meant the Mark was ‘almost certainly’ not a Jew? If that were the case, the sounds like it would be a historical fact if true. I was under the impression that historical facts required far, far more evidence than that, such that it wouldn’t have been overturned so easily.
In other words, I was asking about how you got to a historical fact with the evidence you thought you had.
Is that clearer now?
I’d say that the term “almost certainly” is an indication that the claims is not being put forth as a “fact” but as a “probability”
‘Almost certainly’ sounds pretty close to being a fact to me or at least has a pretty high probability. As I said earlier, surely a conclusion of that magnitude would require a good deal of evidential support perhaps from a number of sources, would it not? Rather than be rebutted so easily?
Yes, high probability requires good evidence.
Really sorry to be a pain here but I am simply trying to understand how the historical process works.
So when you said in the previous blog post (before you retracted it) that Mark was almost certainly not a Jew, are you saying that there was good evidence to support that claim at the time?
Yeah, you’re kinda beatin’ a dead horse here. 🙂 Yes, a claim that there is high probability means there is good evidence. (I’m not sure what the alternative would be)
The point is, if there was such good evidence that Mark was not a Jew, how could it be retracted so easily?
If the evidence was solid and from many sources, one piece of contrary evidence would simply cause a dent rather than reverting back to an indeterminate position surely?
OK, I think we can stop this one now!
Fair enough, if that’s what you wish. It’s your blog after all.
However, you haven’t explained what the good evidence was that lead you to the conclusion the Mark was not a Jew bearing in mind how easily it was overturned.
You didn’t ask what the evidence is. I explained the evidence in one post and what made me rethink it in another.
“You didn’t ask what the evidence is. I explained the evidence in one post and what made me rethink it in another.”
To be honest, my question isn’t really asking about what the evidence is. It is about the reasoning used to conclude something that was a high probability. As I mentioned, I am interested in how you used the historical process here.
I am asking, if you came to a conclusion that Mark was ‘Almost certainly’ not Jewish, I presume that since that will be a high probability i.e. not far away from being a historical fact, there will be multiple lines of evidence supporting it. In other words, it would need a very good case to overturn the conclusion.
You appeared to retract the post as soon as there was a suggestion concerning the meaning of the phrase ‘all the Jews’. That doesn’t seem to be a lot to counter something that was a high probability.
Clearly I am having trouble making my point here although I thought it was reasonably straightforward.
Yes you are! But as I said, I think you need to put this to rest. The reason I said mark was almost certainly Jewish is that he gives information about jews that is patently incorrect, and he would have known that. Another person commented that another Jewish author could be interpreted as saying somthing similar. So I decided not to pursue it and grant that others could see it differently. But really, that’s enough on this topic!
Yes, I do appear to be flogging a dead horse now so I will put it to rest. Even up to my last post, you still seem to be missing the point of the question I asked, which is about the quality of the evidence necessary to conclude some is ‘almost certain’ but then revoking that decision so easily when it was challenged.
I was under the impression that historical facts and being certain about events in history, especially ancient history, was a rare event and required copious evidential support such that it could not be turned over so easily. I assumed a professional historian would understand and be able to address that with ease. No matter.
Many thanks for your patience with this.
OK, thanks. I did try to explain, and this will be my final attempt. If I made an off the cuff comment to you (as opposed to a statement that was clearly meant to shock or exaggerate for effect) that “all Jews in North America keep kosher” it would probably make you think that I don’t know what I’m talking about, and that that would almost certainly be because I’m not a part of Jewish culture in America.
I remember this post. The evidence in the first post was correct. A couple of blog members thought the Letter of Aristeas proved that Mark could have been Jewish. However, the blog members misread the Letter in addition to not knowing the scholarship for it.
Are you saying that Bart was wrong to make the retraction?
No, I think he simply forgot what he already knew about the scholarship for the Letter of Aristeas because I’m almost positive he wrote about it prior to these posts. It would have been a significant piece of evidence in favor of Mark being Jewish if the members on the blog had been correct. I don’t think Bart was suggesting the Letter overturned his opinion, but that he needed to look into it further.
Sorry, I am not clear what you are saying, in that case. Could you clarify please?