(27 votes, average: 4.89 out of 5)
Loading...Jesus existed. In yesterday’s post, I began to show how Jesus is the best attested Palestinian Jew of the first century if we look only at external evidence. Josephus is better attested because we have his own writings. I am also not including Paul because I’m talking only about Jews from Palestine; he was from the Diaspora.
The Gospel Sources
We have four narrative accounts of Jesus’ life and death, written by different people at different times and in different places, based on numerous sources that no longer survive. Jesus was not invented by Mark. He was also known to Matthew, Luke, and John, and to the sources which they used (Q, M, L, and the various sources of John).
All of this was within the first century.
Non-New Testament & Non-Gospel Sources – We Have Many!
This is not to mention sources from outside the New Testament that know that Jesus was a historical figure – for example, 1 Clement and the documents that make up the Didache. Or — need I say it? – every other author of the New Testament (there are sixteen NT authors altogether, so twelve who did not write Gospels), none of whom knew any of the Gospels (except for the author of 1, 2, and 3 John who may have known the fourth Gospel).
By my count that’s something like twenty-five authors, not counting the authors of the sources (another six or seven) on which the Gospels were based (and the sources on which the book of Acts was based, which were different again).
How We Know Jesus Wasn’t “Made Up”
If there had been one source of Christian antiquity that mentioned a historical Jesus (e.g., Mark) and everyone else was based on what that source had to say, then possibly you could argue that this person made Jesus up and everyone else simply took the ball and ran with it.
But …
But how can you make a convincing case if we’re talking about thirty or so independent sources that know there was a man Jesus? These sources are not all living in the same village someplace so they are egging each other on. They didn’t compare notes. They are independent of one another and are scattered throughout the Mediterranean. They each have heard about the man Jesus from their own sources of information, which heard about him from their own sources of information.
That must mean that there were hundreds of people at the least who were talking about the man Jesus. One of them was the apostle Paul, who was talking about Jesus by at least the year 32 CE, that is, two years after the date of Jesus’ death.
Paul, as I will point out, actually knew, personally, Jesus’ own brother James and his closest disciples Peter and John. That’s more or less a death knell for the Mythicist position, as some of them admit. I’ll get to Paul in a subsequent note. Here I am simply stressing that the Gospel traditions themselves provide clear evidence that Jesus was being talked about just a few years after his life in Roman Palestine.
Linguistic Evidence
There is more. Good evidence shows that some of the Gospel accounts clearly go back to traditions about Jesus in circulation, originally, in Aramaic, the language of Roman Palestine, where Jesus himself lived. One piece of evidence is that Aramaic words occasionally appear in stories about Jesus, often at the climactic moment. This happens in a variety of stories from a variety of sources. For example, In Mark 5 Jesus raises the daughter of a man named Jairus from the dead. When he comes into her room and raises her, he says to her “Talitha cumi.” The author of Mark translates for us: “Little girl, arise.”
Why would the author leave the key sentence in Aramaic? If you have ever had bi-lingual friends who assume you too know their second language and have heard them tell a joke about something that happened in the other country, you will know that sometimes they give the punch line in the other language, even though the lead up to the line is in English. That’s because often the punch line packs a better punch than the original.
I had a professor who used to do that with us as graduate students about something that had happened to him in Germany. It used to drive us nuts because even though we were able to read German, we weren’t fluent, and half the time we didn’t know what he was saying. We laughed heartily, though, since there’s no way on God’s green earth we were going to let on that we couldn’t follow German…..
This story about Jairus’s daughter, then, was originally told in Aramaic and was later translated into Greek, with the key line left in the original. So too with several stories in a completely different Gospel, the Gospel of John. It happens three times in just 1:35-42. This is a story that circulated in Aramaic-speaking Palestine, the homeland of Jesus and his disciples.
Traditions Stemming from Aramaic
The other reason for knowing that a tradition was originally in Aramaic is because it makes better sense when translated *back* into Aramaic than it does in Greek.
My favorite illustration of this is Jesus’ famous saying: “Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath; therefore the Son of Man is the Lord of the Sabbath” (Mark 2:27-28). The context: Jesus’ disciples have been eating grain from a field on the Sabbath day; the Pharisees object, and Jesus explains that it is permissible to meet human needs on the Sabbath. Then his clever one-liner.
But the one-liner doesn’t make sense. Why would the Son of Man (Jesus) be Lord of the Sabbath BECAUSE Sabbath was made for humans, not the other way around? In other words, when he says “therefore” the Son of Man is the Lord of the Sabbath, what is the “therefore” there for?
The logic doesn’t work in Greek (or English). But it would work in Aramaic. That’s because in Aramaic the word for “man” and the word for “son of man” are the same word: “Bar enash” (could be translated either way). And so what Jesus said was: “Sabbath was made for bar enash, not bar enash for the Sabbath; therefore bar enash is lord of the Sabbath.” Now it makes sense. The saying was originally transmitted in Aramaic, and when translated into Greek, the translator decided to make the final statement about Jesus, not about humans.
For more about Jesus’ teaching in Aramaic, please see this article.
Reality Check: Jesus Existed
Christianity did not make a big impact on Aramaic-speaking Palestine. The vast majority of Jews in the homeland did not accept Christianity or want anything to do with it. There were not thousands of storytellers there passing on Christian traditions. There were some, of course, especially in Jerusalem.
But the fact that these stories based on Aramaic are scattered throughout our sources suggests that they were in circulation relatively early in the tradition. Most of these are thought to go back to the early decade or two (probably the earliest decade) of transmission. You cannot argue that Jesus was made up by some Greek-speaking Christian after Paul’s letters, for example.
Short story: we are not talking about a Bart Ehrman Jesus figure invented in the year 60. There was widespread information about Jesus from the years after his death. Otherwise, you can’t explain all the literary evidence (dozens of independent sources), some of it based on Aramaic traditions of Jesus’ homeland. But there’s more evidence that clinches the case. I’ll be talking about that in later posts.
There’s a corollary to bilingual populations telling jokes in both languages. My Norwegian grandparents, my German friends, and even my Mexican neighbors like to tell stories but interrupt the flow with curse words in English. Sometimes it’s humorous, and there is a real art to doing it well, but behind it is a serious blending of two cultures.
Interesting!
“…on God’s green earth…” Delightful the way you used that there.
I was hoping someone would like that.
“I’m not including Paul because I’m talking only about Jews from Palestine; he was from the Diaspora”
Ah…fair point. I guess Philo would also fall into this category, if we wanted to get technical.
For me there’s one theme throughout the NT that absolutely destroys any hypothesis for a mythical Jesus, and it is, ironically, the very notion of the resurrection itself. Now, I don’t believe the resurrection happened. I think Jesus died, stayed dead and eventually returned his atoms to the earth as every living thing has done throughout the history of life on earth. However, I do think that his followers believed Jesus had resurrected, and that’s primarily because the actual doctrine of the Mass Resurrection of the Dead was a part of contemporaneous Jewish beliefs, not pagan! It’s not like it never occured to any Jew up until Jesus that the dead could be resurrected. Within the Gospels it states that the Pharisees themselves held this view — moreover, Jesus has a contentious debate with Sadducees over the doctrine of the resurrection of the dead *as if this was a common belief amongst Jews at the time*! So, no, the idea that Jesus could rise from the dead was not even remotely seen as far-fetched to contemporaneous Jews. The problem that other resurrection-believing Jews — such as the Pharisees — had was with the idea that Jesus was the “first fruits” of the Mass Resurrection of the Saints that heralded the Messianic Age. In other words, the early church was going around preaching that Jesus’ death and resurrection was evidence of the impending Mass Resurrection before Judgment Day. But how could Jesus’ resurrection be evidence of that sort *unless Jesus was, himself, a flesh and blood human being who had physically died and resurrected*? That is to say, the very message the early church was trying to spread was that an actual flesh and blood human being Jesus was physically killed and came back to life, just as will happen to ALL the dead with the coming Mass Resurrection before the Day of Judgment. This central core of the early Christian mission completely falls apart if Jesus was never an actual human being who lived on earth who no one had ever seen in the flesh! Ergo, Jesus must have been, at some point, an actual flesh and blood human being who walked the earth.
Yup, I definitely would include Philo as better attested.
Interesting point.
Very good point!
Even this, without what I know are your two main points (one of them mentioned briefly here), should be enough to convince anyone who doesn’t have a totally closed mind. I’m wondering: how much were you able to fit into a 30-minute presentation?
Not as much as I liked! But I made my main points at least.
Bart, the dying words of Jesus (Mark 15:34 and Matt 27:46) ask God why has he been abandoned. Both Gospels include Aramaic at this particular point. Is it possible that the historical Jesus (as a Jew) was familiar with Psalm 22:1 (My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?) and spoke these words in anguish from his memory of scripture — or was it these two Gospel writers who attributed the words to him. … I kind of prefer the ending myself.
I think it is very highly unlikely that anyone was standing at the foot of Jesus’ cross to record what they heard him say. The Gospel writers have put Ps. 22:1 on his lips, in my view.
Wow. For some reason, I’d never thought of that!
One question I always had: The sentence is recorded in the gospel in Aramaic. But the Psalm, I assume, was in Hebrew. Does it read the same in both languages, since they are similar? Or did the Gospel author create an Aramaic “translation”?
I think the idea is that since he spoke Aramaic, this is something that he said, reflecting Psalm 22:1, rather than quoting the verse per se.
But then you are begging the question to end all questions–why would they do that?
Everything else he’s recorded as saying, sure.
But that? I hold with the school that says if he wasn’t known to have spoken those words, they wouldn’t be in there–and in fact they aren’t in the two later gospels, because they conflict with the image of Jesus Luke and John wanted to convey.
Far as I can see, we don’t know enough about what went on at crucifixions to know what’s likely or not. Obviously people attended them–public executions are public for a reason. And morbid curiosity was as much of a thing then as it is now. Not hard at all to believe some of Jesus’ followers were present. Granting that his voice couldn’t have carried far, and he couldn’t have said much at all once the rigors of crucifixion had set in, he could have spoken. And people who loved him would have tried to be as near to him as possible, to render what comfort they could, and to hear his last words.
You know, there are people in this world–right now–who have been voluntarily crucified as an act of religious devotion. There’s a man in the Philippines who has done it over 20 times (he’s going for 27). It’s not like we have to speculate as to whether a crucified man could speak. You could ask one.
They would do that to show that he was fulfilling Scripture, as they often tried to do.
It was written in the scriptures that the Messiah would be forsaken by God?
Jesus may have been consciously quoting scripture, but in a despairing anguished way. Or perhaps his words were not directly quoting that passage (how many people in how many cultures have said words to that effect across the millennia?), and that was retroactively used as a way of explaining his lament.
But if he hadn’t said something along those lines, it wouldn’t be in there. Because it tells us this is a man–not a god, not even a man like a god. Just a frightened sorrowful confused human being, who believed something miraculous would happen if he put himself in this position–and it’s not happening. And God isn’t speaking to him now (as he probably did believe God had done in the past). His inspiration has deserted him. And that’s as good a term for God as I know of.
He was known to have said these words, and they could not blot them out–quite possibly the last words he ever spoke. But neither could they deal with the full import of those words, dealing with the shock of his execution, and the visions of a resurrected Jesus that came on its heels. So they tried to frame it in a different context. As Christian clerics later tried to reframe what Josephus said about Jesus (leading to accusations of them having made it up entirely), but what Josephus wrote was still true.
No, it’s definitely not written that way. The point is that Jesus by quoting Scripture is being shown as a fulfillment of them. He was anticipate. Christians *DID* think the Scripture predicted a suffering messiah.
I’m not convinced the ‘Suffering Servant’ is the Messiah, if that’s what you’re referring to–it may well be what Jesus saw himself as fulfilling. But suffering is one thing. Doubting is another. Jesus is never depicted as having any doubts at all of his mission, until the very end. The gospels are all quite consistent about this. He’s shown as doubting his mission when he asks God to let the cup pass him by, and he doubts when he finds his disciples sleeping, and that final cry of anguish is the supreme expression of doubt.
The other things attributed to him fall nicely into the Suffering Servant meme, but not this. This is a man questioning his entire life, everything he ever believed. Christian theologians have spent centuries trying to explain it away, and they’ve all failed.
With great respect, I must say that you’re failing in the same way, albeit with a different slant.
Bart, how do theologians explain the Cry of Dereliction in relation to Jesus’ divinity?
They typically say that since Jesus was fully human (as well as fully divine) he necessarily had human emotions adn responsees; otherwise his divinity would be overriding his humanity and he wouldn’t then be *fully* human.
The fully human/fully divine concept would be very confusing for Jews and Muslims to understand. I find it very confusing and contradictory!
Dr. Ehrman, from what I understand you only agreed to do the debate with Price if the organizers donated a specific amount of money to your charities. Was that the case? And if so, how much did they raise?
No, that’s not quite the way it happened. When I explained my speaking fee to them I told them I kept it at that level because my fees went to charity. So they just paid me my normal fee — they didn’t raise any money for charity. Not their interest!
The independent sources bit went over my head a little. The Aramaic bit I got. You said all the Gospels have independent source material. Do they all have independent Aramaic source material?
Mark and John do, at least.
Keep rockin in the free world Bart!
When you say “none of whom knew any of the Gospels”—is that primarily due to the fact that they don’t mention the gospels or is it due to the fact (like with Paul) that they wrote before the gospels were written? In other words, is it mostly a content issue or a dating issue?
Maybe I should say “none of whom shows any evidence of knowing the Gospels” or “none of whom bases their views on the Gospels.”
Are there any individual pieces of evidence that mythicists make, that you find compelling?
And you may not want to answer this one…do you think very highly of Richard Carrier as a historian? I ask because I’ve listened to his arguments against the resurrection, and they sound pretty compelling, but I realize my limitation as a non historian for evaluating such evidence.
No, I don’t find any of their evidence compelling.
I think for Richard Carrier to establish a reputation as a good historian would require him to produce scholarship in the field of ancient history, publishing books with major university presses and articles in major refereed journals, instead of devoting himself entirely to showing that Jesus never existed.
I know better, but I read Carrier’s review of the debate. It’s like a bad car wreck when you know you should turn away but look anyway. Of course, it’s as long as a novel. He went point by painstaking point.
I commented a couple of days ago that mythicists, in general, are fallacy hunters. When I read Carrier’s review, my opinion was validated even more. He pointed out at least a dozen or more fallacies which I think is in and of itself fallacious thinking. I have a pet peeve about pointing out fallacy after fallacy and not because things like making a circular argument shouldn’t be brought to attention, but when every thought that comes into someone’s head is accused of being a fallacy, it’s a problem. Identifying a fallacy (ex. non sequitur) in conversation doesn’t make the discussion invalid. All it means is that someone placed a label on a person’s thinking, but that doesn’t mean the label is correct or a trump card that ends the conversation. Some people (Carrier) are so hung up on identifying these fallacy labels that they can’t distinguish fact from fiction or right from wrong.
On to another topic, Carrier and Matt Dillahunty have both expressed their displeasure with needing the proper credentials in order for mythicism to be taken seriously. They’re not the only ones who were annoyed by what was said in the debate. Carrier pointed out that at least one of his publications was peer-reviewed and it seems to drive him bananas that you won’t acknowledge it. That part is funny, but still. What I got out of what you were saying is different from what some have taken it to mean. What I heard was that having the appropriate credentials means educational rigor, thorough research, vetted ideas, and peer reviewed work. This is what Carrier (and some others) heard:
“But Ehrman’s answer to one question was disturbing: when asked what evidence it would take to change his mind, Ehrman responded by not mentioning any arguments or any evidence. He responded essentially by saying that when someone prestigious enough, who has a fancy enough university appointment, tells him it’s plausible, then he’ll change his mind. When pressed after the debate on this, he doubled down. He would never state any evidence, any reasoning, that would ever change his mind. Only the prestige of whose opinion it is would ever persuade him.
Seriously?
Ehrman basically thus said that his field does not do evidence-based reasoning. It only does prestige. Basically, if you don’t teach at Oxford, you can go fuck yourself.”
Could you possibly address this further on the blog? Also, not everything he wrote was negative, but the connotation wasn’t helpful. For what’s it’s worth, I don’t think it’s personal. It’s just how he is.
Yes, Carrier appears to have misunderstood what I was saying about credentials. I’ll address the issue at length in a post. (But does he really want to brag because he has a peer-reviewed article? Isn’t publishing peer-reviewed articles simply what scholars *do*??)
I’ve practiced martial arts for years, and there has always been an observation that is bandied about in the MA community revolving around “high kicks” to the head of an opponent. The observation is that when someone says, “I don’t think ‘high kicks’ would be useful in a real fight,” what they really mean is, “I can’t kick that high.”
I’m sure this thought passes through your mind every single time you hear this argument, Dr. Ehrman, but isn’t it funny (actually sad) that the only people who rail against the need for objective professional qualifications are those who don’t possess them? You never hear someone who has the educational training and professional experience in any professional field saying, “You know, you really don’t need all this experience and training. Anyone could do what I do.”
Ha! Good point.
Mythicists tend to be nit-pickers, and Carrier is the king of nit-pickers. I find it a shame to have to state the obvious, but it appears my hand is forced.
1) Pointing out fallacies in your opponent’s argument can be worthwhile, but it’s important to note that just because your opponent has some fallacies to nit-pick doesn’t mean your opponent is factually wrong. It’s actually possible for an argument to be riddled with fallacies and still be factually correct, as well as it is possible to be factually wrong and be totally airtight and completely free from fallacies. In other words, attacking fallacies is merely a method of exposing the truth, not establishing it.
2) It’s totally possible that a scholar can get his or her work peer-reviewed and accepted into respected journals — and that research is still wrong! Counterfactual conclusions are published in academic journals all the time. That’s why it’s dangerous to merely accept a bit of research simply because it’s been peer-reviewed and published. The true test of whether a bit of research is on to something is if a flood of corraborating research follows in its wake. (In the scientific fields this includes replicated experiments that duplicate the original results and/or additional models that confirm those results.) One test that is often used to determine if a study is on the right track is to see how often that study gets cited. If you go to a journal database, such as JSTOR, they will often allow you to see how many times an article has been cited in other studies. The more an article is cited, the more likely it is that the researcher was on to something worth citing, which strongly suggests that other academics are convinced by it. Meanwhile, those papers that sit languidly in the database, never being read or cited, are much less likely to have uncovered something significant, much less true. Carrier’s work falls within the latter category.
3) It’s sad but true that to be taken seriously in academia it helps to be credentialed. It’s simply human nature to take people more seriously when they have initials after their names. That doesn’t mean that an amateur or outsider can’t contribute to a specific discipline. For example, while Albert Schweitzer had a degree in theology, he wasn’t a religious historican by profession, but was, instead, a physician and musician by profession; however, Schweitzer still managed to contribute much to the research into the historical Jesus (as even Bart himself says he was heavily influenced by Schweitzer’s work), while being effectively an outsider to academia. Meanwhile, there are plenty of “outsiders” who are hacks and conspiracy theorists who have no business contributing to a field of study. In other words, it’s a mixed bag. Sometimes you get an Albert Schweitzer. Sometimes you get a David Fitzgerald. (For the record, I would like to think that I, myself personally, am somewhere within the Schweitzer mold, but I’m well aware that I might be more like a David Fitzgerald. When you’re outside academia it’s hard to get a sense of how seriously people take your ideas.)
Talmoore,
I completely agree with all 3 points. As for credentials, I need to have trust in the person sharing knowledge and information, especially when it comes to biblical topics. I think it’s natural to gravitate toward someone who has a PhD because I know that means the person has taken the time to engage in a higher level of learning.
That being said, I’ve known some pretty dumb people with PhDs. And I’ve known some very intelligent amateurs. I’ll read pretty much anything recommended to me if its a topic of interest, but I go in knowing full well that if it’s something written by a non-expert, I will take that into consideration while reading it.
That probably wasn’t clear! I don’t seek out work by non-experts, but if someone feels a book or article or blog post is worth reading and recommends it to me, I’ll read it. There’s a few on here that will refer to something they’ve written, and if there’s a link, I’ll read it. I usually don’t comment, but I’ll read it.
In a lecture about his book “On the Historicity of Jesus” he said words for the effect that it was published by an “academic” publisher (or “major”, I don’t remember), Sheffield Phoenix Press, and that the book was “peer-reviewed”. Is this claim legit? I don’t know anything about the reputation of this publisher, and I don’t know how strictly he used the term peer-reviewed.
Yes, I think it’s a regular academic press.
Always elucidatingly awesome!
Bart, you said that the majority of scholars in your field are Christians and that you considered yourself to be a liberal Christian for many years while you were also a scholar. How ridiculous is it to maintain faith in a somewhat orthodox version of Christianity while also being a scholar – in comparison to Robert M. Price’s faith in mythicism? What is the probability that God resurrected the body of Jesus and took Him to heaven in comparison to the probability that whatever Robert M. Price claims is true?
When you were a Christian, were you fooling yourself or simply in an intermediate state in your journey to atheism? Sometimes I would like to be a Christian again, but I don’t know how an unbiased person can believe those things.
My view is that scholars can have a large range of theological views, that do not necessarily have to affect the products of their scholarship. I would say that a resurrection is not within the realm of the humanly possible; Price’s view is simply massively improbable.
Dr Ehrman,
There was a time, many years ago, that I believed in some of the mythicist’s points of view. Thanks to you, and all you’ve written, I no longer do. However, it must be difficult going into these types of debates knowing that if Robert Price is actually right, your entire career would be pointless and irrelevant. I certainly don’t believe this, but it must have crossed your mind before?
ha! Never. In part because my career would still be completely intact. I think I’ll explain in a readers’ mailbag.
In fairness to Carrier, he does have other work that is peer reviewed and not devoted to disproving the existence of Jesus (http://independent.academia.edu/RichardCarrier). He just came out with a small book, the first in of a two-part series on science education in the early roman empire (the second is to be focused on scientists in the early roman era). His review of the debate (http://www.richardcarrier.info/archives/11435) is that you won it hands down, though he credits that to Price’s poor performance as a debater. He also blasts some strange arguments that Price has, but he, Carrier, does not hold (i.e. all of Paul is forged and that no NT gospels were written before the 2nd century). Carrier explicitly states that he has escaped the academic tenure system prison though he agrees that peer-reviewed scholarship is required to advance historical knowledge. What would be useful for any fence-sitting mysticist/historicist layman type like myself would be for you to respond to Carrier’s review of the debate in which he makes arguments that he wished Price would have made.
I understand and agree with your response to Zindler at the debate that you didn’t want to undertake an endless go around with all manner of hacks by replying to his tome, but Carrier’s principal work (minus the Bayesian terminology) does seem to meet the bar as at least credible scholarship. Even Carrier states that his arguments in On the Historicity of Jesus don’t require you to agree with him or even understand his application of Bayesian methods; they can be skipped altogether and his mythicist position is still fully presented.
Thanks, that’s helpful. I hope he can make a solid career of the rigorous historical work.
“Carrier explicitly states that he has escaped the academic tenure system prison”
That’s a typical Carrier spin on the fact that he failed to secure an academic job, after years of trying. So it’s kind of cute that he characterises it as him “escaping a prision”. It’s more like there was an exclusive club that didn’t want him to join despite repeated applications.
“What would be useful for any fence-sitting mysticist/historicist layman type like myself would be for you to respond to Carrier’s review of the debate”
If Carrier hadn’t repeatedly proven himself a fairly obnoxious human being, I’m sure Ehrman might bother. But he has noted his previous highly unpleasant exchanges with Carrier and why he doesn’t want to bother with such a person.
Yup, classic case of sour grapes.
Great post!
Hello. Thanks for posting. It’s a very cogent explanation of the four-document hypothesis (positing Luke & Matthew’s independent use of Mark, as well as Q, M & L). I imagine you would assign this theory a high level of probability (i.e. 9/10 or 90% likely to be true). Perhaps even higher? Conversely, how would you estimate the plausibility of the Farrer Theory (granting that Luke was aware of Matthew)? Would you say it has at least a 5% likelihood of being true, or maybe less? Have you, by chance, ever read or commented on Mark Goodacre’s “The Case Against Q”; or could you point me in the direction of a good refutation of his thesis? Thank you.
Yes, I’ve read it indeed. I don’t know of refutations. I myself thought it was the very best case anyone could make against Q, but I simply didn’t find it convincing. The so-called “minor agreements,” in my opinion, can be explained almost in every case in other ways (e.g., the accidental agreement in making a change of Mark’s account)
Thanks for clarifying. Correct me if I’m wrong, but it seems like you may be more open minded to Q skepticism than you are towards mythicism. I don’t imagine you would put Q skeptics, like Mark Goodacre & Michael Goulder, in the same category as crank mythicists. So you may agree that the existence of Q is not as well established (with near certainty) as that of a historical Jesus. But if one grants that Luke may have been aware of Matthew, and if there are no compelling reasons why he couldn’t have been, there doesn’t seem to be the need for a Q source (or M & L) to explain the synoptic problem. Conversely, if one assumes that Luke could not possibly have been aware of Matthew, then there must necessarily have been a source like Q. And if Luke’s “minor agreements” with Matthew are best explained (“almost in every case”) by Luke’s accidental agreement in making changes to Mark; then the best arguments against the Farrer theory (to date) would seem to be an “appeal to possibility” and a (somewhat circular) “consensus fallacy” (argumentum ad populum). Since the assumption, that there are indeed multiple, independent attestations to Jesus’ life in hypothetical source texts, seems to be such a corner stone in historical Jesus studies, it should be incumbent on scholars to flesh out better arguments in defense of Q, L & M; especially if their existence is just assumed or posited as a universal consensus beyond a reasonable doubt.
Yes, I’m absolutely more open to the idea that Q did not exist. There is simply not the kind of evidence for Q that there is for a historical Jesus.
Hello Bart,
I understand you don’t wanna hear much about Richard Carrier and I’m sure others also have submitted this to you, but he wrote a detailed analyses of your debate with Price: http://www.richardcarrier.info/archives/11435
Most people would agree with me that debate between you and Carrier would be far more interesting. He’s incredibly smart and, although not exactly a nice guy, it would be fantastic to see you debate him! We can only hope that happens.
Thanks. I’m afraid his comments reinforce my view that he is not a generous scholar. To say that I started out the debate to expose Bob Price as a Trump supporter is completely ridiculous. I was astonished to learn that he was. (I had never met Bob before, or had a conversation with him, before this debate.) My reason for asking the question is that I assumed a large part of the audience was. How wrong! In any event, I have no interest in spending my time debating mythicists. There are so many other interesting things to be thinking and writing and talking about!!
You mean, you expected many of the group to be Trump supporters? And they weren’t?
Yup. Yup.
Strong and objective information. In my opinion this is exactly why you are one of the best in the field!
I was particularly interested in what you said about the Aramaic term for Son of Man–I always wondered why Jesus referred to himself that way. I looked it up (can’t ask you to explain everything), and it’s fascinating–the very last thing Jesus was trying to do was make himself a God. Like all true mystics, no one was more aware than he of his own human weaknesses. The only way to exalt yourself is to humble yourself. It’s so obvious.
So why do so many people miss it?
Thank you Dr. Ehrman for explaining that Jesus’s disciples didn’t leave records because they were illiterate. Is there any indication that Jesus too was illiterate? He, too, left no writings.
There’s nothing substantial to suggest he could write. Whether he could read or not is a fairly open question. (He reads in only one passage of the NT: Luke 4)
Wow, I didn’t realize that we had so many independent sources for the existence of Jesus. Do you think it made a difference for the mythicists to meet you in person and see for themselves that you actually do know what you’re talking about?
I spoke briefly with Dr. Price about the Markan fragment and asked him if its dating would make any difference in his viewpoint if it is found to be from the first century. He basically didn’t believe paleography could tell us much about its dating. So then I asked him about the reliance of carbon dating, and that was a *no* as well.
I’m not sure!
On the Mark fragment: it sounds like he’s saying that he won’t change his mind even if there is absolutely disconfirming evidence!
Are you familiar with the literature on conspiracy theories, denialism, and pseudoscience? Mythicism strikes me as being part of that “genre”.
Yup, I’ve thought so sometimes too.
Illustrating your point on bi-lingual German jokes, here is one I’m familiar with:
A guy is drinking a beer in a bar. He’s only half finished with his beer and needs to go to the bathroom but doesn’t want someone to take or drink his beer while he is away. He decides to put a note next to it that says “Ich habe darin gespukt” (I spit in this). He comes back out to return to his seat. His beer is still there and so is the note but someone has written underneath his message, “Mich auch”. (Me too!).
ha!! That’s a good one!
Prof. Ehrman,
can you explain the historical relationship between Aramaic and Hebrew? More specifically, why did Jews in Palestine in Jesus’ time speak Aramaic, instead of Hebrew, the language of their scripture? When Hebrew scripture was read in synagogues at that time, did the people understand what they heard? And why are Jews in Israel today speak Hebrew instead or Aramaic? Thank you.
Aramaic was the language of Persia, which is why it became the language of Palestine. It like Hebrew is a Semitic language. For a pretty good introduction to basic information about it, Wikepedia’s not bad: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aramaic_language
Since I know Hebrew (being Israeli) as well as studied Aramaic, I can tell you that Hebrew and Aramaic are pretty similar languages — both being what linguists call Northwest Semitic languages. The comparison I often give is that of Spanish and Portuguese (each being neighboring Romance languages). While Spanish and Portuguese are not, technically, mutually intelligible, if you were to put a Spanish speaker and a Portuguese speaker into a room together, they could probably work out the gist of what the other is saying. Also, if you already know Spanish, it makes it a helluva lot easier to learn Portuguese and vice verse. Same goes for Hebrew and Aramaic. When you hear academics talking about how Jesus and his friends “only” spoke Aramaic, it may give you the impression that the Hebrew and Aramaic are as different as French and Chinese, but that’s not the case at all. (When I studied Aramaic, it was more like learning a different dialect of Hebrew. The alphabets are exactly the same [ignoring for the moment the Syriac script]. Around 95% of the shoreshim, the “roots” that the lexicon is constructed from, are very much similar. Most of the binyanim, the various verbal aspects, are similar. It was very, very familiar territory.)
Anyway, it’s not even remotely a stretch to think that 1st century Galilean Jews who spoke Aramaic as a vernacular could also be familiar with Hebrew. I can’t imagine that 95% of Galileans could hold a conversation in Hebrew, but if they heard Hebrew Bible passages and or overheard a conversation in Hebrew, they might get a sense of the meaning. It’s not like if they were listening to Swahili or something.
I’ve read somewhere that the story of Jairus’s daughter in Mark and Tabitha in Acts are from a common source, with the changing of one consonant in the punchline. Do you think that is plausible? If so, how would one decide which is the older story? Was a Peter miracle turned into a Jesus miracle or vice versa?
I think the story of Jairus’s daughter must be the older. The Aramaic “Talitha cumi” got jumbled in transmission into “Tabitha arise”
your thoughts on this :
Beside the hoo-haa, there really isn’t that much Aramaic influence. What there is I’ve pointed out has problems and errors. Consider “Boanerges”: the diphthong “oa” simply can’t represent the schwa in b’nai (sons). “Talitha Koum” gets translated “little girl, I say to you, arise” though there is no equivalent to “I say to you” in the source. A writer with knowledge of Aramaic would know that. And why is it “ephphatha” (“be opened”) and not ethphatha, which would represent the imperative (“ethpaal”) form of the verb? I’d say the tendentious desire to reify the content of the text spurs commentators to find Aramaisms, given the fact that the narrative has a Judean context and a strong Jewish religious influence. Is the Aramaic content in Mark much more than abracadabara for magicians?
end quote
I’d say the words spoken on the cross “Eloi eloi lama sabachthani” are not abracadabra type words.
You say that Paul was talking about Jesus at least by 32 CE. Since many credentialed commentators state that Jesus was crucified between 33 and 36 CE, are you really dating Paul, or suggesting that Paul’s activities began about 2 years after Jesus’ death?
What I’m saying is that Paul converted a couple of years after Jesus’ death whenever that was. I don’t know of anyone who dates his death after 33, but I haven’t looked much into it.
To Tim: Yes, Carrier may very well have academy envy and he is obviously very obnoxious from his keyboard command post, though Dr. Ehrman did say he was civil at the event. So I am asking Dr. E to rise above the ad hominem from Carrier to take on the best arguments against historicity (and not necessarily does it have to be done on stage). Perhaps responding to other legitimate scholars who are “historicity agnostics” like T.L.Thompson or Thomas Bodie or Hector Avalos would suffice. I don’t think real doctors or scientists should waste their time responding to every nut job HIV/AIDS or climate change denialist or vaccine autism conspiracy monger there is out there, but when someone like a NAS member scientist such as Peter Duesberg goes off the rails and pops up supporting the “crank” stuff, it’s important for the academy to respond to the credentialed apostate expert who presents more enticing, more plausible sound bytes that are dangerously misguiding. Take a look at Jerry Coyne’s blog where many not stupid, but not expert historians, have commented supporting Carrier’s position: https://whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com/2016/10/29/matt-dillahunty-on-mythicism/#comments
I have responded to Carrier before and don’t feel any compulsion to answer him point-by-point so that he would then respond with even lengthier replies point-by-point anticipating me to answer those again point-by-point so that he could respond yet furhter…. and so on! But if anyone has a particular argument that they would like me to respond to, I’d be happy to hear it summarized.
Thanks, Dr. Ehrman. I don’t want to waste your time either in what undoubtedly would be a frustrating and disagreeable task for you (endless go-arounds with Carrier). Two arguments Carrier makes that are a reply to your debate presentation that I personally consider his best arguments against your presentation and the most doubt creating on the historicity of Jesus are centered on Paul’s statement that he met the biological brother of Jesus and the use of Aramaic sources by Mark. I recall somewhere that you made a statement along the lines that if for no other reason (and you have other reasons, I know), atheists upholding a mythicist position should lose it, is the statement by Paul that he met the brother of Jesus. That’s it, he existed (I agree, of course). Likewise, I thought your point about Aramaic sources and the story of Jairus and daughter was a nice piece of corroborating evidence of a flesh-and-blood Jesus in the early first century.
On Paul meeting James, Carrier disputes biological affiliation: “Paul actually says Christians become “brethren” by becoming upon baptism the literal sons of God—by adoption, just like Jesus (Romans 8:15-17). The only difference between baptized Christians and Jesus is that Jesus was first, hence Jesus was “the firstborn of many brethren” (Romans 8:29). So Paul clearly says all baptized Christians are the brothers of Jesus. Paul never says there is any other kind of way to be his brother. It never occurs to him that he has to distinguish between brothers of the Lord by baptism, and brothers of the Lord by birth. Thus, when he just says “brothers of the Lord” without distinction, it does not appear Paul means anything other than the only other kind of brother of the Lord he ever mentions: baptized Christians. If he meant something else, he’d have to make clear he means some other kind of brother. Ehrman is right, though, that when Paul uses the full phrase “brother of the Lord,” he is doing so to “contrast” one group with another. Grammatically, it has already been shown in the peer reviewed literature that in Galatians 1:18-19, Paul is saying the James there referenced was not an apostle (OHJ, pp. 589-90). Thus, he is contrasting apostolic and non-apostolic Christians: he is saying the James there is merely a baptized Christian, albeit still an initiated member of the sect, but not an apostle. Likewise in 1 Corinthians 9, Paul is saying that even if mere baptized Christians—in other words, even rank and file members on church business—get their wives fed on the church dime, why shouldn’t Paul, who was an actual apostle? Even his co-apostle Cephas, Paul says, was getting that benefit, as were apostles generally.Grammatically these readings are just as likely as the alternative Ehrman wants to be true. And contextually, Ehrman’s reading requires Paul to have inexplicably not made the required distinction between what kind of brothers he means; evidently, Paul only knows of one kind, and the only kind we can see from his letters that he knows about, is fictive. So we cannot argue from these passages that Paul is attesting to biological kin of Jesus. Even if he is, we can’t tell.”
On the use of Aramaic in the raising of Jairus’ daughter, Carrier suggests that Mark is using a targum: “Mark does the same thing (puts a sentence in Jesus’ mouth in Aramaic, then translates into the Greek) in the story of the raising of Jairus’ daughter. Apart from the fact that we should sooner suspect Mark drew this line from a targum (and we just don’t have that targum to confirm), the bigger problem is that everyone knows the Jairus story is fabricated. It didn’t happen. It’s a literary creation, a reworking of an Old Testament story (a targum of which may have contained, for all we know, the very line quoted by Jesus), with obvious puns, and a symbolic and allegorical purpose (see Randel Helms, Gospel Fictions, pp. 65-67). It’s possible it was invented in Aramaic, but why would that matter? How does a story being fabricated in Aramaic prove the characters in that story existed? Jairus (whose name means “he will awaken [or be enlightened]” ; get it?) is most likely a fictional character. So why couldn’t Jesus (whose name means “savior” [lit. “God saves”]; get it?) be just as fictional? But even the notion that the story originated in Aramaic cannot be proved. If Mark is an Aramaic speaker, then he may simply be translating his own Aramaic thoughts and ideas into Greek. And even if he is using an Aramaic source (and that source is not simply a targum), then that source made this up. And made up stories cannot be used as evidence for the existence of the characters in them.”
Thanks again, Dr. Ehrman for the debate and your recent positings about it.
Yes, I’m afraid Carrier is precisely wrong. He really is not reading Galatians 1:18-19 very carefully. I’ll explain why in a later post.
Interesting comment pueblo2. I have read numerous comments from people who seem to think it’s impossible to get around Carrier’s argument, and I honestly don’t get that. I’ve found a few things on my own, and if any of it is wrong, then, someone please correct me.
“Grammatically, it has already been shown in the peer reviewed literature that in Galatians 1:18-19, Paul is saying the James there referenced was not an apostle (OHJ, pp. 589-90).”
First thing I noticed is that Carrier does not write out the actual scripture of Galatians 1:18-19–Then after three years, I went up to Jerusalem to get acquainted with Peter and stayed with him fifteen days. I saw none of the other apostles–only James, the Lord’s brother. (NIV). The NASV translation: But I did not see any other of the apostles except [k]James, the Lord’s brother. (The k means Jacob btw). TLB translation: And the only other apostle I met at that time was James, our Lord’s brother.
According to just those 3 translations, James was an apostle. How Carrier is getting around that grammatically, I have no idea. Something else I don’t see him taking into account is how connotation, tone, and voice lead the reader to draw a conclusion. The conclusion is that James is the Lord’s biological brother.
“Jairus (whose name means “he will awaken [or be enlightened]” ; get it?) is most likely a fictional character. So why couldn’t Jesus (whose name means “savior” [lit. “God saves”]; get it?) be just as fictional?”
I could be wrong, but I couldn’t find that Jairus means “he will awaken.” I did find that it could mean enlighten, illuminate, and give light. If this is a fictional story, and the author took such care as to create names that have a double meaning (even though Jesus was an extremely common name back in the day), then we should assume that other main characters had double meanings for their names too. Who would be important to the Jesus story, even more so than Jairus’ daughter? The twelve disciples. Just looking at two of the names, here’s what I found:
Philip–friend or lover of horses. From what I’ve read, name Philip originated in Greek.
Judas–Praise or give thanks.
Those two names are meaningless to a myth story, so if the author went through all the trouble to make the names Jesus and Jairus a literary element, then was he just being lazy with other names? Carrier chose two names to support his argument but left out fifty other names that are meaningless.
doctor Ehrman
you wrote :
I think it is very highly unlikely that anyone was standing at the foot of Jesus’ cross to record what they heard him say. The Gospel writers have put Ps. 22:1 on his lips, in my view.
aren’t there quite a lot of lines mark has used from the psalms when writing his crucifixion narrative?
are there any ancient historical writings which tell the last words of the crucified person in MEast ?
1. Yes. 2. No.
Dear Dr. Ehrman,
Syrian philosopher Mara Bar Serapion wrote a letter to his son about a “wise king of the Jews”.
A – Can the letter be an early non-Christian reference to the crucifixion of Jesus?
B – When can the letter be dated? 73 AD?
C – Is it an interpolation?
Thanks
It seems unlikely. It doesn’t mention Jesus, doesn’t say anything about crucifixion, doesn’t say when the execution took place, and understands that the one executed really was a king, not someone who claimed to be king. No pagan of the first century would say that Jews paid a price for executing Jesus. So I don’t see how it can be referring to the death of Jesus.
Who is Mara Bar Serapion referring to, then?
Who is the “wise king of the Jews” he is talking about?
We don’t know. But he was a king!
When was the letter written?
73 AD? After Bar Kokhba revolt? Third century?
Thanks
We don’t know.
Hello, Bart! I know Josephus, Paul and Philo were able to speak greek. And I know the Hebrew Bible was translated into Greek, even before Jesus was born. But, do you think most Jews in the diaspora knew greek? I mean, many of them had to migrate when they were already adults. And I guess many of the ones who were born in the diaspora were poor, so they could not afford paying for education. Also, what about the Jews in Rome? Wasn’t Latin the predominant language in Rome? I know those are many questions so, can you please recommend me a couple of books on the languages that the Diaspora Jews spoke?
Yes, Jews in teh diaspora spoke their local languages and if they were educated also Greek; they would not have known Hebrew except possibly with rare exceptions. Latin was the lanugage of Rome itself and of Roman administrators etc. (who could also speak Greek). I don’t know of books written about the language useadge of diaspora Jews, probably because it’s not a controversial issue. Philo and Paul were thorougly Greek in their writing and thinking as were almost all other diaspora Jews (just as today Jews in America speak English; with possibilities of travel and mass communication available today somne know Hebrew as well, but not many do)
Dear Dr. Ehrman,
Happy Memorial Day! I had one thought about — “When he comes into her room and raises her, he says to her “Talitha cumi.” The author of Mark translates for us: “Little girl, arise.”
Why would the author leave the key sentence in Aramaic?”
Talitha I am told can also mean “a young lamb” — https://hermeneutics.stackexchange.com/questions/20841/in-mark-541-what-does-talitha-cumi-mean
This makes most sense as a typology for the soon to come resurrection of Jesus, Who is the Lamb of God — as the “Lamb” metaphor symbolizes the sacrifice of Isaac. We are told often that Mark ends with the empty tomb and that Mark 16:9 – 16:20 were later additions. It is also possible that Talitha Cumi was similarly a later addition used to typologize the resurrection of Jesus (and added in along with Mark 16:9-16:20).
SImilarly “Bar Enash” or Son of Man is Brahm in AbBrahm represents “Father of the Multitudes”. Bar Enash is used for Son as part of the 7th day of Rest for God’s son, so too Sabbath is for the (Divine) Son. This too could be a later introduction as it again further Divinizes Jesus Christ.(using Aramaic)
Hi, Professor Ehrman
I am looking to read Matthew in Hebrew.
Is there consensus that Matthew was first written in Hebrew?
There seem to be a number of rare manuscripts in choice institutions, as well as an available version by George Howard which presumably dates to the 15-17th centuries. It is a bit suspect, as, for example, it names Judas as ” Ish Krayot”, rather than Iscariot, which would relate to dhikari, an assassin and/or carrier of a dagger, and seemingly most appropriate.
Which book is the best and/or oldest available version I could read or even get?
Many thanks
Gisele Ben-Dor
http://www.giseleben-dor.com
No, the consensus is that was composed in Greek. The only Hebrew version we have is a medieval translation (though you’ll find sone peole arguing it’s the original) (well, George Howard did, at least). One really compelling argument that it had to be in Greek, though, is that it is word for word the same in places as Mark, which was in Greek. CAn’t do that via translation. There are,, though, lots of other arguments.
1. Do we have a full translation of Galilean Aramaic?
2. If not, what is a closest version to Galilean Aramaic today? Would it be recognized in 1st century Judea?
Do you mean is there a full translation of the Gospels in Aramaic? We do have translations in Syriac (a dialect of Aramaic), from the second century. Probably first century Aramaic readers would be able to follow it.
I see, so that would only be for first century Syriac Aramaic readers? Would people who speak other dialects such as Galilean Aramaic be able to understand it? Dialects can differ by a lot I bet.
Second century. And yes, I”m saying that probably others with other comparable dialects could probably have figured it out if they needed to, just as Greeks with different dialects could read HOmer’s Greek to some extenct.