godspell said
Bart has said he doesn’t believe there were any Christian witnesses to the cruxifixion–I am less sure, think maybe a few of Jesus’ female followers were able to witness it from a distance–could they have heard anything Jesus said, bearing in mind that being crucified does somewhat impact one’s ability to speak clearly and that sound only travels so far? Unknown.
For me, it strains credulity for an entire religion to be created so utterly dependent on the crucifixion of its leader, and yet no one was a witness to this event. Are we to believe that not a single follower of Jesus witnessed the crucifixion or even failed to speak to someone who did?
Sometimes I feel as though we treat the ancients like children.
godspell said
Either way, it seems very unlikely that Mark spoke to any witnesses of the crucifixion–and yet his account is fairly simple, compared to that of the other gospels. Could it have come from an earlier Passion story, well known among literate Jewish Christians, which contained both legitimate memories and transposed elements (like the Barabbas story)?
There are hints throughout Mark that he is drawing upon something more than mere oral tradition. For example, the anonymity of the boy who loses his towel and runs away naked or Mark keeping the identity of Malchus (later named by John) secret in telling of the story of cutting the Roman soldier’s ear. Both events are connected to the arrest of Jesus, and thus imply potential criminal repercussions for both individuals, whose anonymity is maintained by Mark. The best explanation for this, in my opinion, is that Mark was directly told these stories (and told to keep the names secret) or Mark just already knew about the stories.
Mark is quoting other sources, and this is not plagiarism, or lack of creativity on his part. He’s writing for a relatively small audience of literate Christians who know these stories, and what he’s doing is trying to arrange them in a way that makes more sense, conveys a more powerful message. His sources may have been quoting other sources in turn. If we had all the documents, we could figure it out (maybe), but we don’t. Copying books out by hand was very time-consuming, even for people who could write, and there was little if any money in it for Christian scribes–they did it mainly out of devotion, and if they didn’t feel passionately about a work (or couldn’t read it, because it was in a language they didn’t know) it would die out, as the earlier copies were read to death, or the parchment put to other uses.
In some cases, certainly, he heard stories transmitted orally. That is how it all began, with people telling stories, and that would be just as true of the Iliad. Which does convey certain historical facts, mixed in with flights of fancy. And which changed many times in the course of telling and retelling. What we see with the gospels is a more truncated origin, taking place over a much shorter period of time, h fewer changes–but still many. And the notion that we have the ‘original’ in Mark is just bound to be wrong. It’s a very original piece of work, but it’s very sophistication indicates that there were earlier attempts in writing–Mark is trying to improve on earlier versions of the story that he’s read. Writing like this doesn’t happen just from hearing a lot of stories. Anymore than the Iliad we have happened by people passing on stories for many centuries, and then somebody wrote them down.
There’s speculation involved in all of this, and without speculation, there is no scholarship. Historical scholarship of this kind isn’t an exact science–it’s a dark art. This is what Robert and Stephen, who want certainty, are struggling with.
You’re right–we do often think of ancient people as somehow inferior to us. But in some ways, they were more sophisticated. Culture is like that (as Vico once observed). It moves forward and backwards at the same time. We advance on some levels, retreat on others. A human mind is only capable of grasping so much, and by focusing on some things, we lose sight of others. With all our modern capabilities, we could never recreate Notre Dame. That’s why that fire horrified the entire world.
Agreed. And I’ve said nothing to contradict that. I’m not publishing any papers (are you?)
This is a side-interest for me. Important, but I have no scholarly pretensions at all (even though I arguably have more training than you or Robert, but that’s ancient history of a different kind). I don’t plan to upset any applecarts. I just want to get a better understanding of Jesus and those who followed him.
And again–internet forum–where you are happily participating in wacky threads I can’t honestly see any point in. Why do you bother? Hardly anyone is reading this crap we’re typing, Robert. I don’t know why you’re bothering, but in my case, it passes the time, and helps clarify my own opinions on this subject. And I thank you for the opposition, but I wish you’d make arguments other than “This is the scholarly consensus.” While in the meantime, there’s people here propounding theories that are pure wack-a-doodle. I’ve not suggested anything that isn’t within the mainstream, and well you know it.
If I’m wrong, I’m wrong–but will we ever know for sure who is right? It’s a process, and it goes on indefinitely. Like Zeno’s paradoxical tortoise, being pursued by a fleet-footed runner–we never quite arrive at the destination. But we do get closer.
What leads you to believe I’m struggling with this?
Robert, godspell’s favorite thing is to psychologize. He knows what you’re thinking, what I’m thinking, what Jesus was thinking! Oh rare and enviable gift!
Vergari wrote
For me, it strains credulity for an entire religion to be created so utterly dependent on the crucifixion of its leader, and yet no one was a witness to this event. Are we to believe that not a single follower of Jesus witnessed the crucifixion or even failed to speak to someone who did?
But consider the logistics of the affair. A small group of people from the country in the big city flushed with visitors who had dispersed in terror because their leader had been arrested. Where would they go to witness the crucifixion? When would it take place? (I doubt the Romans posted a schedule.) And even if you were there how close could you really get? Jesus was probably one of a batch of people slated to be executed. The Romans did this all the time. There was nothing special about crucifixion. To anybody wandering by, unless they were already a disciple, Jesus would be just another unfortunate Jew. Who would the disciples interview?
The tendency is to assume that a system of belief that mutated into a world religion must have had an astounding beginning. There is a great deal of special pleading and circularity in this view. While Paul is obsessed with the significance of the crucifixion he has little if any interest in the narrative details. And the narrative details in the crucifixion accounts in the gospels are all shaped by the writers to address their own individual theological agendas. (John even changed the day. Either he deliberately changed it to make his own point or he had a separate tradition that contradicted the synoptics. You pays yer money and makes yer choice.)
Public executions are meant to remind the populace that if they get out of line, they get stepped on. Crucifixion was not going to achieve the desired effect if nobody witnessed it. Spartacus and his fellow gladiators could tell you that.
Jerusalem was not a large city by modern standards, and the place of execution was well known. We’re told there was a procession of the sentenced, who had to carry the crosspiece of the instrument of their deaths. Honestly, it wouldn’t be that hard. Just dangerous. I don’t believe any of his male followers were there, because they were running to avoid the same fate. And in fact, the earlier stories only have female followers present, watching from a discreet distance. Women were not taken seriously by either the Temple leaders of the Romans, and it’s unlikely they would even know if any of the women present were followers of Jesus. Though I suppose if they’d cared, they could have watched to see who was weeping.
The tendency of some is to assume religions have amazing origins, yes–and the tendency of others is to reflexively step on the drama, even though we know drama is occurring all around us, at all times, and we just selectively focus on the dramas that matter to us.
Do you question that the execution of Jesus mattered a great deal to people who revered and loved him? If somebody you loved was going to be publicly tortured to death, you’d just say “Well, I’ll read about it later”? Hard to do if you can’t read.
You don’t have to turn off all human emotion to study history–in point of fact, if you are bereft of empathy, you’ll never understand history at all. Psychology comes in handy as well, and come to think of it, ‘naive religious fanatic’ reeks of it–but not very good psychology.
Kudos for an original argument, though–“How would they have even known where the crucifixion was taking place? Those were very exclusive! You had to know people to get in.” Worthy of Monty Python. 😉
Stephen said
Vergari wrote
For me, it strains credulity for an entire religion to be created so utterly dependent on the crucifixion of its leader, and yet no one was a witness to this event. Are we to believe that not a single follower of Jesus witnessed the crucifixion or even failed to speak to someone who did?
But consider the logistics of the affair. A small group of people from the country in the big city flushed with visitors who had dispersed in terror because their leader had been arrested. Where would they go to witness the crucifixion? When would it take place? (I doubt the Romans posted a schedule.) And even if you were there how close could you really get? Jesus was probably one of a batch of people slated to be executed. The Romans did this all the time. There was nothing special about crucifixion. To anybody wandering by, unless they were already a disciple, Jesus would be just another unfortunate Jew. Who would the disciples interview?
Crucifixion didn’t take place in back alleys.
As godspell pointed out, they were the chief Roman weapon of terror. They were nothing if not public, open and notorious. It would require special pleading to assume a crucifixion was secret.
Radiating from your post is a condescending view of the ancients. Are we to believe that people didn’t know where crucifixions took place unless it was posted on social media? This was an utterly public event, commencing with a public flogging, followed by the condemned carry his cross to the crucifixion site, and continuing with a human being (in most case) having his appendages nailed to wood beams, before being hoisted up vertically.
As to Jesus’s followers being “a small group of people from the country,” that’s simply another presumption you couple with other presumptions.
Stephen said
But consider the logistics of the affair. A small group of people from the country in the big city flushed with visitors who had dispersed in terror because their leader had been arrested. Where would they go to witness the crucifixion? When would it take place? (I doubt the Romans posted a schedule.) And even if you were there how close could you really get? Jesus was probably one of a batch of people slated to be executed. The Romans did this all the time. There was nothing special about crucifixion. To anybody wandering by, unless they were already a disciple, Jesus would be just another unfortunate Jew. Who would the disciples interview?
The tendency is to assume that a system of belief that mutated into a world religion must have had an astounding beginning. There is a great deal of special pleading and circularity in this view. While Paul is obsessed with the significance of the crucifixion he has little if any interest in the narrative details. And the narrative details in the crucifixion accounts in the gospels are all shaped by the writers to address their own individual theological agendas. (John even changed the day. Either he deliberately changed it to make his own point or he had a separate tradition that contradicted the synoptics. You pays yer money and makes yer choice.)
Stephen, by this post, I have to ask:
Do you reject the historicity of the crucifixion?
If you don’t believe there were any witnesses who actually spoke to any disciples, how do the disciples even know Jesus was crucified at all? I assume you also reject the empty tomb.
So without any eyewitness transmission of any kind to the crucifixion and without any empty tomb, what basis is there to believe that Jesus was crucified or that he even died at all during the Passover?
Well, he can’t reject the historicity of the crucifixion, since that’s like the most important part of the scholarly consensus. It’s like the one thing everybody agrees on (except Muhammad). He got nailed to that cross but good, or possibly tied.
The problem at hand is that we want a believable version of events, and there is none. It’s unbelievable no matter how you tell it (never more unbelievable than when you try to say it’s all a myth). And so is most of human history. You think it’s improbable an itinerant Jewish preacher became the most important human who ever lived? Go back a million or two years and look at our hirsute pre-verbal ancestors–who was betting on them to take over the planet, and possibly destroy it?
You are merely choosing between rival improbabilities, and of course it matters which ones you choose, and why, but acknowledge that’s what you’re doing. Is all I ask.
I am not a mythicist. I accept that there was a historical Jesus who was most likely an apocalypticist. This interpretation makes the best sense of the traditions. Certainty is not possible but I am suspicious of the Empty Tomb stories precisely because they assume Jesus was treated in a special way. The usual fate of crucified criminals was burial in mass unmarked graves. To me the important part is not whether Mark “invented” the Empty Tomb or whether he inherited the story but the use he makes of it. When I get more time I’ll try to explain what I mean by that.
The crucifixion happened but Mark’s depiction is a literary construction not an historical account. I’ll post on that too.
Sorry gotta go.
So what’s your opinion of the execution of Socrates?
What we know about that comes entirely from two disciples of his, neither of whom was present, one of whom has Socrates expostulating calmly on philosophy while a deadly toxin ravages him from the inside. Truthfully, hemlock might have been as cruel a way of killing someone as crucifixion, though less dramatic, to be sure.
Jesus was crucified, best as we can tell, for overturning a few tables and preaching in public about events he believed would happen in the future, brought about by a divine agency no Roman believed existed. I’d say that was fairly special treatment. There is zero evidence he was any active threat to Roman rule, Bart believes he had very few supporters in Jerusalem, attracted very little attention.
We know much more about why Socrates was killed–he had educated men who temporarily overthrew Athenian Democracy and instituted a dictatorship, who had taken his anti-Democratic ideas and made them manifest, in ways he perhaps did not entirely approve. Even this comes entirely from sources sympathetic to Socrates, and antipathetic to the Athenian authorities. Who were not witnesses to the trial or their teacher’s subsequent demise.
Should we teach Plato’s dialogues as religious mythology?
Stephen said
I am not a mythicist. I accept that there was a historical Jesus who was most likely an apocalypticist. This interpretation makes the best sense of the traditions. Certainty is not possible but I am suspicious of the Empty Tomb stories precisely because they assume Jesus was treated in a special way. The usual fate of crucified criminals was burial in mass unmarked graves. To me the important part is not whether Mark “invented” the Empty Tomb or whether he inherited the story but the use he makes of it. When I get more time I’ll try to explain what I mean by that.The crucifixion happened but Mark’s depiction is a literary construction not an historical account. I’ll post on that too.
Sorry gotta go.
So I was actually asking about the crucifixion here (I took your position on the empty tomb and resurrection appearances for granted), and you basically sidestepped my question(s).
What I asked was:
If you don’t believe there were any witnesses who actually spoke to any disciples, how do the disciples even know Jesus was crucified at all? I assume you also reject the empty tomb.
So without any eyewitness transmission of any kind to the crucifixion and without any empty tomb, what basis is there to believe that Jesus was crucified or that he even died at all during the Passover?
These are fair questions. You seem to be giving lip service to the historicity of the crucifixion, while simultaneously rejecting any possible sources to the event.
On the issue of the empty tomb (since you brought it up), you say:
I am suspicious of the Empty Tomb stories precisely because they assume Jesus was treated in a special way. The usual fate of crucified criminals was burial in mass unmarked graves.
Here, you are parroting Bart’s view. But is it true?
The two best sources we have on how the body of a First Century Jew living in Judea may have been treated following crucifixion are Chapter 5 of the Fourth Volume of the Jewish War by Josephus and the Digesta. There is also substantial archaeological evidence within ossuaries dating back to the First Century. That evidence flies directly in the face of the claim that the “usual” practice in First Century Judea was that “crucified criminals w[ere] burial in mass unmarked graves.”
Over the years, Bart has dismissed this evidence, instead throwing his supporting between far weaker evidence, built on certain presumptions, such as that Jesus was executed for High Treason.
Maybe Bart is right; but I suspect he tries too hard. I will say this: if the very evidence Bart is using to support his view that Jesus would not have been buried also indicated that Jesus’s corpse disappeared from the mass grave, Bart would discount it, as very weak and unreliable.
The most prominent champion of the idea that Jesus was not buried in a tomb but left to rot is, of course, Dominic Crossan–whose ideas Stephen generally does not seem to hold in high regard. “Jesus wasn’t taken up into heaven, he was eaten by dogs.” Which to be honest, is never an idea that bothered me terribly much (I can think of worse fates for my own mortal remains), but that doesn’t mean it’s true.
The problem with Jesus having a tomb is that he had alienated both the Roman authorities and powerful Jewish authorities in Jerusalem. So to believe he was buried, when his followers had fled, and he’d left nothing behind him to pay for such an amenity, you do need someone to intercede on his behalf, such as Joseph of Arimathea. Josephus mentions no such person. No source outside the gospels does. But all four gospels do–meaning either that he existed, or that he was invented very early (well before any gospel was written) to explain how Jesus came to be entombed.
The gospel accounts of him all disagree to some extent, concurring only on his name and that he had Jesus properly entombed. That means there has to have been an earlier source, or perhaps several, that we don’t have now.
Mark says he was a member of the council in Jerusalem who had some sympathy with Jesus’ Apocalyptic ideas (perhaps because he was a believer in John the Baptist, Jesus’ former master).
Matthew says he was a wealthy follower of Jesus (Again, Matthew dislikes imputing any decent action to any Jew who hadn’t converted, and certainly does not want to believe any Jew on the council would behave this way.)
Luke agrees more or less with Mark, but doesn’t just repeat what Mark says–he indicates that Joseph disagreed with the council’s actions, which in Mark is only implied.
John echoes Matthew, but in different language–Joseph was a secret disciple of Jesus (because to openly follow him would bring about his own downfall, although surely paying for Jesus’ burial would have tipped his hand).
The Doctrine of Dissimilarity is working overtime here. But it’s very hard to believe there was no such person at all–why not just say some wealthy man buried Jesus out of sympathy? Why do they all agree on the name? Two traditions–he was a Christian and he was a devout Jew with some Apocalyptic ideas of his own–and John tries to split the difference by saying he was both.
I’m a bit skeptical of the tomb, but I agree with you–sometimes the tendency to pare away everything that seems outwardly improbable doesn’t work–the entire story is improbable, but some parts of it happened anyway. I agree with Bart that the disciples saw visions brought on by extreme mental distress–but what triggered these visions? If it was just losing a beloved leader, then why didn’t the same thing happen with other crucified would-be messiahs?
godspell, basically agree with you on all points.
I’ve posted many times that if historians applied the same type of skepticism that some textual scholars do to the (rather simple) story of a post-crucifixion story of burial in a tomb, then the entire discipline of history essentially could not exist.
There is absolutely nothing supernatural or facially unbelievable about the body of a First Century crucifixion victim in Judea being taken down from the cross and buried on Passover. Indeed, as you indicate, the four gospel writers, though they agree on the identity of the man who buried Jesus, apparently all heard slightly different details as to who and why the man did this — indicating differing sources for the story; not to mention Matthew polemic against the (apparent early) rumor that Jesus’s body had been stolen from the tomb. And yet, certain textual critics have been decades attacking the historicity of this element of the narratives of Jesus.
I agree the male disciples fled Jerusalem, but that explains why the earliest versions of the story deal with female followers of Jesus, who would be in much less danger from the authorities, and who would have certain traditional roles to fulfill with regards to a deceased loved one (Jesus encouraged his followers to think of each other as related in an even deeper sense than blood family).
The role of women in the earliest days of Christianity is difficult to overemphasize. There wouldn’t have been any Christianity without them. They, I believe, were the ones who refused to let Jesus remain dead.
Because he was possibly the only man they ever met who treated them as equals. By which I don’t mean he didn’t inherit some of the attitudes of his culture towards women. I think they just became less and less important to him as he became more and more focused on the Kingdom, where such differences would be meaningless. The gospels are full of stories where he engages with women, challenges and is challenged by them. He would have attracted strong-willed women to be his followers, and they would have been unable to accept the loss.
It’s just a feeling, but it is backed up by the information we have–we’re told they were the only witnesses to his death–we’re told they found the tomb empty, were the first to hear the message of his resurrection–if men wrote these stories, why write it that way? I believe men wrote the gospels, but where did the stories come from originally? From women. They founded what came to be called Christianity. It was the only way to keep him and his message alive. The message was greatly corrupted, of course. But the underlying ideas survived.
I feel quite certain I have never had any idea on this subject nobody has had before. Nobody can have a new idea about Jesus. Not even Steefen. 😉
Why did Jesus’ cult endure, and that of John the Baptist did not? Probably in part because Jesus was more inclusive. He reached out to women, to non-Jews, to people of all classes and occupations. He took John’s ideas and brought them to a wider audience, and that broadened the talent pool–and Jesus had an eye for talent, of that I have no doubt. So when he was gone, there were all these people prepared to do more than just wait around for him to come back. Who had ideas of their own, based on his ideas. Who found their vocation in life, and were prepared to take risks for it. They attracted other talented people in turn. And some of them were damned good writers.
It is an acknowledged historical fact that women were unusually influential in early Christianity–but both Jewish and pagan society were too patriarchal for that to last, once Christianity became a source of power. That’s another pattern we keep seeing–when something is new, women can take leadership roles in it. When it becomes established, they get pushed to the side. Hopefully that’s changing now.
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