Robert said
godspell said
As opposed to the realism of an angel coming down from heaven to turn the world upside-down and get rid of all the bad people?Yes, I know, that’s not what you meant.
But how can we know what’s realistic about what a religious visionary with an apocalyptic mindset might or might not have thought was going to happen, or what his precise role in coming events would be? The Doppelganger idea doesn’t sound so bad. As a general rule, middle positions hold up better than absolutist ones.
Jesus saw himself as a man, but a man who had been chosen by God to help transform reality–that seems indisputable, and that means we have to adjust our thinking to the world he was seeing after that. The idea of mortal men becoming divine or semi-divine beings (often after death) was commonplace in that era, among Jews and pagans alike, as Bart went to some pains to show us in How Jesus Became God. Jesus certainly was familiar with that idea. He knew he wasn’t God, he didn’t think his mother was a virgin, but that doesn’t mean he just thought he was just some Palestinian Estragon, sitting around waiting for Godot.
Explain to me why you don’t think Jesus could have thought he’d become the Son of Man after his own death. I’m sure you’d acknowledge that people in the grip of a powerful belief (not just religious belief) have thought crazier things. What in the texts leads you to believe otherwise in this case? Why did Jesus put himself in such a vulnerable position in Jerusalem? Why did he go out of his way to provoke both the religious and secular authorities, when he clearly did not have a very large following?
Why did the disciples so quickly adopt the beliefs they did after his death, have powerful visions that seemed to substantiate them? I’d say it’s because Jesus had prepared their minds in advance to accept that his death might not be failure at all, but part of God’s plan. This explains why it never happened with the other messianic pretenders, who were sticking more to the traditional messianic formula. Jesus changed it. And the new formula proved more adaptable, more suitable to inspiring and attracting followers, albeit mostly not from the ranks of the people Jesus had come from.
It might not be true at all, but why do you rule it out categorically? I don’t see the basis for that.
Please, I did NOT categorically deny the possibility, but yes I do find some of the specifics unlikely for a few reasons, if you’re interested. First, as already indicated, I have not seen a good defense of this approach by other scholars. More specifically, even if one advances the hypothesis that the Parables of Enoch should be dated sufficiently early to have influenced Jesus and made his pronouncements understandable to his contemporary audience, or to have been influenced by more hypothetical ideas to make this approach even more likely, should one further hypothesize that the figure described therein or theorized was actually differently described and known among Jesus’ disciples either in a titular sense generally or more specifically as closely associated with the Messiah? Then one would need also to credibly credit this hypothetical set of beliefs to Jesus and as a principal psychological motivation for seeking his own death in a further belief that he would be somehow be resurrected into a returning heavenly reincarnation of just such a multiply hypothetical figure. If you want to take on such a task, by all means, I will pay close attention.
Alternatively, my collaborative view of Mark’s own redactional tendencies and perspective places the creative exegesis of the book of Daniel with the application of the Son of Man to a destructive heavenly Jesus at a much later stage of the prior traditional material, conception, and composition of the gospel. Although this approach is exceedingly less hypothetical, further explication of this view would require quite a quite a bit of explanation that preliminary experience indicates you would merely be inclined to discount and dismiss out of hand in favor of your own psychological interpretation of Jesus’ personality.
I figured that you might like Dale Allison’s Doppelgänger theory, not because it is a middle position, but because it might otherwise lend itself to your own speculation. The problem, in my opinion, is certainly not that it is a middle position between competing theories based on contradictory evidence, thereby better accounting for more evidence than either of two otherwise opposing theories, but rather that it is a middle position for two theories, one of which is supported by some evidence and the other which is supported by a long-standing scholarly theory without real evidence. Keep in mind, I do not dismiss the contrasting theory, but I certainly cannot dismiss the contrasting evidence, and I must recognize theory as theory. My position is simply that we do not know that for which we do not have sufficiently reliable information.
We cannot know with anything approaching reasonable certitude what is realistic about what an unusual or even unique religious visionary with an apocalyptic mindset might or might not have thought was going to happen, but that does not mean that we must therefore claim to know this. It remains our task to try and understand this individual within his historical context to the extent that this context is known.
The idea of mortal men becoming divine or semi-divine beings (often after death) was commonplace in that era especially among world emperors, mythical figures of primeval history, or perhaps a singular legendary prophets or yore. Was that likely a view promoted by a near contemporary of Hillel or Shammai? That is a problem for an historian of this period to contemplate.
Certainly many people throughout history have indeed thought crazy and crazier things, but is craziness in and of itself a criteria for credibility?
Why did Jesus put himself in a vulnerable position and provoke authorities in Jerusalem? Presumably because he believed in what he was doing and in what he taught. But what exactly did he teach about himself as a future returning heavenly Son of Man, if anything at all. That is the question for a responsible historian.
Why did the disciples so quickly adopt the beliefs they did after his death, have powerful visions that seemed to substantiate them? Perhaps because Jesus had prepared their minds in advance to accept that his death might not be failure at all, but part of God’s plan? Sure. But does that in and of itself tell us exactly what Jesus believed about a heavenly Son of Man? No, it does not. Sorry.
Sounds pretty categorical to me–maybe if you deny it twice more, the cock will crow? 🙂
I’m not trying to prove anything, and you’ve proven nothing either. You apparently don’t think you have to.
You basically are saying “This is the default position, and therefore you have to prove your point, but I don’t.” That’s lazy argumentation. There is no default position here. We know Jesus went to Jerusalem, did and said some controversial things, and was crucified. We agree he was an apocalypticist. Bart believes he thought a supernatural being would come down from heaven and make him king. I don’t believe that. And that is decidedly not a consensus view, as Bart as conceded. It’s his interpretation, which of course is more qualified than any of ours, but that doesn’t make it right, and one must allow for the rather unique scholarly journey he made from fundamentalist to agnostic/atheist. I’ve never been either. So of course I’m going to see things differently.
What exactly do you think happened, and no scholarese, please. There’s not a scholar on this whole forum, and referring to all these writers you don’t find credible is beside the point–this is my own take, not something I borrowed. One of the most admirable things about Bart is that he writes without a lot of this filtering material, mentions other scholars, but doesn’t make it some kind of club that’s all about name-dropping. You don’t have the background to get away with that. I don’t even try.
I’m thinking about it. To me, this is a reasonable interpretation of the person I see in the gospels. How can he solve the problem he faces, that the world is unjust and cruel, the powerful exploit the weak, the evil crush the good, and clearly fighting them won’t work, because he doesn’t have the numbers, and because violence corrupts and debases even good people. Power corrupts, ut only power can win out over the evil forces that control the world. Therefore, God has to intervene and set things right, which of course is what all Apocalypticists think, so you can’t argue against that.
Yes, he was a near-contemporary of some famous rabbis who would almost certainly have rejected his views, but that’s neither here nor there. We know he was very much an oddball in his own faith. That’s really the first thing you need to understand about Jesus. He was unconventional in almost every respect. He is coming out of that tradition, but he’s changing it to suit himself, because he doesn’t see that tradition changing the world in the way he believes it must be changed.
Yes, serious scholarly speculation is a matter for serious scholars, but this is a message board for amateurs, and you’re not a scholar yourself. I don’t have to respect anything you say unless you back it up, and not just with references to scholars, all of whom will eventually be supplanted by other scholars, who will certainly say different things, because the fact of consensus is, it shifts. It evolves. It mutates. It doesn’t stay in one place. And if you’d studied history the way I did, you’d know that. Just read old history books and you’ll know that.
I don’t know Jesus thought of himself as the Son of Man, but I do know there’s serious confusion on this topic among scholars. That there is no consensus view on what Jesus meant by this, or even if he said it. Therefore, you are hiding behind a consensus that does not exist. That’s pretty lame. State your views clearly, and maybe I’ll find them convincing. At least I won’t be bored. 🙂
Robert said
tompicard said
… maybe but I dont know any part of his ministry recorded in the NT that Jesus implied he would physically resurrect
Seriously? Have you ever read the gospels? For example, let’s just look at the first gospel:
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Of course, the relevant question is whether or not these passages and others can reliably be traced back to the historical Jesus. Is that what you meant to say? Or are you perhaps imagining that Jesus was not speaking of a physical resurrection? Or are you speaking of something else entirely perhaps?
ok rather than saying i meant this to that; I’ll just retract that comment as kind of dumb
The topic of his thread
Crossan’s view of the historical Jesus
posted on Bart’s site
I meant/hoped would lead to a comparison/consideration of Crossan’s view of Jesus as sapietial teacher vs Ehrman’s view as apocalypticist. and which arguments presented by these scholars is more convincing and why.
Whether Jesus believed a third person Son of Man was going to appear in his lifetime as Bart believes to inaugurate the Kingdom of God or whether Jesus was going to die (purposefully?/intentionally?sacrifice his life) and resurrect as a Son of Man who inaugurates this world, as godspell speculates although an interesting questions aren’t specifically germaine to this topic, as both those hypotheses encompass apocalyptic ideas that would be rejected by Crossan
Interestingly both Crossan’s and Ehrman’s argument having strikingly similar format yet exactly opposite conclusions
Ehrman thinks that Jesus use of term Son of Man was exclusively 3rd person apocalyptic (probably non human) judge . I understand his argument to be based on the examples where Jesus speaks of the Son of Man in the third person and possibly when situates the Son of Man with ‘clouds of heaven’. Which must imply early followers of Jesus (but not Jesus himself) created the gospel tradition where Jesus used the therm son of man as a self reference
Crossan thinks/speculates that Jesus frequent use of the term son of man as a self reference combined with post easter views of Jesus as ‘divine’ and a resurrected being led to the early followers to equate Jesus with an apocalyptic judge i.e. Son of Man.
godspell . .
And if Jesus thought of himself as a prophet in the old sense (he definitely saw parallels) that would be a good answer. However, Bart and many other scholars believe he saw himself as the messiah.
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Exactly which interpretation of what Jesus believed would you consider ‘normal’, tompicard? It kind of amuses me what people can normalize in their heads. None of this is normal. It’s all very very odd.Crossan’s ideas are pretty odd themselves, though
Normal would tend toward “all men are mortal”, “dead bodies remain dead”, “messiah is a human being chosen by God”, “Kingdom of God is where all are treated justly and equally by earthly authorities and their brothers and sisters, regardless of presence of sickness and/or hurt and/or poverty”
I am pretty sure those are ideas Crossan would ascribe to Jesus
But I am not sure Bart does.
tompicard said
fwiw
pretty much my same thought after/during reading this book
I don’t think he Crossan was explicit about this; but appears he did NOT believe Jesus taught a (or his) “second coming”
and I agree with that.
Yes, I think Crossan rules out any apocalyptic sense of the phrase “son of man” in the teaching of the historical Jesus, whether it was about a third-party apocalyptic “son of man” or about his own second-coming.
From what I can tell of Ehrman’s own account regarding the “son of man” sayings, he places the most weight on Mark 8:38-9:1, 13:24-30, 14:62; Matthew 13:40-43, 24:27-44; Luke 12:39, 17:24-30, 21:34-36. These texts do indeed seem to be referring to the “son of man” in the third-person.
What Crossan does with these passages, as far as I can tell, is set them next to certain phrasings about the parousia in Paul’s letters, the Didache and Revelation, and claim they were written by later followers to portray Jesus as predicting his own return, and did not originate with Jesus. With a few of them, such as Mark 8:38, Crossan looks at the phrasing in Matthew 16:27 and Luke 9:26 and, again comparing with selected passages in Revelation and 2 Timothy, concludes that Jesus is referring to himself in a passive voice with the phrase “son of man,” again with the parousiac sense of later Christians.
Again, I find Crossan’s exegesis of these passages convoluted, and Ehrman’s reading appears to be much more straightforward. But even the more straightforward reading leaves me with questions. Why would evangelists, who were most likely writing after the first generation of Jesus’ followers had died, want to preserve unrevised sayings of Jesus that seem to have wrongly predicted the overturning of earthly powers by an apocalyptic kingdom during the lifetimes of that first generation? Granted the evangelists perhaps preserved other embarrassing facts or sayings about Jesus life, though they usually make great efforts to explain them favourably (the baptism by John, the hostility of Jesus’ family, the crucifixion and death itself). But preserving apocalyptic predictions about the coming of a “third-person” son of man that obviously flopped would seem the threaten the evangelists’ credibility to their readers unless these predictions were now being read in a parousiac light.
So, I remain undecided about the whole argument about the “son of man” sayings. It makes me suspect that going with the events narrative that Sanders constructs might be the clearest route to seeing the historical Jesus as a an apocalpyticist. Of course, Ehrman also invokes Sanders’ argument.
I think the Son of Man topic has confused the hell out of everyone who ever wrote about it, including the NT authors.
We must at least leave some room for the possibility that it confused Jesus as well. That he was not of one mind about it. Visionaries are hard to understand because they don’t fully understand their own visions. They just have them, and then have to find some way to bring them into the real world, translate them for the benefit of others. Something is always lost in translation.
Bart likes to simplify. It’s part of what makes him such a ‘master explainer’ of a very difficult area of study. He has never presumed to say his explanations are the only ones that work, but he does look for ways to cut through the confusion–often by cutting the source material to the bone. Which is probably the same habit of mind that made him a fundamentalist for a time. That’s another way of simplifying things–to believe everything. That didn’t work, so he’s increasingly gone the other way. Which has worked better, but any approach can be overdone.
Certainty isn’t possible here, but we should at least agree that the Son of Man idea was very important to Jesus, or else it wouldn’t be emphasized so heavily in the gospels. And Jesus might have identified so deeply with the Son of Man that he began to blur the lines between that entity and himself. And this is why people who knew him blurred those lines as well, to the point where they no longer existed.
Of course
Ehrman’s reading [Mark 8:38-9:1, 13:24-30, 14:62; Matthew 13:40-43, 24:27-44; Luke 12:39, 17:24-30, 21:34-36. These texts do indeed seem to be referring to the “son of man” in the third-person. ] appears to be much more straightforward. Crossan’s exegesis of these passages convoluted,
But on the other hand Crossan’s readings of texts where Jesus refers to the son of man in the first person like Matt 8:20 and many (I think more) others, is straight forward and all Ehrman can do is say that particular text isn’t historical and or maybe provide a convoluted exegesis.
( I dont remember if Ehrman has given any compelling exegesis on how first person son of man references by Jesus in Gospels originated and yet he claims they aren’t historical, if there is something please remind me )
This is a pretty good summing-up of Prof. Ehrman’s views–
** you do not have permission to see this link **
i agree very strongly with him that whatever Jesus believed about the Son of Man, it was likely to be an interpretation peculiar to himself–perhaps derived to some extent from John the Baptist, and the Essenes, but probably still pretty sui generis to himself. Jesus, in the time period we have information about, was nobody’s camp follower, and it’s absurd to say “Well, this is what Jews in this era believed”–first of all, we don’t know nearly enough about what they believed, and secondly, we have ample evidence Jesus had massive differences with mainstream Judaism. Might as well say “Well, Luther couldn’t have believed such and such because he was raised a Catholic during the Age of Faith.”
I am less certain about Bart’s contention that Jesus only used Son of Man in the third person, and said nothing that might lead listeners to think he felt some level of identification with this cosmic judge of humanity. My personal pet theory is that Jesus didn’t think of himself as being the Son of Man in the present tense, but that he would be in the future, perhaps only after his death. This would not be a glorification but a sacrifice.
Not at all hard to believe that Jesus’ ideas were changing even in the course of his brief ministry, given the pressures he was undergoing, and the decapitation of his teacher John. So he could have begun thinking of the Son of Man as a completely separate entity, and then began to blur the lines between that entity and himself, as he realized that nothing in the world around him was really changing, and that the Kingdom was as far away as ever (and that he would ultimately meet a similar fate to John’s if he didn’t surrender his calling–so how to give that meaning?).
We are repeatedly told that his disciples had trouble following his line of thought, so there is obviously enormous room for doubt as to whether they got it right, let alone the later evangelists who wrote the gospels.
In some respects, I would prefer to think Jesus never identified himself with the Son of Man, but there’s a lot of evidence to the contrary, and any answer we give is at best an educated guess. It’s impossible to refer to scholarly consensus on this subject, because there is none.
That being said, there’s a lot of evidence he did sometimes refer to himself as Son of Man, used the term in several senses–but that still begs the question of what he meant. However, the notion that Jesus always meant exactly one thing by anything he said doesn’t really hold up to scrutiny. He was not speaking in concrete black and white terms, and should not be taken as doing so. He could very easily think the Son of Man was a cosmic judge coming from heaven and still think he himself was in some limited sense the Son of Man. His thinking was not digital but analog.
The problem of course is that we’re not talking about some obscure cult leader we’re interested in, but rather the unwitting founder of the most influential social movement in world history, who is identified as Messiah, Son of God, and God incarnate. This has a tendency to skew the interpretations in either direction, depending on the leanings of the scholar in question. It’s very hard to be objective. Particularly since the subject at hand is anything but.
Erhman rejects the historicity of Jesus first person use of the term ‘son of man’
Crossan rejects the historicity of Jesus use of the third-person (or at least titular) use of the term
Bart Ehrman’s preferred hypothesis implies Jesus views the “The Messiah” and “The Son of Man” as two different beings. This is no less convoluted theory than Crossan’s alternate hypothesis. especially if you take a moment ask what is the relationship between these two beings.
I will think about GodSpell’s theory that seems to try to harmonize both types of uses. There is some merit to thinking Jesus could expect/hope to one day fulfill the role of a messiah/judge (even though he was clearly not in that role during his ministry in Galilee), More likely though the role would be precipitated by acceptance of his ministry and acknowledgement of it worth as opposed to being misunderstood and persecuted by the Judean leadership, and I dont believe that he thought that the fulfilled role of Messiah could be accomplished by getting himself killed.
Robert said
godspell said
This is a pretty good summing-up of Prof. Ehrman’s views–
** you do not have permission to see this link **
i agree very strongly with him that whatever Jesus believed about the Son of Man, it was likely to be an interpretation peculiar to himself–perhaps derived to some extent from John the Baptist, and the Essenes, but probably still pretty sui generis to himself. …Bart’s point here is that Jesus could have come up with this particular usage of the Son of Man term, but elsewhere he states clearly that he does not know if the term was widely used this way prior to the time of Jesus but that he doubts Jesus was the one to coin this usage:
I think this is how Jesus used the term. Whether it was widely used that way or not before his time, by other Jewish preachers, I don’t know. We don’t have evidence that it was. (The closest analogy is 1 Enoch.) Did Jesus coin the title himself? I doubt it, but I don’t really know. And either does anyone else! ** you do not have permission to see this link **
See, it can be good to admit the things that we just do not know. As for the Essenes, if you believe that some of the writings of the Essenes can be found among the Dead Sea Scrolls, this usage is certainly not found there.
Robert, if you’re saying I have been pretending to certain knowledge on a subject I just said everybody is confused about, then you are really violating that whole get the log out of your own eye thing Jesus almost certainly did say, every time you accuse me of imputing things to you that you never said. You also seem to be implying that Bart contradicts himself, but since he probably never reads this forum, I wouldn’t worry about that.
I never mentioned the Dead Sea Scrolls, or indeed even thought about them in this context, but the Essenes are well known to have been Apocalypticists, and it’s widely believed that John the Baptist was influenced by them, and Jesus certanly was influenced by John. Are you saying we know for a fact everything the Essenes believed is found amongst those fragmentary bits of parchment? No? Then you didn’t say anything at all.
tompicard said
Erhman rejects the historicity of Jesus first person use of the term ‘son of man’Crossan rejects the historicity of Jesus use of the third-person (or at least titular) use of the term
Bart Ehrman’s preferred hypothesis implies Jesus views the “The Messiah” and “The Son of Man” as two different beings. This is no less convoluted theory than Crossan’s alternate hypothesis. especially if you take a moment ask what is the relationship between these two beings.
I will think about GodSpell’s theory that seems to try to harmonize both types of uses. There is some merit to thinking Jesus could expect/hope to one day fulfill the role of a messiah/judge (even though he was clearly not in that role during his ministry in Galilee), More likely though the role would be precipitated by acceptance of his ministry and acknowledgement of it worth as opposed to being misunderstood and persecuted by the Judean leadership, and I dont believe that he thought that the fulfilled role of Messiah could be accomplished by getting himself killed.
Okay. Why not?
It’s established that Jesus was unconventional in his thinking, even by the standards of other Jewish apocalypticists.
It’s established that Jesus was aware of the martyrdom of his teacher, John, who he clearly had believed had some vital role to play in the coming of the Kingdom, albeit perhaps less important than his own role. It’s pretty clear that Jesus didn’t consider John a failure because he’d been executed. Overcoming death itself through faith in God was certainly part of his belief. It’s the specifics that tend to be fuzzy. As they would have been for him too, probably.
I agree with Bart that he didn’t think in terms of an afterlife as Christians later would, but that’s not what this is. He’s not gaining paradise by becoming the Son of Man, but rather losing it, as Moses lost the Promised Land in the process of getting his people to it. He won’t really be himself anymore. Jews did in fact believe that some of the prophets were raised up into heaven. Not as a reward, a sort of celestial retirement, but rather because God still had need of them. Prophets don’t rule, they serve–eternally.
I like your post, and of course your idea could be right, and of course we don’t know (how does Robert think I’m saying I do know? I don’t know that either.). But the idea of sacrifice is so inherent to the gospels, and to the tradition Jesus is coming out of, that I don’t see any way around it.
Maybe Jesus just expected to be transformed at the moment of his death or shortly before it–that would explain why there’s a tradition of him despairing on the cross, however much Bart doesn’t think anybody could have known if he did or not (it’s not exactly a stretch, is it now?) We just know he unnecessarily put himself at risk, and there’s no reason to doubt the memory that he insisted his followers not defend him from arrest, because if they had, they’d have been crucified too, right?
If what he’d told them beforehand didn’t match up at all with what happened, then why would they have visions and dreams that told them he’d risen? They hadn’t believed it could happen, then it did, and they had stood by and let it happen. The thing Jesus had expected at the end of his travails had not happened, but in their minds it did, and that was all that mattered. They absolutely changed what he said, but not the core essence of it. We can’t know exactly what he said and thought, but I think we do know who he was. He was a man who was willing to give everything he had, everything he was, to make a better world for the good people of this earth, who he saw being oppressed and exploited by evil.
Whether his sacrifice was worth it or not is, I suppose an existential question. But I’m not an existentialist, so……
No, it was still a non-answer. You can say “This is my reading at this moment in time” without saying you have certain knowledge. You seem wary of that, and I don’t really understand why.
You were not correcting my reading, you were just being unnecessarily nitpicky, which is a thing you do, and it’s very annoying, which I’m guessing is the point? My point, for the record, is that Bart doesn’t think you can assume Jesus couldn’t be innovating in his use of the term Son of Man. In saying this, he wasn’t saying he knows what Jesus meant, and how you think I was saying he did is truly beyond my comprehension.
As to the Essenes, I guess you didn’t process my use of the conditional? You know multiple languages, and you still have problems with basic English? 🙄
We know Jesus was influenced by John. We think John may have been influenced by the Essenes. We know very little about what the Essenes believed, and the odds that they all believed exactly the same are negligible. The Dead Sea Scrolls are not the point of anything, since they were not created for the purpose of telling historians everything Essenes believed, and as you point out, they are not just about Essene beliefs. And I never brought them up. Because I wasn’t talking about the Essenes, a subject I’ve spent relatively time thinking about. I just mentioned them as a potential influence, and at best a secondary one, since I consider it unlikely Jesus was a member of that cult, and may never have had any direct contact with them. Whatever he knew about them he probably knew through John. But I don’t know that! Don’t start saying I’m pretending to know that! 😀
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