Perhaps something like:
1) Jesus and John were part of a more encompassing group of itinerant preachers.
2) Jesus and John were remembered best because of their brutal deaths. Death often draws people’s attention to an individual’s life.
3) The death of Jesus caused the Galileans to share stories of him, not in a Jesus follower style but simply memories of the crucified itinerant preacher that came through their town one day. So at the foundation of oral tradition are simple memories, sayings and stories.
4) Jesus’ brother James and follower Peter felt there had to be more to Jesus’ life and they developed messianic ideas but had to move to Jerusalem when the Galileans rejected this in favor of memories of Jesus’ life and teachings rather than his death and second coming. This is found in the woes to Chorazin and Bethsaida and other stories of Jesus’ rejection which probably are reflections of the rejection of the Messianic sect in Galilee.
5) In Jerusalem, James became the leader of what would eventually be called Jewish-Christianity which lasted centuries but was in time rejected by both the Jewish people and the Christians.
6) In Samaria, the life and teaching memories merged with the Jewish wisdom tradition and in time would lead to the various gnostic interpretations of Jesus. Gnostic interpretations would spread to Alexandria and eastern Syria.
7) In Syria, amongst the Hellenistic Jews and increasingly the Gentiles, the Christ figure emerged emphasizing Jesus as the Son of God and his physical resurrection. The concept of the Son of God was heavily influenced by the Roman Imperial Cult in contrast to Jewish uses of son of God. Christology would continue developing into full deification. The Christ figure interpretation would continue into Asia Minor, Greece and Rome where it became heavily influenced by Plato and pagan religious interpretations.
8) The interesting part is that Galilee is centered amidst many cultures, countries, languages and religions and so there would have been almost immediate syncretism and competition as the different interpretations moved back and forth across a relatively small area. This is clearly seen in Paul’s letters although he was writing about churches as far away as Greece and Rome.
9) As multiple concurrent interpretations were developing, communities were forming. The communities developed their own traditions and the NT narrative texts as well as the apocrypha are reflections of the community at the time of the writing. Communities developed their own stories supporting their interpretations and by the time of the narrative texts, the historical Jesus was buried in competing traditions. After 40 years of these competing interpretations and evolving community traditions, the actual sayings and deeds of Jesus had been lost. At best scholars use higher critical scholarship and criteria to identify the oldest traditions which may still be competing community interpretations rather than the actual historical Jesus.
10) The Gospel of Mark has an artificial non-historical narrative framework of Jesus’ ministry in which Mark has embedded the stories of his community in support of their tradition of Jesus as the Son of God who has arisen from the grave. This tradition presents the disciples as not understand Jesus resulting in their failure, betrayal and abandonment of Jesus. There is no hint of their later rehabilitation. This framework story of Jesus’ ministry is that of a gentile in another country speaking another language after 40 years of developing and competing traditions. Once written Mark itself was embedded in the still developing traditions and Matthew and Luke then followed his narrative framework in their gospels while John shows knowledge of it.
What is being modeled here is the idea of various interpretations emerging concurrently from simple memories, sayings and stories rather than nascent Christianity following Peter and the disciples around as they travel to Jerusalem from Galilee, flee back to Galilee only to return to Jerusalem which they then left again as itinerant preachers. James’ and Peter’s Jewish messianic sect was one of several competing interpretations not the origin from which all else arose.
A model is not particularly true or false. People will argue every point. There is always much nuance that isn’t included so that it doesn’t become too cumbersome and unwieldy. It is a flexible framework, in this case to encompass the origins of Christianity, that can be changed to reflect further evidence, research and discussion. The Lukan tradition with its narratives in Acts is an inflexible framework that conservative Christians believe must be substantially correct if not totally correct, even inerrant. Much scholarship has developed as mere variations on the Lukan narrative of Acts.
I’ve considered a lot of your points over the years and I especially agree with you on the matter of different groups developing different key tenets of the Christian tradition. I disagree though on the minimalist beginnings of the Jesus movement such as you put forward in #1 of your post (maybe I’m misinterpreting you though). Something that has always puzzled me though is how such extreme differences in belief could have occurred so quickly in the Jesus movement (Gnostics and others now considered non-orthodox and heretical). I’ve posted questions on this to some of Prof Ehrman’s blog posts, but he’s only beat around the bush on answering me.
gmatthews said
I’ve considered a lot of your points over the years and I especially agree with you on the matter of different groups developing different key tenets of the Christian tradition. I disagree though on the minimalist beginnings of the Jesus movement such as you put forward in #1 of your post (maybe I’m misinterpreting you though). Something that has always puzzled me though is how such extreme differences in belief could have occurred so quickly in the Jesus movement (Gnostics and others now considered non-orthodox and heretical). I’ve posted questions on this to some of Prof Ehrman’s blog posts, but he’s only beat around the bush on answering me.
It’s hard to express things (worth reading anyway) in a few paragraphs. There is no room for nuance and the small amount of space makes a person sound confrontational and certain of everything. I still find many scholars who seem to be speaking as though everything started with the disciples. A more realistic idea, to me anyway, is that shortly after Jesus was executed, there were other itinerant preachers who knew of him, people in the Galilean towns who remembered when Jesus came to their town, his brother James and the family, Peter and others who were remembering and trying to think how it had come to this. I think the people in the Galilean towns who had simply heard or heard of Jesus are an underrated part of the beginnings of the oral tradition.
My point though is that all of these groupings of people would have seen and remembered Jesus in their own way and that the truth of the historical Jesus is not in found in any one group including his family and Peter. From the very first story remembered, Jesus was already being reconstructed in that person’s mind. James and Peter when they thought back on Jesus were reconstructing him also. Memory itself is a reconstruction. I’m waiting to see where Professor Ehrman’s studies in the oral tradition, how memory is constructed and how stories evolve leads him. I do not think that the historical Jesus can be found after 40 years of oral tradition only community traditions.
The extreme differences in belief occurred so quickly because of Galilee’s location. Draw a circle with a 50 mile radius (three or four days walk) around Capernaum and it will include parts of Syro-Phoenicia, Galilee, Gaulanitis, the Decapolis and Samaria. Different countries, different cultures, different languages and different religions. So I think there would have been multiple points of origin as the stories and memories were interpreted differently in all these areas. There would have been areas where Jesus was remembered as a teacher, areas where Jesus’ teachings merged into the wisdom tradition, areas where Jesus as prophet and Messiah became predominant and areas where the Christ figure arose. And almost immediately these groups would have been interacting and influencing each other. Professor Ehrman would however disagree with the multiple points of origin developing concurrently. At least I think he would disagree.
Bart said
I’m sorry that I’ve beat around the bush!! It certainly is never my intention. My view is that the early Christian movement was extremely diverse from the get-go: which is not surprising, given the lack of anything like mass communication and thereofre of centralized organization. Every church Paul is involved with appears to have people who had radically different views from him on matters of faith and practice: Corinth, Galatia, Philippi, Rome, even Thessalonica.
Haha, sorry I didn’t mean much by the “beat around the bush” comment. You’re a busy man and I understand that. I guess I’ve understood that Paul’s known churches did have different views on what he must have though, but I never thought much about them as far as comparing and contrasting those views. I think my interest is more along the lines of HOW such differing views could have sprung up so quickly. Yes, they did obviously happen, but how? Is there anything analogous in history, large or small scale, that is comparable? It’s like the lesson of having a bunch of people sit in a circle and pass around a few sentences by whispering in the next person’s ear. What you get from the last person is not normally close to what the first person said! The difference here is that no one was whispering. Or were they? Maybe that’s part of it. The various “churches” (small gatherings of people) were meeting in private so maybe the message did get mixed up since it wasn’t a public message, at least not in the way it is today with Joel Osteen on TV, super churches in all the big cities, etc.
Most people including many scholars have a distorted view of what happened in 1st century Judea and Galilee. Most believe a great prophet, John the Baptist, arose in the wilderness with apocalyptic warnings and a baptism of repentance. He was followed by Jesus of Nazareth, an itinerant apocalyptic preacher who taught of the coming of the kingdom of God.
All of these labels, including prophet and apocalyptic preacher, are later reconstructions of John and Jesus after their deaths by those who knew them and knew of them. The historic Jesus was an itinerant, a transient. To the Roman world, he was part of the class of expendables. These are the people who have fallen through the cracks of the Roman empire. These are the poor, the sick, the elderly, the thieves, the prostitutes and the itinerants.
Farming brought a tremendous change from hunter-gather to agriculture but civilization brought cities and very quickly empires. Life in the empires was good for a tiny ruling elite however for the vast majority of the civilian population life was a day to day grind for survival. Empire’s purpose was to squeeze every last bit just short of open rebellion from the populace. Calling it taxation gives a false image. It was nothing like modern taxation. Slavery was not condemned in the Bible because in the age of empire, everyone was basically a slave to the ruling elite. The populace worked hard and “taxation” took the majority of it away.
People who did not have land or a taxable occupation were expendable. They were no use to an empire. Jesus was part of this level of society. It is often thought that Jesus chose to be an itinerant preacher to spread the good news. That he felt he had a message that must be taught. He was actually a part of this larger level of society. He did not choose this as a vocation and his teachings were part of the common fund of beliefs with which expendables consoled themselves. Some were beggars, others thieves, prostitutes and in the case of Jesus, itinerant healer to the poor in exchange for food and shelter for a night.
Rosekeister, I hadn’t really thought much of Jesus’ students grinding out a living during that time period. I could understand how the lame, old, lazy or criminal elements might have the time, but how could the masses at the “Sermon on the Mount” or the fish feeding episodes have the time to listen to all day sermons? So, due to time constraints and subsistence survival, Jesus intentionally excludes hard-working, morally decent folk from his followers? He came for the lost, he told his disciples to give up their life’s work and not support their families, and he told people not to worry about tomorrow, etc., etc. Scripture supports this. Common thought is that a life dedicated to family and to a job well done are God’s ideal when just the opposite is true. You’ve brought a different consideration into the culture context.
Jesus’ teachings take on an entirely new meaning when it is understood that teaching and preaching was not his profession. He did not choose this life. Healing is the way he survived in the empire without land. Who he was is found in his itinerancy. Jesus was itinerant healer in exchange for food and shelter and part of the healing process were words of comfort. His healing was not a ministry. It was a way to live. Healing was remembered as instantaneous and miraculous but the reality would have been nursing the sick back to health so they can work again to obtain food and shelter.
Much of what is taken to be apocalyptic, takes on new meaning when understood as the words of comfort to the expendable. This is not an argument against apocalypticism. A recent book taught that deity has to be understood in a new way. That in antiquity the question was not whether there was deity but in what manner this is meant. How much is the question. With apocalypticism the question is not whether a first century itinerant spoke in an apocalyptic vein. The question is how much and in what sense.
Listen to the sayings in the context of words of comfort to the sick and desperate. One day the empire will be gone. One day the transients will not be last but first. Everyone including us is acceptable and equal in the eyes of God. One day there will be enough food and room will be made for us at the banquet table. Until that time we can live in that reality by taking care of each other.
At the beginning of Mark is an interesting section where Jesus comes to the home of Simon and Andrew. Here he heals Peter’s mother-in-law and later many came to him for healing. None of the details and the story itself is probably not historic in any sense except possibly preserving a memory that Jesus moved from town to town to homes that gave him food and shelter in exchange for healing. It is a story of the itinerancy of Jesus. The wealthy had doctors while the poor had itinerant healers.
I’m waiting to read Professor Ehrman’s studies on the oral tradition and hope he shares the process with us on the blog (that wasn’t real subtle, was it?). I can’t help but wonder if ground zero of the oral tradition is the memory of Jesus among the transients and that everything after that is part of the trajectories of interpretation in Galilee, Jerusalem, Samaria and Syria.
What is credible in light of the itinerancy of Jesus? The constant thread throughout the synoptics is people coming to him for healing as he moves throughout the region. Mark has stories of healings where Jesus uses spittle and other folk treatment, stories where the healing is not instantaneous. This framework of itinerancy does not make sense in the context of Jesus the Son of God come to earth as a saviour. It makes sense in the context of a standard itinerant healer moving through the region to homes that took him in exchanging food and shelter for healing. People in the town would then come to him with their illnesses.
When Jesus was executed, his death started the oral tradition amongst the expendables. Not all expendables were itinerants but with Jesus’ death, some itinerants began attributing their common store of folk wisdom and comfort to Jesus. These are stories that Jesus would have passed on also but did not originate with him. These are the stories that one day the Roman empire will be gone. One day the expendables will not be last but first. Everyone including the expendables are acceptable and equal in the eyes of God. One day there will be enough food. One day room will be made at the banquet table for the expendables. Until that time expendables can live in that reality now in the way they treat each other.
Galileans were drawn to these stories and there began the tradition of Jesus as wisdom teacher. James and Peter were looking for explanations of how Jesus could have died on a cross at the hands of the Romans. Beliefs began where Jesus was elevated to the Messiah. Jesus was expected to return and inaugurate the kingdom of God on earth in which those comforting stories would become literally true. So the first step away from the historic Jesus is the move of the oral tradition from the itinerants and expendables to the people of the towns Jesus came to as healer. The constant tension in the NT gospel narratives is that of communities trying to adapt stories which came from a context of the expendables and the itinerants into a community setting.
Bart said
I’m sorry that I’ve beat around the bush!! It certainly is never my intention. My view is that the early Christian movement was extremely diverse from the get-go: which is not surprising, given the lack of anything like mass communication and thereofre of centralized organization. Every church Paul is involved with appears to have people who had radically different views from him on matters of faith and practice: Corinth, Galatia, Philippi, Rome, even Thessalonica.
Sorry Dr. Herman, but these extremely diverse opinions were promoted by the enemies of Christianity, mainly by unbelieving Jews as it is today. We read in 2Corinthians 11:22-25, “Are they Hebrews? So am I. Are they Israelites? So am I. Are they descendants of Abraham? So am I. Are they servants of Christ? I speak as if insane I more so; in far more labours, in far more imprisonments, beaten times without number, often in danger of death. Five times I received from the Jews thirty-nine lashes. Three times I was beaten with rods, once I was stoned.” Bart, to fully understand the spirit of the NT we all need the wisdom to rightly divide the true word of God from the lying words of man. In other words we need to be enabled to see the difference between the wheat and the tares.
In Mark, every chapter, except the chapter of parables, until the arrival of Jesus in Jerusalem recounts Jesus arriving at different places and healing people. The underlying structure of the gospel is that of an itinerant healer moving from town to town. The stories are not historical but they illustrate the unconscious collective memory of Jesus as an itinerant healer.
Readers today through familiarity do not recognize that this framework of itinerancy is at odds with the story of Jesus as the Son of God. Moving from town to town healing has little to do with the Son of God as savior. Indeed the stories of Jesus healing with spittle and poultices, stories of healings that were not instantaneous soon gave way to miraculous, instantaneous healings and finally great nature miracles.
The surreal atmosphere of the gospels does not come from the Son of God in Palestine. It comes from communities trying to adapt itinerant wisdom and comfort to teachings for a non-itinerant community. The surrealness comes from attempting to merge the collective memory of the itinerant healer into a framework of interpretation in which God sends his Son to earth as savior.
Rosekeister said
Jesus’ teachings take on an entirely new meaning when it is understood that teaching and preaching was not his profession. He did not choose this life. Healing is the way he survived in the empire without land. Who he was is found in his itinerancy. Jesus was itinerant healer in exchange for food and shelter and part of the healing process were words of comfort. His healing was not a ministry. It was a way to live. Healing was remembered as instantaneous and miraculous but the reality would have been nursing the sick back to health so they can work again to obtain food and shelter.Much of what is taken to be apocalyptic, takes on new meaning when understood as the words of comfort to the expendable. This is not an argument against apocalypticism. A recent book taught that deity has to be understood in a new way. That in antiquity the question was not whether there was deity but in what manner this is meant. How much is the question. With apocalypticism the question is not whether a first century itinerant spoke in an apocalyptic vein. The question is how much and in what sense.
Listen to the sayings in the context of words of comfort to the sick and desperate. One day the empire will be gone. One day the transients will not be last but first. Everyone including us is acceptable and equal in the eyes of God. One day there will be enough food and room will be made for us at the banquet table. Until that time we can live in that reality by taking care of each other.
At the beginning of Mark is an interesting section where Jesus comes to the home of Simon and Andrew. Here he heals Peter’s mother-in-law and later many came to him for healing. None of the details and the story itself is probably not historic in any sense except possibly preserving a memory that Jesus moved from town to town to homes that gave him food and shelter in exchange for healing. It is a story of the itinerancy of Jesus. The wealthy had doctors while the poor had itinerant healers.
I’m waiting to read Professor Ehrman’s studies on the oral tradition and hope he shares the process with us on the blog (that wasn’t real subtle, was it?). I can’t help but wonder if ground zero of the oral tradition is the memory of Jesus among the transients and that everything after that is part of the trajectories of interpretation in Galilee, Jerusalem, Samaria and Syria.
Your opinion of the ministry of Jesus in general is a false one: sufficient to say that many wealthy people went to Jesus to ask for the healing of their loved ones.
You also said: “Indeed the stories of Jesus healing with spittle and poultices, stories of healings that were not instantaneous soon gave way to miraculous, instantaneous healings and finally great nature miracles.”
If you knew Jesus you would know that the stories “of spittle and poultices” are false, Jesus healed with His word as the centurion said; “just say the word and my servant will be healed” The sick person did not even needed to have faith for Jesus raised the death. Therefore the word spoken by Jesus and His compassion are SOVEREIN over all things.
I think this was discussed in Jesus, interrupted. There were 4 main Christianities:
1- Ebionites: they were converted Jews who followed the teachings of James and Peter. They believed Jesus was a human being and they chose poverty to gain heaven when they die. you to be a Jew first then a Christian to benefit from the new religion.
2- Marcionites: they preferred Paul. They didn’t enfore the path through Judaism to reach salvation. They believed the god of the New Testament is different than the god of the Old Testament.
3- different groups of Gnostics. While they had differences, they all believed that salvation is through knowing the secrets of the teachings of Jesus. They believed that there are different realms where Jesus comes from. They could go there if they knew those secret teachings.
4- the winners who took it all. Dr. Ehrman calls them the Pro-Orthodox Christians, those who believed in most of what we read today as the New Testament.
There wer probably more factions but these were the main ones. It is so interesting to read how different they were in their beliefs only a few decades after Jesus died.
This reminds of the early history of Islam when the division started the day their prophet died. We still live the consequences of this division until today, 1,400 years after the fact.
With Jesus’ death, itinerants began attributing the itinerant wisdom of the expendables to Jesus. This is the first step from the historical Jesus. Even at this stage a reconstruction of the memories of Jesus was taking place. This is the move from the itinerant healer to the itinerant preacher. The origins of Christianity is found in itinerancy and the expendables.
The Didache is a fascinating text. It’s final form was in the first quarter of the 2nd century but its traditions reach back to the very earliest communities. The Didache shows that 75-100 years after the death of Jesus the itinerants were still part of the developing Christian traditions.
But it also shows that communities had to be on guard to see that the itinerant was teaching what was acceptable to a community setting. The itinerant was not allowed to stay more than one or two days and then sent away with only some bread. The community was not to listen to an itinerant asking for money or something else. If the itinerant wished to stay with the community he must work for his living. The tension between itinerancy and the communities is palpable.
This is the situation from which the New Testament texts arose. The New Testament texts illustrate another step away from the historic Jesus. This is the movement from itinerancy and expendables to communities. This happened in several different ways but the trajectory is from historic healer to itinerant preacher to the adaption of itinerant wisdom to community settings.
Rosekeister said
What is credible in light of the itinerancy of Jesus? The constant thread throughout the synoptics is people coming to him for healing as he moves throughout the region. Mark has stories of healings where Jesus uses spittle and other folk treatment, stories where the healing is not instantaneous. This framework of itinerancy does not make sense in the context of Jesus the Son of God come to earth as a saviour. It makes sense in the context of a standard itinerant healer moving through the region to homes that took him in exchanging food and shelter for healing. People in the town would then come to him with their illnesses.When Jesus was executed, his death started the oral tradition amongst the expendables. Not all expendables were itinerants but with Jesus’ death, some itinerants began attributing their common store of folk wisdom and comfort to Jesus. These are stories that Jesus would have passed on also but did not originate with him. These are the stories that one day the Roman empire will be gone. One day the expendables will not be last but first. Everyone including the expendables are acceptable and equal in the eyes of God. One day there will be enough food. One day room will be made at the banquet table for the expendables. Until that time expendables can live in that reality now in the way they treat each other.
Galileans were drawn to these stories and there began the tradition of Jesus as wisdom teacher. James and Peter were looking for explanations of how Jesus could have died on a cross at the hands of the Romans. Beliefs began where Jesus was elevated to the Messiah. Jesus was expected to return and inaugurate the kingdom of God on earth in which those comforting stories would become literally true. So the first step away from the historic Jesus is the move of the oral tradition from the itinerants and expendables to the people of the towns Jesus came to as healer. The constant tension in the NT gospel narratives is that of communities trying to adapt stories which came from a context of the expendables and the itinerants into a community setting.
There are some problems with your view that Jesus basically was an itinerant healer. I think he was that, too, but if that was all, there would have been no reason to execute him for being a self-appointed Jewish king. And this is one of the the most secured historical facts of all. If there was no sort of conflict with the Sadducee temple-priesthood, they would have seen no reason to participate. Apocalypticism, on the other hand, fits very nicely into this picture. So many scholars think that Jesus viewed his own success as healer and exorcist as signs of the approaching Kingdom .
gavriel said
There are some problems with your view that Jesus basically was an itinerant healer. I think he was that, too, but if that was all, there would have been no reason to execute him for being a self-appointed Jewish king. And this is one of the the most secured historical facts of all. If there was no sort of conflict with the Sadducee temple-priesthood, they would have seen no reason to participate. Apocalypticism, on the other hand, fits very nicely into this picture. So many scholars think that Jesus viewed his own success as healer and exorcist as signs of the approaching Kingdom .
It was easier to get executed by the Romans than people generally understand. A Passover in Jerusalem in which there were other problems resulting in executions would just make it that much easier. Causing a disturbance in the temple during such a Passover would be all it would take. Speaking of a time after the Roman empire would be a sure way to get rounded up with the other usual suspects.
The belief that Jesus was a threat to Rome or the Jewish authorities is something many people want to believe but was probably not the case. Another belief that many people want to believe is that Jesus drew crowds and he gave stirring speeches. I think it more likely that as he moved from town to town as a healer, people came to him for that reason rather than wisdom and that this is actually the structure of Mark which was incorporated into Matthew and Luke.
It was easier to get executed by the Romans than people generally understand.
I believe this to be true. In those days, anyone who rebelled against the power of Rome would be immediately disposed of.
From the Jewish point of view, Jesus was insignificant. He merely repeated precepts from past Jewish scriptures to remind people to live by Torah precepts.
At any rate, under Judaic law, one is never condemned for ideas – only for actual actions and when these actions have actually caused harm to another. To disagree with another is NOT causing harm however forcefully you argue against the other. It was not so for the Romans.
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