In another place on this blog, posters helped me substantially with a story I am writing, and so I am trying again. Since this story (the story of Dives and Lazarus, I mean) in Luke is one of only two sections of the NT (to my knowledge) that have been used to suggest that Jesus believed that the Judgment would be the day on which the fate of souls after death would be determined, I am wondering if the consensus is that Jesus might have really told this story, or no.
I don’t know there is any strong consensus, but I tend to doubt Jesus told this one, since it isn’t in Mark or Matthew, and is too good a story to leave out if it was in Q or some other compendium.
I also question its authenticity because it depicts an otherwordly afterlife you reach immediately after death, which isn’t consistent with what we know about Jesus’ apocalyptic beliefs. He didn’t think people went to heaven or hell when they died. He believed the final judgment was coming soon, you were either in the Kingdom or you would be briefly punished before meeting a final definitve end–and after that happened, how could the rich man warn his brothers to mend their ways? They would already have been judged themselves.
It could very well be a pagan story repurposed (Bart has talked about many pagan stories about the afterlife), but the notion that the last shall be first and the first last is certainly evocative of Jesus’ ideas.
I like it because of the dogs licking his sores. Cute. 🙂
godspell said
. . it depicts an otherwordly afterlife you reach immediately after death, which isn’t consistent with what we know about Jesus’ apocalyptic beliefs. He didn’t think people went to heaven or hell when they died. He believed the final judgment was coming soon, you were either in the Kingdom or you would be briefly punished before meeting a final definitve end
you are equating what Dr Ehrman theorizes Jesus believed with what Jesus actually believed
at the minimum we know it is a concept that 1st century Luke understood to be a representation of the afterlife.
godspell said
It could very well be a pagan story repurposed (Bart has talked about many pagan stories about the afterlife)
or it could be a story Jesus or another 1st century apocalypticist created
I find Bart extremely persuasive on this point, yes. What’s the point of the Kingdom of God, if there’s also heaven and hell?
This is a significant point of divergence between Matthew and Luke. Luke doesn’t talk about sheep and goats, wheat and tares. The idea there is that there is one moment in time where people are divided into two categories for judgment. But this parable suggests that the sorting occurs every time somebody dies.
Matthew and Luke could disagree, and so can we, but I doubt Jesus would have told both the parable of the Wheat and Tares and Lazarus and Dives. They don’t agree. One or the other.
The problem with everybody being judged at the same time is that people keep getting born and dying and the Kingdom doesn’t come. Early Christians were reluctant to give up on it entirely (because Jesus had so clearly promised it was coming in the lifetimes of those he preached to), but they still had to live (and die) a day at a time, and part of that for them was believing their devotion to the ideals of Jesus was not futile–that there were rewards for living a good life, and punishments for a bad one.
Since an increasing number of Christians were converted pagans, who did believe in an eternal afterlife, and did have some concept of reward/punishment after death, and had not been raised with a belief in the Jewish Messiah or a Jewish Apocalypse, Paul (the Apostle to the Gentiles) would be highly motivated to accommodate their desire to believe in a better afterlife than the attenuated ghostly underworld pagans typically believed was the best case scenario.
There are definitely elements of Dives and Lazarus that sound like Jesus, but that doesn’t mean he told the story. Or he could have told a version of the story, and a different ending got slapped on later, but there’s currently no basis I’m aware of for assuming that.
I admit, I would like to believe it anyway, since that would mean Jesus told a story that had nice street dogs in it. 🙂
godspell said
I find Bart extremely persuasive on this point,
not really; he had excellent opportunity recently at
** you do not have permission to see this link **
He re-stated that “resurrection” (which he equates with resuscitation of physical bodies (but does not supply evidence that is only way to understand the word)) was dominant view at that time NT was written but provides no evidence of that (passing citation of 1 Cor 15, which is NOT explicit in confirming his thesis)
I’m not seeing any evidence from you to the contrary. And I’ve read enough of his work to know you’re wrong to say he never provides any evidence. A blog article is no substitute for a book.
Remind me–when Jesus rose from the dead, in all four gospels–did any of them say it was in spirit only?
Even in the original ending of Mark–the tomb is empty.
godspell said
I’m not seeing any evidence from you to the contrary.
i did not claim the contrary
And I’ve read enough of his work to know you’re wrong to say he never provides any evidence. A blog article is no substitute for a book.
ok I have read most of his posts last few years and some of his books, and I dont think he has made the case (well) that all NT authors all believed in (end the world) (kingdom of heaven) type of resurrection of the dead is synonymous with corpses leaving their (literal) graves in which they were buried in and being resuscitated and remaining ETERNALLY alive on earth
[if I misunderstand his thesis, possibly, I would like you to let me know how I am misunderstanding it]
but assuming that is correct please cite the book or post where you think he argued that thesis ‘persuasively’.
Do you think the recent post I mention above argues that thesis or just states it? I think the latter,
Remind me–when Jesus rose from the dead, in all four gospels–did any of them say it was in spirit only?Even in the original ending of Mark–the tomb is empty.
regarding Jesus yes it appears that the authors, who lived post Jesus death thought he rose physically, that is not evidence, to me that it was what Jesus himself taught. But even the authors presentation of Jesus does not appear to exactly coincide with Ehrman’s thesis ( again assuming I understand it correctly) Because Jesus does NOT remain eternally alive ON EARTH, as he ascends to heaven (I am not sure what that means), contrary Bart’s contention that at the fulfillment of Kingdom humans (or at least righteous) humans will live eternal ON EARTH
If you did not claim the contrary, I don’t see the basis for an argument. Or the point of one. But I’ll give it one last college try.
I don’t think any of Jesus’ followers ever actually encountered the resurrected Jesus in physical form. I think they had visions of him resurrected, and came to believe it had happened, but in reality their post-mortem encounters with him, however you explain them, were not physical in nature. Yet they chose to interpret them as such. Why? Because they were his disciples, and this is what he had taught them. And this is what Apocalyptic Judaism taught. Most Jews didn’t believe in a spiritual afterlife–some believed in no afterlife at all, but others thought that the dead would rise in new immortal bodies. (Paul uses this divide to his advantage in Acts)
Pagans, however, believed in a spiritual afterlife–leaving the body behind to enter a ghostly afterlife. Unlike (for example) Buddhists, they did not regard this in a positive light, liberated from the imprisoning flesh and worldly desires. The afterlife, for pagan Romans, was not usually seen as a happy place.
But somehow, when converted to Christianity, pagans began to see a purely spiritual afterlife as a good thing, as a joyous realm of communion, unpolluted by sin (the final lines of Amazing Grace express it best). It was increasingly obvious the material world hadn’t changed, and most of the people Jesus had spoken to were dead, so Jesus couldn’t have meant to say what he seemed to have said–he must have meant something else. Christianity changed them, and they it.
Just an idea. Not a very original one. I respect your opinion (whatever it is), but this is mine. Okay?
if you do take the time to check out
** you do not have permission to see this link **
please look 2nd page of comments and read JDTabor’s
apparently I am not the only one who thinks Dr Ehrman’s thesis IS NOT YET persuasive
[this is what I said – I did not claim/imagine I could win an argument with Bart on this topic – did godspell assume that is what I was implying]
I wouldn’t doubt it. And I’m not even saying Bart’s opinion constitutes the consensus view (if not, wouldn’t be the first time).
But I’m looking for something consistent with the evidence. Jesus didn’t just pull the Christian heaven and hell out of his ass. He had antecedants, influences, and far as I know, none of them believed this. He thought it was possible for a select few servants of God to go straight up to heaven–and he didn’t think that was a reward. That was duty prolonged throughout eternity. But he never believed in hell.
There’s my prejudice, in case you missed it–I never wanted to believe he believed in eternal punishment for a finite lifetime of sins. And I am therefore much inclined to believe Bart when he says that was never what Jesus believed. Still and all–it’s there in the texts. Bart didn’t pull ideas out of his ass either.
Can you explain why Jesus said the entire world would be transformed in the lifetimes of those listening to him? Because, you know, that did not happen. He wasn’t talking about the distant future, and he wasn’t talking about a ghostly afterlife of eternal joy or eternal torment. The latter in particular is slandering him.
The trouble with hell–a problem Christians of good will (and we both know that term leaves out a very large percentage of self-identified Christians) have been struggling with for centuries–is that to believe in it is to deserve it.
The true saints (the ones who merited the name) mainly talked about how they themselves were unworthy sinners depending on God’s grace and forgiveness, but the tendency of most is to say hell is for the people we don’t like. It’s an endless temptation, that corrupts us (and not just Christians, since of course the real origins of hell are more pagan than Jewish, and lots of people with no religion at all still wish there was a place where the people they hate would get beaten up for all eternity).
Jesus believed the goats, as he called them, were making their own hell, not through being sinners, but through being unable to care for others besides themselves (Jesus didn’t know from Narcissism, but that’s really what he’s talking about). It would be a punishment of very brief duration, and then they’d be gone–unable to torment and prey upon the sheep any longer.
The wages of sin is death–not hell (Paul was fairly close to Jesus’ meaning here, though his grammar in the KJ translation sucks). But treating others as you would be treated is rewarded with eternal life. Not in heaven. Heaven is not a club, St. Peter isn’t the bouncer. 😉
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