Bart,
I recently heard a sermon based on Mark, Chap 7:
The Pharisees and some of the teachers of the law who had come from Jerusalem gathered around Jesus 2 and saw some of his disciples eating food with hands that were defiled, that is, unwashed. 3 The Pharisees and all the Jews do not eat unless they give their hands a ceremonial washing, holding to the tradition of the elders. 4 When they come from the marketplace they do not eat unless they wash. And they observe many other traditions, such as the washing of cups, pitchers and kettles. 5 So the Pharisees and teachers of the law asked Jesus, “Why don’t your disciples live according to the tradition of the elders instead of eating their food with defiled hands?” 6 He replied, “Isaiah was right when he prophesied about you hypocrites; as it is written:
“‘These people honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me. They worship me in vain; their teachings are merely human rules. You have let go of the commands of God and are holding on to human traditions.” 9 And he continued, “You have a fine way of setting aside the commands of God in order to observe] your own traditions!10 For Moses said…
This entire passage raises numerous questions: Why didn’t the disciples not wash their hands? Were they too poor to find clean water in an arid land? Or did they just have bad manners, (or rather working class manners.) Was hand washing limited to the upper classes? Or was hand washing just a ceremony having nothing to do with personal hygiene?
Then Jesus starts quoting Isaiah. How does a working class carpenter have such a knowledge of Isaiah that he can quote it from memory? Same question when he starts quoting Moses.
And who recorded this lengthy conversation? Probably not the scribes who accompanied the pharisees. Whoever recorded the conversation had to speak Aramaic and Greek, and translate between the two, and have an excellent memory, since it’s a long conversation. What are the odds of someone like this being present?
It seems to me that the author of Mark might have just made up the entire conversation. Perhaps “Mark” was a literate Greek Christian with some anti-semitic bias. Only then does the passage make sense.
In fact these problems of who recorded a given conversation plague the Bible from start to finish. Please give your opinion on this or direct me to one of your books that addresses the problem.
JRH, welcome to the forum.
Dr. Ehrman does not monitor the forum. To ask him a question, post a comment on the most recent blog post. His answers are usually very short, so you may want to ask him to add your question to his mail bag. He devotes a post on an answer in that case.
I’m not the great Dr. Ehrman, but to address a few of these points I guess:
1. Why his disciples did not wash their hands is likely, in my opinion, due to the author of Mark merely creating an event in which this happens, so that Jesus could give a lesson on this tradition, evidence of this can come from the next point.
2. A carpenter like Jesus would not have been able to read or write, Dr. Ehrman has noted this before. Around 98% of the population would have been illiterate. What is here is a case, most likely to me (though I am not an expert), of the scribe writing Mark quoting from Isaiah and placing this all under the words of Jesus, so as to make a point.
3. As you pointed out, it seems rather unlikely that a Pharisee scribe would have recorded these things, and no one following Jesus (none of his disciples in particular) would have been of this caliber.
So in conclusion, I think it entirely likely that the author of Mark made this story up.
If you would like work that Bart Ehrman has (though with extreme caution, as he does disagree with the methodology and various other things) referenced then read: The Five Gospels, and The Gospel of Jesus by the Jesus Seminar.
I think one of most important points is that the Gospels cannot be relied upon to give an accurate picture of what was going on in Judaism in the first century. The first problem is knowing who the Pharisees actually were. We have some knowledge from Josephus and rabbinic writings, but they were not a self identified group that left any written materials about themselves. They serve as a nice foil for Jesus’ criticisms of the Judaism of his time, but we don’t know enough about the Pharisees to know how much they agreed or disagreed with Jesus. There is a possibility that the historical Jesus took issue with the traditions and the oral law promoted by pious groups – as many other Jews did – but many of Jesus’ Torah interpretations actually ended up in the Mishnah. So If we think the Pharisees eventually gave rise to the rabbis, Jesus actually agrees quite a bit with the Pharisees.
In short, the story was likely made up for theological reasons.
BDEhrman
FreedomBen
evgendob
Robert
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