Argument 1.
Mark Matthew and Luke spent many years dedicated to christianity and so might have had ulterior motive to record thing Jesus really didn’t say
what about Bultmann Ehrman and Meier they likewise spent many years in school (BS & Phd so at least 8) so they may have ulterior motive to conclude Gospels have many problems (in other words how can they receive tenure and sell books if their conclusion is Gospels are pretty much accurate)
[Note: I am not implying that ANY of the above 6 authors are biased only that I cannot tell determine whether 3 are more or less biased than the other 3]
Argument 2.
Mark Matthew and Luke contradict each other, therefore they can’t be trusted.
Cant we say the same about Bultmann, Ehrman and Meier, that they contradict each other (eg. 2 of them think the parable of the wicked tenants is bogus and 1 thinks it has some historical content)
I know that in many other cases of history, a modern dedicated historian knows more about an ancient situation than a contemporary simply because modern historians have access to a lot of different sources and they have the time to study a situation. That’s certainly the case for battles, where the participants often had only the foggiest idea of what was going on. It wouldn’t surprise me if the same went for what Jesus really said.
I have no clear evidence indicating that the anonymous authors of the synoptics had any first-hand knowledge of Jesus whatsoever.
The author of Luke seems to indicate that the story was “handed down” – Luke 1:2 and that he “investigated” – Luke 1:3.
So, if we are very generous and assume that these authors would not, could not, and did not distort anything; it does not follow that their sources did not fabricate, misquote, or distort what they heard.
If you maintain that the authors were eye witnesses (or accurately recorded eye witness testimony) then the problem of distortion continues to present itself in the contradictions that exist between the synoptic authors. When two accounts of a story contradict one another, they both can’t be correct (although both can be wrong).
Your second argument speaking to contradiction seems – um – really “odd” because you appear to create a false equivalence between the gospel authors who pruportedly had detailed knowledge of proximate events and scholars living almost 2000 later who are attempting to piece together the story from various sources that span centuries.
That Bultmann, Ehrman, and Meier do not agree on every point is not at all surprising. It would be shocking if they did agree on every point. In how many instances do scholars from different schools of thought in any field agree on every point?
Bultmann, Ehrman, and Meier have never claimed to be eye witnesses or to have talked with eye witnesses. They are not living within 100 years of the event. They do not have access to anyone who was living during the time of these events.
These and other scholars have tried to figure out what actually happened using fragments, copies of copies of copies of documents that contain inconsistencies and contradictions, the writings of scholars who went before them, as well as evolving findings in the field of archaeology.
Why would anyone expect an equal level of consistency when the the circumstances of each group are so radically different?
Your take on scholarship also seems a bit twisted. Are you claiming that there is a religious litmus test for granting tenure in public universities? I would love to see evidence for that assertion.
Are you claiming that scholars can’t sell books unless those books deny the accuracy of the gospels? Tell that to the conservative apologists who pump our books right and left.
You know, if Bart Ehrman really wanted to make a killing in the book market, he could begin writing books in which he recants his current positions and market those books to the fundamentalist book sellers. He would make millions. But I think he is not all about the cash, but is all about seeking the truth.
skeptik
true, citing possibility of bias and contradictions are very foolish when questioning reliability of Bultmann Ehrman and Meier
are you saying however they are good arguments if applied Matthew Mark and Luke ?
** you do not have permission to see this link **
that is interesting point that of course modern scholar can have a much broader view.
Let me answer by way of an admittedly less-than-perfect analogy.
You are reading a hand written trial transcript from 60 years ago that pertains to the disappearance of a policeman near Roswell New Mexico.
In that transcript, two witnesses are claimed to have certain knowledge of an extraordinary event in which a flying saucer shot a beam of light and caused the policeman to vanish into thin air.
These witnesses are put on the witness stand and are asked to relate what they know. The first says that the event happened on Monday morning. The second says that it happened in the Wednesday evening. When questioned about other facts relevant to the story they diverge on other points as well. Both claim that other people saw the event also but they disagree on who these people were. (and none came forward to verify this claim.)
The testimony of those witnesses is then put under scrutiny. It is determined that neither one of those witnesses were actual eye witnesses of the event but were relating what they had heard or pieced together from others who allegedly saw the event. (now we have entered into the realm of hearsay which is problematic in court testimony multiple reasons).
You then learn that the trial transcript that you are reading is not the original, but a fifth hand copy that had been passed down by a group of people who have long promoted the belief in flying saucers.
How much belief can you place in the story as it has been related to you? Do you buy the story? Some might, especially if they already had a strong belief in flying saucers. But I would not find such a thing at all convincing.
skeptik said
Let me answer by way of an admittedly less-than-perfect analogy.You are reading a hand written trial transcript from 60 years ago that pertains to the disappearance of a policeman near Roswell New Mexico.
In that transcript, two witnesses are claimed to have certain knowledge of an extraordinary event in which a flying saucer shot a beam of light and caused the policeman to vanish into thin air.
These witnesses are put on the witness stand and are asked to relate what they know. The first says that the event happened on Monday morning. The second says that it happened in the Wednesday evening. When questioned about other facts relevant to the story they diverge on other points as well. Both claim that other people saw the event also but they disagree on who these people were. (and none came forward to verify this claim.)
The testimony of those witnesses is then put under scrutiny. It is determined that neither one of those witnesses were actual eye witnesses of the event but were relating what they had heard or pieced together from others who allegedly saw the event. (now we have entered into the realm of hearsay which is problematic in court testimony multiple reasons).
You then learn that the trial transcript that you are reading is not the original, but a fifth hand copy that had been passed down by a group of people who have long promoted the belief in flying saucers.
How much belief can you place in the story as it has been related to you? Do you buy the story? Some might, especially if they already had a strong belief in flying saucers. But I would not find such a thing at all convincing.
When one adds in that the second witness strongly contradicts key elements of the first witness’s story and reasons can be seen for doing this, and it turns out that this first witness was expanding on the story of an even earlier witness which he ‘corrects’ in places, the whole thing becomes extremely doubtful. And this is not even counting a fourth witness who tells yet another very divergent story.
AstaKask said
Who knows more about the Persian wars? Herodotos or modern historians?
Modern historians know more about the Persian wars than Herodotus because they have Herodotus and some supplemental sources. The problem with knowing more than the Gospel writers about what a real historical Jesus said is that there are no relevant supplemental sources outside of the Gospels. Complicating the situation is that the Gospels contradict each other in very significant ways. Furthermore, all of the Gospels – even the first – have the earmarks of serving agendas that pertain to events well after the time of Jesus. That Matthew and Luke had clearly read Mark (and IMO Luke had read Matthew) confuses the reliability issue even further. What the Gospel writers knew and what they wrote would appear to be not the same thing.
In this case, it is necessary to dig through what seems to be agenda driven or other ex post facto invention and what sounds like it might be original or at least pre-Gospel traditional. IMO the only reasonable sources for getting a glimpse of an authentic Jesus are Mark, who appears to have received stories about Jesus that are irrelevant to both his specific agenda and to general Christianity concepts, and Matthew, who represents Jewish Christianity and may have had access to traditions about what Jesus himself believed.
OldDogNewTricks said
Modern historians know more about the Persian wars than Herodotus because they have Herodotus and some supplemental sources. The problem with knowing more than the Gospel writers about what a real historical Jesus said is that there are no relevant supplemental sources outside of the Gospels. Complicating the situation is that the Gospels contradict each other in very significant ways. Furthermore, all of the Gospels – even the first – have the earmarks of serving agendas that pertain to events well after the time of Jesus. That Matthew and Luke had clearly read Mark (and IMO Luke had read Matthew) confuses the reliability issue even further. What the Gospel writers knew and what they wrote would appear to be not the same thing.
In this case, it is necessary to dig through what seems to be agenda driven or other ex post facto invention and what sounds like it might be original or at least pre-Gospel traditional. IMO the only reasonable sources for getting a glimpse of an authentic Jesus are Mark, who appears to have received stories about Jesus that are irrelevant to both his specific agenda and to general Christianity concepts, and Matthew, who represents Jewish Christianity and may have had access to traditions about what Jesus himself believed.
The last paragraph may be too dogmatic. There are independent attestations even in gJohn as well as Paul’s letters. Whatever model of the gospel sources one adopt, Luke and Matthew both contribute to the reconstruction of either Q, or alternatively the sources behind Matthew that Luke potentially detected and altered. The latter view is extremely problematic.
In a sum, later compilers contribute to the detection of historical truth by looking at how they changed their sources.
gavriel said
The last paragraph may be too dogmatic. There are independent attestations even in gJohn as well as Paul’s letters. Whatever model of the gospel sources one adopt, Luke and Matthew both contribute to the reconstruction of either Q, or alternatively the sources behind Matthew that Luke potentially detected and altered. The latter view is extremely problematic.
In a sum, later compilers contribute to the detection of historical truth by looking at how they changed their sources.
I was not talking about attestations to the existence of a historical Jesus. Paul’s widespread readers already knowing there was a Jesus and Mark’s use of apparently very early traditions are to my mind sufficient to take that as a reasonable assumption. I was talking about what actual events or sayings may have been preserved from the life of a real Jesus. Paul tells almost nothing about the life of Jesus except that he was crucified, something his audience already seems to know. (All of the Gospels include this as well, with Mark’s possibly containing some genuine original details.) Mark provides some episodes that could very well have really happened. For the most part, that these episodes usually do not relate well to Christian thought and even to some extent weigh against Paul’s take on matters argues against them being inventions by Mark.
I do not believe Q ever existed. The Two Source hypothesis (Mark and Q) resulted from the need to explain why Matthew and Luke contain material from Mark and also have material in common not found in Mark. In this view Matthew and Luke derive from prior sources. But this fails to explain why Matthew and Luke both contain material not found in each other or in Mark. Some scholars then proposed M and L sources to account for the unique material.
My own view is that Matthew used Mark as a basis for his Gospel, adding on new material of his own invention to serve his agenda. This agenda was to distinguish Matthew’s community of Law-observant Jewish Christians from Jesus-accepting but Law-rejecting Pauline Christians and from Law-observant but Jesus-rejecting rabbinic Judaism. Luke also used Mark as a basis, but incorporated material from Matthew and of his own invention. Luke’s agenda was to counter certain features of Matthew he found objectionable, specifically the insistence on Law observance and the emphasis of Jesus as the Kingly Messiah with its unhappy reminder of the catastrophic Roman-Jewish War.
Quite a bit of Luke’s Gospel consists of referring to elements of Matthew and turning them upside down. Examples: the very different genealogy treatment with subtle jabs at Matthew (no one else has a genealogy of Jesus), the very different Nativity with subtle jabs at Matthew (no one else has a Nativity story), discarding the Jesus as New Moses meme that Matthew uses in several places and making Jesus more universal in appeal, switching geographic emphasis from Galilee to Jerusalem, the Galilee being a hotbed of revolution. This last even goes as far as totally negating Matthew’s account of the resurrection and substituting a very different Jerusalem oriented one where the disciples do not go to Galilee. Plus miscellaneous other anti-references throughout.
John has brief references to all of the other Gospels but mostly just invents a whole new story for a new purpose. Acts I see as an attempt to reconcile the differences in prior writings and resolve problems that arose over time, especially the failure of the Son of Man to make a timely appearance.
Considering that there appears to be a great deal of invention in the Gospels, it looks to me like a question of disregarding what is unique to a particular Gospel and that supports the unique agenda of that Gospel, likewise whatever does not fit the timeframe of Jesus and (depending on taste) omitting the miracles. Of particular interest for possible inclusion are those items that do not fit well with later Christian (Pauline) ideas as these are more likely to be original than invention.
That is my take on it.
…Mark’s use of apparently very early traditions…
Possibly but I think it is a mistake to automatically assume that Mark has access to early traditions simply because he was the first gospel written. Mark (whoever) is a gentile writing for a gentile audience, perhaps in Rome, completely divorced from a Jewish milieu, occasionally confused about Palestinian geography and Jewish cultural norms. He is ignorant of material that is considered by Christians to be foundational, namely “Q”, specifically the so-called “Sermon on the Mount” material. (Note that I’m not asserting that Mark doesn’t have access to early material, simply pointing out that such an assumption may not be warranted.)
I do not believe Q ever existed.
Well Q might not have existed as a separate document but the material certainly exists and it came from somewhere. I have not seen any compelling evidence that Luke and Matthew knew each other or that John knew the synoptics. The existence of a Q source document is a reasonable supposition.
Stephen said
…Mark’s use of apparently very early traditions…Possibly but I think it is a mistake to automatically assume that Mark has access to early traditions simply because he was the first gospel written. Mark (whoever) is a gentile writing for a gentile audience, perhaps in Rome, completely divorced from a Jewish milieu, occasionally confused about Palestinian geography and Jewish cultural norms. He is ignorant of material that is considered by Christians to be foundational, namely “Q”, specifically the so-called “Sermon on the Mount” material. (Note that I’m not asserting that Mark doesn’t have access to early material, simply pointing out that such an assumption may not be warranted.)
I do not believe Q ever existed.
Well Q might not have existed as a separate document but the material certainly exists and it came from somewhere. I have not seen any compelling evidence that Luke and Matthew knew each other or that John knew the synoptics. The existence of a Q source document is a reasonable supposition.
I am not assuming anything about Mark because it was the first gospel written. I had in mind passages such as:
Mark 7:1-13 in which Jesus berates the Pharisees for making up rules that are not in the Torah and emphasizing that it is the Torah that should be followed. The argument over what the Pharisees call the Oral Torah and Jesus labels as ‘teaching as doctrines the commandments of men’. This would be lost on a non-Jewish audience.
Mark 10:17-19 in which Jesus states as the way to eternal life obeying the commandments, with examples quoted right out of the Torah. No mention of faith or of Jesus as anything other than a teacher. In verse 18, Jesus even minimizes his importance in the matter.
Mark 16:1-8, the original ending of Mark, in which the women go to the tomb to complete the required burial rites, find the stone rolled back and a stranger says that Jesus rose from the dead and went to Galilee. No one sees the resurrection itself or the risen Jesus. The End. This is entirely believable as an actual event. Why would Mark write such a suspicious sounding end of his story, especially since he had Paul’s elaborate witness story in 1 Corinthians 15 to draw on? Note that Mark drew on 1 Corinthians 11 for his Last Supper narrative so we know he read 1 Corinthians. So why the minimalist and suspicious ending that Matthew even admits sounds like grave robbery. Unless that was the tradition that Mark received. This could even be the real origin of the resurrection story.
Mark tells two versions of calming the seas: Mark 4:35-41 and Mark 6:45-51. He also tells two versions of feeding the multitudes: Mark 6:31-44 and Mark 8:1-20. Why would Mark invent two different versions of these stories? A better explanation is that he received traditions old enough to have developed multiple versions and he used them all.
It is not to be ruled out that Mark had access to some old traditions about Jesus.
I do not understand what you mean by “Q might not have existed as a separate document but the material certainly exists and it came from somewhere”. What form do you think this material took? Oral traditions? Multiple documents? I gave reasons earlier why I think there was no Q and that Luke wrote to counteract what he considered problems that Matthew introduced. I would elaborate on this but at the moment I do not have the time. I will try to get to that tomorrow. Likewise John’s connections to the Synoptic Gospels.
OldDogNewTricks said
I was not talking about attestations to the existence of a historical Jesus. Paul’s widespread readers already knowing there was a Jesus and Mark’s use of apparently very early traditions are to my mind sufficient to take that as a reasonable assumption. I was talking about what actual events or sayings may have been preserved from the life of a real Jesus. Paul tells almost nothing about the life of Jesus except that he was crucified, something his audience already seems to know. (All of the Gospels include this as well, with Mark’s possibly containing some genuine original details.) Mark provides some episodes that could very well have really happened. For the most part, that these episodes usually do not relate well to Christian thought and even to some extent weigh against Paul’s take on matters argues against them being inventions by Mark.
I do not believe Q ever existed. The Two Source hypothesis (Mark and Q) resulted from the need to explain why Matthew and Luke contain material from Mark and also have material in common not found in Mark. In this view Matthew and Luke derive from prior sources. But this fails to explain why Matthew and Luke both contain material not found in each other or in Mark. Some scholars then proposed M and L sources to account for the unique material.
My own view is that Matthew used Mark as a basis for his Gospel, adding on new material of his own invention to serve his agenda. This agenda was to distinguish Matthew’s community of Law-observant Jewish Christians from Jesus-accepting but Law-rejecting Pauline Christians and from Law-observant but Jesus-rejecting rabbinic Judaism. Luke also used Mark as a basis, but incorporated material from Matthew and of his own invention. Luke’s agenda was to counter certain features of Matthew he found objectionable, specifically the insistence on Law observance and the emphasis of Jesus as the Kingly Messiah with its unhappy reminder of the catastrophic Roman-Jewish War.
Quite a bit of Luke’s Gospel consists of referring to elements of Matthew and turning them upside down. Examples: the very different genealogy treatment with subtle jabs at Matthew (no one else has a genealogy of Jesus), the very different Nativity with subtle jabs at Matthew (no one else has a Nativity story), discarding the Jesus as New Moses meme that Matthew uses in several places and making Jesus more universal in appeal, switching geographic emphasis from Galilee to Jerusalem, the Galilee being a hotbed of revolution. This last even goes as far as totally negating Matthew’s account of the resurrection and substituting a very different Jerusalem oriented one where the disciples do not go to Galilee. Plus miscellaneous other anti-references throughout.
John has brief references to all of the other Gospels but mostly just invents a whole new story for a new purpose. Acts I see as an attempt to reconcile the differences in prior writings and resolve problems that arose over time, especially the failure of the Son of Man to make a timely appearance.
Considering that there appears to be a great deal of invention in the Gospels, it looks to me like a question of disregarding what is unique to a particular Gospel and that supports the unique agenda of that Gospel, likewise whatever does not fit the timeframe of Jesus and (depending on taste) omitting the miracles. Of particular interest for possible inclusion are those items that do not fit well with later Christian (Pauline) ideas as these are more likely to be original than invention.
That is my take on it.
I was commenting on your view on Q. If Q never existed as a common, written source and what we call Q rather is a multitude of traditions collected additionally to gMark (or invented by Matthew or both) then how will you explain why Luke extracted all these additional pericopes from gMatthew and combined most of them them with gMark’s pericopes in a completely different arrangement? If he was using gMark and gMatthew one would have expected him to be using at least some of the sequences of Mark- and Q- pericopes found in Matthew. But the didn’t.
Your model requires that he extracted all the non-Markan stuff from gMatthew, and used most of it but in completely different combinations with gMark pericopes. And at the same time basically keeping the order of the gMark pericopes. That , I think, is not very likely.
gavriel said
I was commenting on your view on Q. If Q never existed as a common, written source and what we call Q rather is a multitude of traditions collected additionally to gMark (or invented by Matthew or both) then how will you explain why Luke extracted all these additional pericopes from gMatthew and combined most of them them with gMark’s pericopes in a completely different arrangement? If he was using gMark and gMatthew one would have expected him to be using at least some of the sequences of Mark- and Q- pericopes found in Matthew. But the didn’t.
Your model requires that he extracted all the non-Markan stuff from gMatthew, and used most of it but in completely different combinations with gMark pericopes. And at the same time basically keeping the order of the gMark pericopes. That , I think, is not very likely.
I am a bit confused on what you mean. I am aware that Luke took material from Matthew and put it in a different place relative to Mark than Matthew did. Luke replaces the Sermon on the Mount with his much smaller, and much less strictly Jewish, Sermon on the Plain and scattered other pieces of Matthew’s version here and there in his Gospel. I am aware of Luke moving the rejection at Nazareth from near the end of the pre-Jerusalem ministry of Jesus to right near the beginning. But there are clear reasons for doing this. (A significant topic in itself but briefly it is Luke assigning Jesus to a more universal role than Matthew’s strictly Jewish one.) Is this the kind of thing you are talking about? If not, can you give an example?
OldDogNewTricks said
I am a bit confused on what you mean. I am aware that Luke took material from Matthew and put it in a different place relative to Mark than Matthew did. Luke replaces the Sermon on the Mount with his much smaller, and much less strictly Jewish, Sermon on the Plain and scattered other pieces of Matthew’s version here and there in his Gospel. I am aware of Luke moving the rejection at Nazareth from near the end of the pre-Jerusalem ministry of Jesus to right near the beginning. But there are clear reasons for doing this. (A significant topic in itself but briefly it is Luke assigning Jesus to a more universal role than Matthew’s strictly Jewish one.) Is this the kind of thing you are talking about? If not, can you give an example?
Right. If there was not an independent Q document, your hypothesis requires Luke to have extracted all non-Markan material from gMatthew, and made a mixture of it with gMark according to his own taste, completely different from what Matthew did, but still largely keeping the Markan order of pericopes.
gavriel said
OldDogNewTricks said
I am a bit confused on what you mean. I am aware that Luke took material from Matthew and put it in a different place relative to Mark than Matthew did. Luke replaces the Sermon on the Mount with his much smaller, and much less strictly Jewish, Sermon on the Plain and scattered other pieces of Matthew’s version here and there in his Gospel. I am aware of Luke moving the rejection at Nazareth from near the end of the pre-Jerusalem ministry of Jesus to right near the beginning. But there are clear reasons for doing this. (A significant topic in itself but briefly it is Luke assigning Jesus to a more universal role than Matthew’s strictly Jewish one.) Is this the kind of thing you are talking about? If not, can you give an example?
Right. If there was not an independent Q document, your hypothesis requires Luke to have extracted all non-Markan material from gMatthew, and made a mixture of it with gMark according to his own taste, completely different from what Matthew did, but still largely keeping the Markan order of pericopes.
An example of what I am talking about can be found in the treatments of the ‘Prophet not without honor’ passage.
Mark 6:1-6 has Jesus teach in the synagogue in his hometown but he is not taken seriously because he is just ‘the carpenter, Mary’s son’. Matthew 13:53-58 has a very similar passage in nearly identical wording. It is interesting that shortly before that passage, Matthew refers to people not recognizing the Messiah because they cannot understand (Matthew 13:10-17).
But Luke’s corresponding passage (Luke 4:16-30) is quite different. The people in the synagogue are very impressed with the teachings of Jesus, even considering his reference to himself as Messiah to be ‘gracious words’. It is not until he begins to recount examples of God favoring Gentiles over Jews that they turn on him. Then they want to kill him. Is it mere coincidence that Matthew emphasizes the Jewish character of Jesus and Christianity even to the extent of requiring adherence to the Law (e.g., Matthew 5) but Luke emphasizes Christianity being Gentile? This theme appears in Luke over and over, often with explicit references to Matthew.
Luke read Matthew and wrote in opposition to him. No need for Q in any form.
OldDogNewTricks said
An example of what I am talking about can be found in the treatments of the ‘Prophet not without honor’ passage.
Mark 6:1-6 has Jesus teach in the synagogue in his hometown but he is not taken seriously because he is just ‘the carpenter, Mary’s son’. Matthew 13:53-58 has a very similar passage in nearly identical wording. It is interesting that shortly before that passage, Matthew refers to people not recognizing the Messiah because they cannot understand (Matthew 13:10-17).
But Luke’s corresponding passage (Luke 4:16-30) is quite different. The people in the synagogue are very impressed with the teachings of Jesus, even considering his reference to himself as Messiah to be ‘gracious words’. It is not until he begins to recount examples of God favoring Gentiles over Jews that they turn on him. Then they want to kill him. Is it mere coincidence that Matthew emphasizes the Jewish character of Jesus and Christianity even to the extent of requiring adherence to the Law (e.g., Matthew 5) but Luke emphasizes Christianity being Gentile? This theme appears in Luke over and over, often with explicit references to Matthew.
Luke read Matthew and wrote in opposition to him. No need for Q in any form.
Yes, but that does not contradict the Q hypothesis. Based on the same examples one may say that Matthew made a mixture of Markan and Q pericopes colored by a Judaizing intent, while Luke independently made another mixture of the same two sources , with a “gentilizing” intent.
Do you think there are Matthean combinations of Markan and Q pericopes (assuming Q is a Matthean expansion) , that were taken over by Luke? That is what one would expect to a high degree if Luke used Mark and Matthew as the basic sources. Luke, however, himself refers to “many” written attempts.
On the other hand, if Luke and Matthew wrote independently, the expected outcome is exactly what we se: Q mixed with Mark wholly differently by both authors.
Given:
Rudolf Karl Bultmann (German: [ˈbʊltman]; 20 August 1884 – 30 July 1976) was a German Lutheran theologian and professor of New Testament at the University of Marburg. He was one of the major figures of early-20th-century biblical studies and a prominent voice in liberal Christianity.
Bultmann is known for his belief that the historical analysis of the New Testament is both futile and unnecessary, given that the earliest Christian literature showed little interest in specific locations.
Bultmann relied on demythologization. Bultmann contended that only faith in the kerygma, or proclamation, of the New Testament was necessary for Christian faith, not any particular facts regarding the historical Jesus.
Steefen
He does not value history.
Given:
John P. Meier (born 1942) is an American biblical scholar and Roman Catholic priest. He is author of the series A Marginal Jew: Rethinking the Historical Jesus (5 v.), six other books, and more than 70 articles for peer-reviewed or solicited journals or books
Volume 1 (1991) differentiates the Historical Jesus from the Biblical Jesus. It analyzes sources, including the New Testament and non-canonical works. The latter include the agrapha, the apocryphal gospels (such as the Gospel of Thomas), Josephus, and other Jewish and second-century Roman works. For deciding what comes from Jesus as distinct from early Christian tradition, it proposes these primary criteria (pp. 168–77):
1. The criterion of embarrassment: Why invent what would invite difficulty for the early church?
2. The criterion of discontinuity: Why reject as words or deeds of Jesus what cannot be derived from the Judaism of Jesus’ time or the early church?
3. The criterion of multiple attestation: Is it more plausible to deny words, sayings, or deeds attributed to Jesus in more than one independent literary source (e.g., Mark, Q, Paul, and John) or literary genre (e.g., parable, miracle story, or prophecy)?
4. The criterion of coherence: Given the claims to historicity from any of the above criteria, are different sayings or deeds evidently inconsistent?
5. The criterion of rejection and execution: If Jesus’ ministry came to a violent, public end, what of Jesus’ words or deeds could have alienated people, especially powerful people?
The criteria are to be used in concert for mutual correction. Still, any claim is only to the probable, not the certain.
Volume 3 (2001) places Jesus in the context of his followers, the crowds, and his competitors (including Pharisees, Sadducees, Essenes, Samaritans, scribes, and Zealots) in first-century Palestine.
Steefen
He applied methods for an Historical Jesus search.
BDEhrman
FreedomBen
evgendob
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