Loading...This now is the 7th of 10 parts of my interview with Ben Witherington on my book Did Jesus Exist. Here there are two interesting questions, both focusing on the relationship of legend and history in ancient stories about Jesus. Part of the question is whether the Gospel writers were simply riffing on (or, more cynically, ripping off) earlier stories of other amazing figures when talking about Jesus; the other is whether that has a significant bearing on how we understand what he said and and did — or on whether we think he even existed.
Q. Robert Price’s argument that the stories of Jesus are a giant midrash on OT stories about Moses and others, and so are completely fiction seems to ignore the fact that midrash is a hermeneutical technique used for contemporizing pre-existing stories. Talk briefly about the difference between how stories are shaped in the Gospels and whether they have any historical substance or core or not. (N.B. It appears that Crossan has recently made the same kind of category mistake arguing that since there are parables in the Gospels, that whole stories about Jesus may be parables, pure literary fictions).
A. In Did Jesus Exist? I try to make a major methodological point that there is a very big difference between saying that a story has been shaped in a certain (non-historical) way and saying that the story is completely non-historical. I make this point because authors like Robert Price have claimed that all the stories about Jesus in the Gospels are midrashes on stories found in the OT. By that he means, roughly, that the story of Jesus is shaped in such a way as to reflect a kind of retelling or exposition of stories about persons and events in the Old Testament. For example, the beginning of Matthew’s Gospel shapes the stories about Jesus to make Jesus appear to be a kind of “second Moses.” Like Moses, Jesus is supernaturally protected at his birth when the ruler (Pharaoh/Herod) seeks to destroy him; like Moses he goes down to Egypt as an infant; like Moses he comes up out of Egypt to the promised land; like Moses he passes through the waters (the parting of the Red Sea; the baptism); after which he spends time in the wilderness being “tested” (40 years; 40 days); after which he goes up on the mountain to receive/deliver the Law (Mount Sinai; Sermon on the Mount). The story of Jesus has evidently been “shaped” in light of the author’s knowledge of the story of Moses in order to say something: Jesus is the new Moses.
It is true that a number of stories about Jesus in the Gospels (not all of them though!) have been shaped as a kind of midrash on the OT. But the key point to make is that there is a difference between
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So what if Mark is simply combining Judean Jesus motifs? There is the Bart Ehrman (Paul’s) Jesus. Dr. Tabor’s militant Jesus. Elisha. Jesus Ben Jehozadak. Isaiah. Hosea. He sets the time of Jesus 40 years (“this generation”) back from the point of authorship.
While I would still argue the Jesus motif goes back at least 300 and possibly 700 years before Mark, Mark’s fiction is based on his real life experience of seeing itinerant preachers and rebel leaders claiming “secret knowledge” or revelation. He is not expanding one one person’s life. Rather he is writing fiction based on his own life experiences. But the purpose of his fiction is to criticize the Judean leaders and Roman leaders who lead to the 66 AD revolt “Mark” is living through. He also criticizes the populace for not understanding rather simple things and the character Jesus complicating things for them unnecessarily.
Overall, it’s a fictional Jesus written to express his exasperation in a bloody revolt that destroyed lives and never needed to happen.
It’s the motif that is real and Judean. The author sets the time period one generation back because the current destruction is the motivation for writing.
Very valuable observations Bart.
The key point, from the mythicist perspective though, is that ‘coincidence is proof’; indeed since the historical record has been systematically censored and interpolated by religionists; ‘coinicidence is the best proof’. The ‘differences’ you observe only illustrate your naivity in taking this corrupted literature at face value.
For example. from Richard Carrier’s blog:
“the coincidence that Philo is connecting his Son of God and High Priest to Zechariah 6, which mentions a Son of God and High Priest named Jesus, is just too much of a coincidence to believe an accident. Moreover, whatever this archangel is named, he still has all the same peculiar properties as Paul’s Jesus. Which coincidence remain effectively impossible, unless indeed, the earliest Christians believed their Jesus was this archangel.”
Carrier is asserting that Philo knew of an archangelic Son of God or ‘Logos’ called ‘Jesus’; as did Paul and the earliest Christians. But when it is pointed out that Philo nowhere attaches the name ‘Jesus’ to this ‘Logos’ figure, or indeed any archangel, Carrier argues that the coincidence is so great for it to have been impossible for Philo not to have named his Logos ‘Jesus’.
Coincidence is proof.
Yup. Good god.
Are you suggesting syncretism *could* have shaped an historical figure? You’ve highlighted many contrafactuals to other deities, but do you mean we have no precedent who satisfied ALL those attributes at once? Or do you mean we have no precedents for any of those attributes individually as available material for syncretism? Even if he was historical, the attribution to him of the properties of pagan deities had to come from somewhere, and cultural diffusion is the obvious source. So in the midst of a fashion for dying-and-rising salvation gods with sin-cleansing baptisms, the Jews just happened to come up with the same exact idea without any influence at all from this going on all around them? That they “just happened” to come up with the idea of a virgin born son of god, when surrounded by virgin born sons of god, as if by total coincidence? I am certainly not advocating mythicism, but these attributes didn’t evolve in a black-box.
Sorry. I don’t understand your questions about syncretism.
I’m fairly new to your writings and lectures, so I’m not sure where to pose this question. It has to do with sacrifice. As a practicing Jew, how did Jesus view the meaning of Jewish sacrificial practices? He is quoted as predicting his own death. Did he think of that possibility as a sacrificial event?
He probably considered the sacrificial system as given by God and needing to be observed. His problem with the Temple practices appear to ahve been that he thought they had become corrupt. I don’t think he did predict his death “for others” or as a sacrifice. My view is that he probably wasn’t expecting to be killed, but thought he’d preach his message and people would repent. The idea that it was a sacrifice arose only after the fact, among his bereft followers.
Might not that association of Jesus’s death with sacrifice have been kick-started by the crucifixion happening at exactly the day and time when the Passover lambs were being slaughtered in the Temple precincts? As is explicit in John; and implied by Paul at 1 Corinthians 5:7; “For our paschal lamb, Christ, has been sacrificed”.
Is this the earliest New Testament text to apply the principle of sacrifice to the death of Jesus?
Yes, it may well have been. The irony, of course, is that the Passover lamb was not sacrificed “for sins.” But yes, 1 Cor. 5:7 is our earliest references.
Born of a virgin and reanimated bodily do not strike you as fictionally fantastical in the extreme, I suppose?!
Oh, of course not. Jesus just HAD to be real! What about all the parallels to the John the B birth narrative? What about uncany parallels to the death OF JAMES (Read EISENMAN)? Better still, the parallels, to the gnostic story of James becoming Master to the Betrayal of Christ story, IN ORDER, and INVERTED? Every detail from all four Gospels can be sourced in the gnostic Apocalypses of James and Peter, including the three denials, BY Jesus, not Peter, “in this night.” The infamous kiss is there, inverted negatively. The sign (the kiss of spirit), sitting on a rock praying, let this CUP pass, I am He, receive what has been ordained, the flesh is weak (word for word!). No good Gnostic would ever borrow from an orthodox story about sacrifice, especially of the beloved Master! That is made clear from the Gospel of Judas which you all misread as Jesus sacrificed and not Judas, the cover for James. The New Testament was conceived for one single purpose: to hide James… Paul’s mortal enemy (Paul literally killed him).
I’m not sure most of the readers of the blog will know what you’re arguing here…
Bart, what you do not realize is that this has happened BEFORE. My own Master, Maharaj Charan Singh, was involved in a contested successorship in 1950, with Kirpal Singh, at the Radha Soami Satsang, Beas. Two lines emerged. I happens. People can get jealous. Paul was so jealous, he KILLED James. He was not a Master, but someone wanted to start an unauthorized Paulinized Church based on a martyr, who may or may not have lived. Only living Masters can save. How do you all miss John 6:40, 9:5 and 14:7? “SEE and believe to be saved” — ” work while alive, death comes WHEN NO ONE can work” — and Jesus is The Way for those alone who “have SEEN him.” No universal savior would ever say these things if he were the sole all-time savior. It doesn’t work that way! All real Masters have taught that the disciple and Master must be living CONCURRENTLY.
Masters come all the time for the ready. There is one here now. Over and over, some with selfish motivations try to change the story, and that is what this is. It’s the ONLY purpose of the New Testament.
I’d prefer that we stick to historical examination of the matters, if that’s all right. Discussions about what “universal saviors” would or would not say is not a historical form of analysis, but a theological view that cannot be established one way or the other on historical grounds.
Would it be more accurate to say that in the ancient world there were broad templates of divine men that could be customized by ancient myth makers to make sense of remarkable individuals who make a big impact on the people around him? You don’t have to copy verbatim one divine man into another. Divine men have general common characteristics but they also reflect the more specific religious milieu out of which they arise.
Yes, I would agree with that. Sometimes there are striking similarities; but there are always distinctive features as well….
Dr Ehrman, I take your point about significant differences between Jesus and other divine men. But Jesus’ death and resurrection does have strong similarities with other dying and rising gods, such as Osiris and Dionysus. They were dismembered, if I recall correctly, and then had their body parts ‘reassembled’ and reanimated. The details don’t match Jesus’ experience precisely, as you say. But I suppose I can understand the mythicists majoring on that aspect of the stories as it can be a persuasive argument, particularly if their audience isn’t as quite as knowledgeable as we ‘bloggers’. But it has very little impact on whether Jesus existed of course.
I’d suggest you read Jonathan Z. Smith’s discussion in his influential and brilliant book Drudgery Divine. He was one of the most erudite scholars of religion in the 20th century. He showed that the parallels to Osiris and Dionysus do not work. There aren’t gods who die and then rise again in their bodies on earth.
Thanks for the Smith reference Bart; it is indeed refreshingly well-argued and erudite.
One point that Smith makes , is that the ‘Mythic Jesus’ argument has its origins in a ‘Mythic Mary’ polemic developed in Scots Presbyterianism in the mid 19th century ; especially in the gloriously titled work by Alexander Hislop; ‘Two Babylons; or the Papal Worship Proved to be the Worship of Nimrod and his Wife’. These scholars argued that contemporary Catholic ritual – specifically in its ‘sacrificial’ and Marian forms – was actually smuggling a Babylonian ‘mother goddess’ and “saviour god’ under the guise of true Christianity.
Smith notes that these themes were then to be reworked by George Frazer – also Scots of course – in ‘the Golden Bough’; as applied to stories of kings (and associated gods) in his reconstruction of underlying annual fertility rituals.
The most recent mythicist discourse does seem to back-pedal on the supposed association between saviour god cults and fertility rites; and rather to reconstruct a common underlying mythic narrative in which earthly affairs are proposed as subject to a parallel cosmic struggle between angels of light and demons of darkness. Christian beliefs originating as narrating one such celestial battle.
Thanks. Are you an academic, btw?
Yes and no;
I do hold an emeritus academic fellowship; but in public health rather than religious studies; though at the theoretical level that I work, there can be a surprising degree of overlap. My analytical studies find that, (within the UK) those who have loving families, multi-generational friendships, and are able to forgive their enemies and trust their neighbours, tend to report better access to good health; and also tend to report greater likelihood of belonging to a faith community. Caring for one another is far preferable to caring for your own.
In the 19th century, there were a number of amusing statistical studies by ‘freethinkers’ into the efficacy of being prayed for; comparing members of the British Royal Family (who were than prayed for * a lot*) with members of the general population. Which confirmed that that was is no dose-response effect in prayerful effectiveness.
But, perhaps embarrassingly for many social scientists, categorical (yes/no) religious affiliation does appear to be inescapable (though not strong) as a significant asset in differential access to recovery from many chronic illnesses; even when we adjust for education, income, housing tenure, employment and ethnicity.
A thousand years later?
It doesn’t need to be identical.
The original Osiris / Dionysus rebirth
Conflict noted by Smith.
had evolved, been changed
or implemented differently.
Thank you Dr Ehrman. Apologies for this late response but I have just recalled that some mythicists (notably Freke & Gandy) have claimed that ancient mystery religions (the ones associated with Dionysus I think) involved theophagic rituals, similar to the Catholic doctrine of transubstantiation. They use this to link Christianity to these ancient cults. Do you think there is any real evidence for this?
No. I”m afraid those two were fairly clueless about the ancient world. You might want to look at my comments in Did Jesus Exist.
Aren’t there arguments that the word “virgin” was mistranslated, and that the correct word was “maiden?”
For Isaiah 7:14, yes tat’s correct.
So, at the risk of belaboring a minor point (hey, that is what academics and textual critics love to do, right?), the error (accepting it as such) occurs in making the Hebrew of Isaiah into Greek (from which it gets carried forward in subsequent translations), which means that the writer of the gospel of Matthew (whoever the actual writer is), apparently does not know the book of Isaiah in the original Hebrew (or by an oral Hebrew tradition). If this is the case, it strongly suggests that he is a speaker of Greek who is not personally familiar with Hebrew. Is that correct, or am I totally out to lunch here?
That is correct. But he *may* have been able to read Hebrew if he needed to — there’s no way to know. What is clear is that he is using the Greek translation and that is what has led him to make the claim he does.
Bart, do you think it likely that the original Matthew did not include the birth narrative? I had read that there was a Hebrew or Aramaic version of Matthew.
There is a later medieval *translation* of Matthew into Hebrew, but the book was originally written in Greek. I do think it contained the virgin birth story. I suspect, however, that Luke 1-2 were not original and that Luke began with what is now ch. 3. I’ve talked about that on the blog before. You can see the discussion here: https://ehrmanblog.org/did-luke-originally-tell-the-birth-story/ .
What is the distinction between virgin and maiden that were are asserting? One could be an old virgin (literally an old maid), but a maiden was typically assumed to be a very young woman, and unmarried and thus virginal. (At the very least, a maiden would be unmarried and not have been pregnant.)
THe Hebrew word Behulah means “woman who has not had sex.” THe world Alma (used in Isa 7:14) means “young woman.” Obvoiusly the two categories often overlap, but not necessarily.
I defer to the much greater expertise of others, of course, but it seems to me that context is key here. Translation, as I understand it, is more than just the literal mapping of individual words. The trick is also to capture something of the broader sense of the words. We are talking about a prophecy about a Messiah, presumably an event of some importance. To specifically state that the Messiah will be born from a young woman seems not much worthy of prophecy. It would be like saying the Messiah will wear clothing, eat food and drink liquids. (One might ask at what point in a pregnancy does a maiden cease to be a maiden.) Isn’t there an implication of something special here? Are the ideas that the mother is young or that the child would be her first details of particular importance? If not, isn’t the interpretation as being born of a virgin perfectly reasonable even not entirely provable as the correct one? Ultimately, the implications are whether or not the Messiah has a biological father, or if something more miraculous is being proposed. In this text, there is no mention of a biological father.
The problem is that the Hebrew indicates that hte “young woman” Isaiah is speaking of is already pregnant and the prophecy is about what will happen after she bears her child. So in terms of context, it clearly is not referring to a virgin.
The prophecy of Isaiah 7:14 does not appear to be about a messiah at all. The child was to be a sign to the king Ahaz concerning his wars. The author of the Matthew birth narrative pulled this out of context, and did so with other passages as well.
I’ve never understood why the gospel writers chose to refer to certain profecies, but decided to ‘ignore’ other parts of those same profecies. For example, why didn’t they portray Jesus as eating butter and honey (Isa 7:15) ? Why isn’t the breaking of nations by iron mentioned (psalms 2:9) and why isn’t Jesus portrayed as starved when crucified (psalms 22:17)? It has always struck me that it seems that the NT writers sometimes took a part of a profecy that they saw fit and just didn’t pay any attention to any surrounding verses. Do you have any thoughts on this? Might this have been common practice? Or would writers cite well known phrases by memory without carefully looking them up? Or did they think parts of a profecy do apply to Jesus while the other parts do not?
Yes, it was a common practice in the ancient world to apply written texts to modern situations in ways that modern readers find completely haphazard and rather random. That occurs in Greek, Roman, Jewish, and Christian writings. But as to why they didn’t use other passages to support other prophetic fulfillments, my view is that they may well have! We have so few writings from Christians in the period that we don’t really know what most of them were saying.
https://second.wiki/wiki/c389xodo_oriental
´It is called Exodus Oriental or Exodus of the Eastern People to the collective emigration of inhabitants of the Eastern Band who followed Artigas to the Salto of the Uruguay River´
Artigas guiding our people through ´el desierto´ asi it was called rural uruguay in those times because almost nobody lived there.
A 40th century historian would think that´s a total invention based on Moses.
It is not, 19th century uruguayan historians ´shaped´ with an obvious biblical theme a very well documented event in order to separate ourselves from Argentina.
La Redota (spanish slang to The Defeat) becomes The Exodus and nobody knows how many really followed Artigas .
To shape a story is not the same as make it all up.
A lot of remembering the past going on, particularly my own, so please forgive the butchered inquiry:
I remember Dr. Avalos saying scholars could only agree on 3 (or 4) historical “facts” about Jesus: Lived under Pontius Pilate, baptized by John, and was crucified. Perhaps the 4th is that He was from Nazareth. How many historical claims about Jesus do you consider historical, Professor?
Instead of Apollonius of Tyana, wouldn’t a better parallel for Jesus be Moses, in that scholars once attached a great many historical facts to Moses, but today attach very few? Perhaps Moses married a Midianite woman and had been a war hero. But beyond that? Moses is mostly literary invention. Could the same be true for Jesus? Could He have been a famous name, mostly? A famous name through which later communities could validate and elaborate their own ideas (= making Jesus say stuff)?
What percentage of historical events about a person must be historical (versus purely literary) to count as a historical person? If Jesus is 90% literary invention, who’s right? The mythicists or the historicists? If Jesus is just a famous name that was co-opted (ala Moses), would that count as a historical person?
ZEKE! Just rewatched Apocalypse Later!! (I”m working on Revelation now for a trade book.
I don’t realyl have a number of things that scholars agree on, but there are lots more than that. How bout, e.g., that he was a Jew. From Galilee. Who had followers. ANd was a teacher. And used parables. and…. As to percentages, I don’t think history works that way (is the information 67% right or only 65%?)
Dr Ehrman, will you be covering the First Century “Cold War” between Rome and Parthia as part of the historical context in your book on Revelation? For example the First Century belief that Caesar Nero (“The Anti-Christ”) survived his assassination and fled to Parthia and was going lead a Parthian army across the Euphrates River and invade Rome to restore his throne. The Nero Redivivus in the Sibylline Oracles seemed to have a huge influence on the author of Revelations.
I will probably be dealing with Nero redivivus, yes; I’m probalby not going to get into any detail about Parthia, given my audience.
Praise you, Prof. Thank you for engaging. This blog continues to be fire. Props.
Quick related question: Do you think that everything told about Jesus in the canonical Gospels ultimately stems from some pre-Gospel source (proto-sources like Q, M, L, etc., or unspecified oral-tradition), or do you think the Gospel authors themselves probably added at least SOME of their own original stories/thoughts from their imaginations to their respective Gospels?
I think most comes from earlier sources, but I imagine some came from the authors. I’d say there’s almost no way to know for sure.
Thanks for clarifying.
It’s true that the virgin birth and resurrection stories for Jesus are unique, having no direct parallel with other god men or heroes. But since these stories are surely of doubtful historicity, I’m not sure it’s valid to claim them as evidence for Jesus’ historicity. At the least, seems an awkward argument.
That’s right. You would not want to argue that since Jesus was born of a virgin, he therefore must have existed. (Since he wasn’t born of a virgin!)