Loading...QUESTION(S):
Evidently the “Q” source is quite authentic, but why? And, other sources of Jesus’ sayings may be related to oral traditions and even to early church teachings that were fed back into the Gospels and are less authentic….
I find it hard to accept that what we have in the New Testament is the authentic material was actually said and done by Jesus (in the strict historic sense).
You said that the statement about Jesus relating to God’s Kingdom on earth and who was to rule and that Jesus thought he was the King of the Jews and that Judas reported that to the religious authorities. How do we know that this is historically accurate?
How can we know that one item is authentic and others aren’t? I did read your book dealing with the criteria, but I am not convinced….
***Question*** How do we know, absolutely and historically, that even those sayings of Jesus that meet the criteria you use are authentic and not simply the teachings of the early church fed back into the Gospel documents?
RESPONSE:
These are great questions, and among other things they show that I am doing a very bad job indeed in communicating my views!
For background: this reader was responding to comments I made, when evaluating the work of Reza Aslan, where I laid out the evidence that Jesus delivered an apocalyptic message. This evidence includes the fact that apocalyptic teachings of Jesus are found scattered throughout all the layers of our early traditions, Mark, Q, M, and L. I quoted a couple of the Q sayings in support – hence this person’s question.
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I guess I’ll never understand why, exactly, that it cannot be posited that Mark simply invented the “sayings” in his gospel, Matthew and Luke in theirs, and John in his. It seems like the most parsimonious answer by far. I guess it’s just too frightening to consider that we actually have no authentic sayings of Jesus.
It’s because there are so many similar sayings in sources that did not collaborate with one another, that it’s hard to imagine they all invented these out of whole cloth and yet they — from different sources — cohere so well.
WHY IS NON-COLLABORATION SO DIFFICULT TO IMAGINE? They *borrowed* successively from each other!
Some did. Some didn’t. The historian’s work is to figure out which is which.
Not real hard: Judas offered money in Mark, and not a devil. Judas greedy and offered money in Matthew. Judas is Satanic in Luke. Judas is a Devil from chapter SIX in John. Seems pretty clear to me.
Dear Bart:
I couldn’t find a topic on Josephus so I hope you see my question. In your book “Did Jesus Exist” on page 59 you quote (Antiquities 18.3.3).
Both this quotation and the more conservative version that seemed more plausible as his original writing have one very fundamental flaw that you didn’t mention. I of course am asking for your opinion. I’m no expert, but my understanding is that the word “cross” would be a dead give away that this is an interpolation.
The Romans used upright torture stakes not crosses. If this is true then these couldn’t be Josephus words.
Hope you see this. I would like to know. Please forgive me if you address this later on as I have just started reading your book. I am so thankful for your books and the integrity and courage you have demonstrated by exposing these apparent myths to the “light of day”.
Ron
No, the term cross (Greek: σταυρος: STAUROS) is the term used in all our sources for the crucifix used by Romans; I don’t know of any references to it being simply an upright stake.
Bart.
A real beginner’s question!
Is there any evidence of a written Aramaic source for Mark, Q, M, or L?
The reason I ask is that I remember your saying that the incongruity of Mark 2: 27-28 ( “Jesus said to them, ‘The Sabbath was made for man, and not man for the Sabbath. 28 ‘So the Son of Man is Lord even of the Sabbath’.”) can be accounted for if the verse is translated back into Aramaic. Is it not more likely that such a misunderstanding of the point Jesus was making would have occurred during a written, rather than an oral, translation, from Aramaic to Greek, of the pronouncement?
Ah, good question. Mark was almost certainly written in Greek — it has Greek stylistic characteristics without the characteristis of a Greek-made-from-translation-of-a-semitic-language characteristics. Q must have been written in Greek, since the parallels of Matthew nad Luke are verbatim in the Greek. M and L show no characteristics of semitic translation Greek either.
But there are passages such as you cite that clearly were once circulated in Aramaic. The usual explanation — the one I buy — is that at some point in the telling of these stories, before our writing authors got them, they were put into the language of the authors, Greek, from Aramaic originals. *Maybe* that happened at the level of writing, but there’s no reaosn that it couldn’t have just as easily as happened at the oral stage.
Hey Bart, what’s up with some of your past debate opponents? They are definitely appearing to be of questionable character, integrity, and credibility. We had Michael Brown, who appeared on the television show of charlatan televangelist (aren’t all televangelists charlatans?) and “faith-healer” Benny Hinn. Then we have Dinesh D’Souza, who already was caught adulterously screwing a gal 20 years younger than him…..and now, as of tonight, Dinesh is facing federal charges of campaign finance fraud! Gee, for all of Dinesh’s lecturing the rest of us about how we can’t have true morality apart from belief in the evangelical God, he’s not doing a very good job of practicing what he preaches.
Yeah, Dinesh is not having a good year. I assume he’s very much in favor of voter restriction laws in order to cut down on voting fraud. 🙂
There is another possibility that explains better. You are stating things that the gospels say about , for example, what Jesus thought of himself at trial without acknowledging that the only sources are related literary creations — Hellenized romantic novellas, not history. We discussed the gospel origins in depth at the Vridar Mythicist blog, and it was clear to me that there was no oral tradition, just recycled Persian, Greek, Roman and Tanak myths. Just because there might have been a ‘Q’, doesn’t make it oral. Just makes it common! The gospels are all more or less interdependent and contradictory, not the best evidence for real history.
If you look at modern mystic teaching as a control, the truth is so obvious it can’t be avoided. Stripping away the fiction leaves the core of mysticism which is everywhere evident. I know it because I *live* it. The early church DID create the myth. It wasn’t “evidence” that you examine, but literature.
“One is that the same *kinds* of sayings can be found in other documents that are unrelated to and independent of Q – so that neither Q nor any of these other sources made this kind of saying up (the other sources: Mark, Thomas, M, L; this is the criterion of independent attestation).”
Assuming that Q was a document for the moment, isn’t it dangerous to cite these as independent? Mark, according to you, was written some 30 years after the events and presumably we don’t know the sources for Mark’s work. Similarly with the other documents which also relied on oral sources we assume.
Had all of these been written at the time of Jesus I can understand how they could be viewed as independent, I don’t see on what basis you can assume that so many years after the events took place.
My view is that if someone wants to claim that two ancient sources are literarily related to one another, that person bears the burden of proof. Given what we know about book production and distribution in the ancient world, it seems highly unlikely that (unlike now) one author had access to another’s author book. so one has to look for evicence one way or ther other. And when scholars have engaged in this kind of work it does seem that Q and mark are independent.(Mainly because they have doublets in places, which shows they inherited different forms of the same story). M and L are trickier. But one has to go with probabilities, and if someone argues that they “probably” had access to each other, one has to ask for the evidence…..
Sorry, I think I was being unclear. I wasn’t suggesting that the written sources really did have access to each (apart from the know links of Mat & L to M & Q), I meant that the written sources all seem to have come many years after the death of Jesus and so would have relied on other sources, presumably oral, that were circulating around this part of the empire.
So a particular story such as Joseph of Arimathea for example, might appear in Mark and John and so would deemed to be independent of each other but if that story goes back to a time soon after the crucifixion and had been told and retold for many years, then it is not surprising that both Mark and John would hear of it and write it down especially as it’s needed to make the resurrection narrative hang together.
So my question is – if the gospels were all derived from oral sources how independent can they really be?
Yes, when I say they are independent I mean *literarily* independent. If they have the same stories in them, then, the stories can be traced back to an earlier period before their writing — either a shared oral tradition or the actual event itself or, more likely, both.
It seems to me that even if the early church “fed back into the Gospel documents” certain teachings it still reflects what early Christians understood as the teachings of their religion and formed the basis for their religion’s influence on history. And it seems to me that influence on history and society is more important than the technicalities of what Jesus actually said or did.
Dr. Ehrman:
Please help me refute the following argument:
1. One of the primary ways that you “liberal” professors “prove” that the Bible is not the inerrant Word of God is by dating the Gospels late enough to imply that they are full of later Christian exaggeration.
2. The primary ways you date the gospels are by a) finding places in the narratives that imply the authors already knew about later historical events and b) finding indications in the narratives that show evolutionary changes in the authors’ theology.
3. For these methods to work, you must assume that the authors could not possibly have known about the events beforehand and that the theologies represented do not conform to Jesus’ actual teaching.
4. In other words, you are “begging the question” by “proving” that the Gospels aren’t the Word of God by assuming that the Gospels aren’t the Word of God.
It would help me to argue your side if I knew of some other ways the Gospels could be accurately dated. Thank you for your help.
This isn’t simply the approach of “liberal” Bible professors. It’s the way historians always date sources. If you find a letter written on paper that is obviously 300 years old or so, and the author says something about the “United States” — then you know it was written after the Revolutionary War. So too if you find an ancient document that describes the destruction of Jerusalem, then you know it was written after 70 CE. It’s not rocket science! But it’s also not “liberal.” It’s simply how history is done. If someone wants to invent other rules, they’re the ones who are begging questions!
There are other reasons for thinking the Gospels were not written, say, in the 60s though — one of which is that the well-traveled and widely ocnversant with all things Christain Paul does not appear to know anything about them….
Thank you for the quick response. Unfortunately, the argument that this is “simply how history is done” won’t fly with the people I’d like to convince, because they believe ALL academics (even History professors) are trying to discredit their religion. I do like the argument about Paul not knowing the Gospels, however. You don’t have to make any assumptions about biblical inaccuracy to make it. Thanks!
No, of course not. But that simply means that arguments and evidence don’t matter. So there’s really very little point talking to them to let them see a different perspective….
There is no need to prove the Bible is not the inerrant Word of God. The burden of proof is on those who claim that it is the inerrant Word of God. It never calls itself the Word of God and, if it did, citing that would only be part of a circular argument.
TWO TYPOS:
“…therefore his historically reliable.”
“The fact that Jesus called executed…”
If you’re new here you’re going to get used to Bart’s typos. He doesn’t have all the time in the world to write these posts, nor does he have a proofreader (I assume) so from time to time mistakes are made 🙂
I know something I’d like to believe; but (sigh) if there ever was any evidence for it, it was doubtless suppressed by the early Christians.
I’d like to believe Jesus only came to think of himself as the Messiah, and future “King of the Jews,” reluctantly, after his few-but-fanatical followers convinced him of it. (Perhaps they’d found him a spell-binding preacher.) I’d have a better opinion of him if it was his disciples who’d convinced him of his own super-importance; but all we get in the Gospels is his “revealing” it to them.
Here we go again! The same old “probability” argument supported by “scholarly criteria” for determining the historical reliability of what amounts to literary documents written by people who had no better understanding of history than they did of science.
What you say at the beginning of your response is clearly true. “I am doing a very bad job indeed in communicating my views!” On the other hand, your suggestion, which amounts to an “either-or” fallacy at best, is false. “In my view, the only option to refusing to make probability judgments about the past is to throw up our hands in despair and say we can never know what happened in the past.” Some choice!!!
You seem to have come a long way from Dr. Schweitzer, but I think it’s the WRONG WAY. He knew, and rightly so, that everyone finds the historical Jesus he or she is seeking. More than that, we all overstate what we think we know as though it were true, and if not absolutely true, then very likely or probably so. It reminds me of my dog who keeps looking into the backyard pool, thinking there’s another mutt down there, staring up at him.
Great fun, but as Gershwin says, “It ain’t necessarily so!”
Hey, if it’s a good drum set, there’s no problem with beating the same ole drum.
That’s not exactly what Schweitzer says. But in any event, the Jesus I end up with is *definitely* not one painted in my own image!!
Yeah, sometimes it takes awhile to get through to the hard of hearing.
As far as YOUR JESUS is concerned, he may not look like you, but he’s NOT a historical recreation, either.
Just a patchwork of improbable probabilities. 😉
I’m always open to better explanations of the evidence!
Bart,
First off, I don’t think you are as open as you say. Unlike what I call “true-believers,” who start out with “holy writ,” you approach the New Testament as an unbeliever who replaces the divine premise with a man-made stratagem for discovering “evidence.”
When thinking about God, you are an avowed agnostic. But when it comes to people and events of the distant past, you seem to believe you can know the unknowable, not with religious conviction or absolute certainty, but with the hubris of a man of science pronouncing “probabilities.”
Why? Because “…the ONLY way we can establish what Jesus most likely really said or did is by looking at all the evidence, applying to it (one piece of evidence at a time) the various criteria that historians use to determine historically reliable information, and then making a probability judgment…”
But I wonder, have you ever considered that there is no “ONLY way”? If we knew with any degree of confidence who Jesus was, or even what he said and did, there surely would be (dare I say “probably”?) more harmony about the historical “facts,” rather than so much discord and divisiveness among truth seekers. Even among scholars there seems to be ongoing debates and disagreements.
For my money, religious Jews have always had it right. They understood, and still do, that the New Testament was written by Hellenized authors with anti-Jewish agendas. Their stories were edited and manufactured by men who had no better understanding of legitimate history than they did of science.
In other words, it was a literary endeavor, neither divinely inspired, nor historically reliable.
Jesus did NOT have a personal biographer, someone who took notes and reported what was being said and done at any given moment in time. It is therefore a mistake to treat the Gospels, including the Book of Acts, either as HISTORY or GOD’S WORD. They may reflect slivers of truth, of course, but very little that is definitive.
Instead, we should understand and approach what was written purely, or at least mostly, as literature, where characters and events reveal a different kind of truth, something akin to ancient storytelling with literary themes and fictive embellishments.
More than that, I find the dependency of modern historians/scholars referring to theoretical sources like the Q documents, and relying on interpretive devices such as multiple attestations, dissimilarity, etc., to be a convenient but misleading way of picking and choosing between historical fact and non-historical fabrication.
Perhaps what we need is a new way of talking about “biblical truth,” something more in keeping with what your wife does in explaining the plays of Shakespeare. In fact, I’d be very much interested to hear her take on what I’m suggesting.
DCS
P.S. I felt so strongly about the problem of getting know “the real Jesus” that I called my book The Jew No One Knows. 😉
Yes, actually, I think about that all the time (that there is no Only way). I just don’t think it’s true.
I don’t think it’s at all true when you say, “I am doing a very bad job indeed in communicating my views!” It’s just that what you are trying to prove is very nigh impossible, akin to squeezing the proverbial square peg into an imaginary hole. And if, as you seem to believe, it is untrue to say, “there is no ONLY way,” why then is it so hard for you, or anyone else for that matter, to make YOUR WAY clear? Could it be that the premise of your starting point is faulty? After all, at least as I see it, the number of provable, or even probable facts about Jesus, makes a short list indeed.
I’m not trying to *prove* anything. I’m discussing what probably happened in the past.
Well, if you are just “discussing” things you seem to have an argumentative way of doing so. Maybe you’ve noticed. I have similar inclinations. 🙂
But he is colored by your orthodox upbringing, subconsciously, if nothing else.
If Jesus is the most important person in western cultural evolution, it’s not because he was a false apocalyptic prophet. There was something about his church that took off, despite the crucifixion, more than one thing no doubt. Maybe the apocalyptic mindset contributed to people feeling safer or wiser inside the cult. What else did? Was it essential that Jesus become God to give the church its staying power?
Exactly who Jesus was is going to remain debatable. Who was he to the early church seems the better question to me.
Yup, that’s the topic of my forthcoming book — in two months now!
We also have the writings of Paul who expressed apocalyptic views. He wrote in the 50s AD, but he converted in the 30s. Presumably, his apocalyptic views reflect the early beliefs of the Jesus’ sect. Jesus’ devotees followed Jesus’ teaching. So, if his followers held apocalyptic beliefs, they probably came from Jesus. The synoptic gospels’ accounts of Jesus’ apocalyptic warnings are roughly consistent with Paul’s letters. Paul tends to confirm the gospels’ portrayal of Jesus as an apocalyptic preacher.
The apocalypse was WITHIN. It and the coming kingdom hadn’t a thing to do with this world. John 18:36.
A very helpful restatement of what I thought I already understood you to be saying about these particular matters. I’ve been doing some heavy (well, heavy for me) reading on quantum mechanics, trying to come to terms with the concept that, at least at the smallest scale, we can only know the probability of a particle being at a certain place, moving with a certain velocity/direction. It seems our knowledge of early Christianity has some similar characteristics. In quantum mechanical experiments the results you see depend on what experimental equipment you set up. It seems that our interpretation of what / who Jesus was depends on what pre-conceived notions (experimental equipment?) we bring to the task of trying to understand who / what he was. I guess a way of “throwing up our hands in despair” is just to take the first part of the quote from Albert Schweitzer – “He comes to us as one unknown…….”. At least known only in way of probabilities.
Bart…thank you for posting information on this topic.
Even when I entered seminary (1964) I assumed that most of the information about Jesus was accurately remembered and handed down by his followers and that we had a very good picture of who Jesus was in the Gospel stories. Nothing in my seminary experience led me to believe otherwise, and I attended a liberal institution (Yale Divinity).
Only since following your blog, and reading your books, have I come to the realization that we know very little about who Jesus was in a true historical sense. What we know seems to be the Jesus of the community (the church’s collective memory) and the type of history we read is “theological history.”
I think you mentioned once that the history of the ancients (biased history) was much different than contemporary history (seeking actual facts and the account of events as they happened). History written by the ancients is more of a history to make a point….although we do write biased history now days as well. Just watch the news !!
I have come to the conclusion that we will never know exactly who Jesus was, what he said, and what he did. We do know what the early church thought about Jesus, and that seems to be as good as it will get.
I can live with that (or live without it). I only wish that those who wield the Bible as a weapon understood that as well.
Thank you for your comments and for the excellent videos you are presenting as well.
1. Great post.
2. I would like to see you give more examples of “coherence” as a criterion.
3. Great question from the reader.
4. You are doing a great job of communicating your views. You are sometimes too hard on yourself.
5. I like the concept of “historical probability judgments,” not mathematical certainties.
The way “coherence” used to work (it was one of the three guiding principles for the new quest) is that if there are, say, sayings that in themselves do not pass the criteria of independent attestation and/or dissimilarity, but they cohered to sayings that did in content and meaning, then they too were likely authentic. This allowed scholars to “fill out” the picture of Jesus obtained by applying the other two criteria rigorously, so they had something more than a bare-bones sketch of Jesus.
Yeah, but you guys treat the gospels like they were independent sources. They weren’t. We talked about this on Vridar Mythicist blog. Later gospels borrowed from earlier.
Thanks. You really do have a gift for explaining stuff in a way that I can understand it.
“In my view, the only option to refusing to make probability judgments about the past is to throw up our hands in despair and say we can never know what happened in the past.” This is an interesting counterpoint to the fundamentalist view that any string of words that made it into the Bible guarantees certitude of that event’s having taken place. You have to strike a balance somewhere or you risk your intellect’s credibility.
What is your opinion on the method the Jesus Seminar used on deciding which statements attributed to Jesus are authentic? When they chose their color of marbles, did they use the criteria you describe or did they just vote their preconceived opinion?
I don’t think there was one set of criteria that htey all agreed on. Each one voted based on their own understanding of how to reconstruct history. The voting procedure certainly opened them up to a good deal of ridicule.
I’ve always found the ridicule about the voting humorous. Didn’t the early church councils vote on things like the divinity of Christ or at least the nature of the divinity of Christ? The voting actually works exactly the way it was designed. It gives others an idea of how much agreement or disagreement there is on the different subjects. I’ve found “consensus” scholarship differs from writer to writer. Conservative Christians have an entirely different version of consensus scholarship than more progressive Christians. Christians in general have a different consensus than professors. The Jesus Seminar’s votes tell you exactly where they stand and you discover that there are actually conservative members included. I’ve found it interesting where they include the votes of the associate members (non-scholars) and you see where the public view is sometimes more conservative but sometime more liberal than the scholars.
This Seminar illustrates the futility of unrealized minds dissecting scripture. Masters alone can do it correctly. http://www.RSSB.org
Here’s an analogy I’ve been thinking of lately – perhaps you might find it useful: I think the gospels are like the ancient equivalent of modern rock-star bio pics – particularly the self-indulgent ones like Prince’s “Purple Rain”, Mariah Carey’s “Glitter” and Eminem’s “8-Mile” etc. These movies tell the ‘story’ of the rise to fame of the artist, but in doing so, they exaggerate the story *for emotional effect*. Rags to riches. No one actually believes on historical grounds that these movies are presenting pure history. We all go along kind of knowing that it will be an exaggerated version of their life. Typically in these movies, all the problems the artist faces accumulate to the point of high tension, and they reconcile the tension by a stunning emotional performance that gets them signed to a label, that allows the characters to forgive each other and themselves, that wins them the love interest, that reconcile’s them with their family etc. It’s the ‘Hollywood’ version of “reality”. I think the gospels lie in something of a similar genre. It’s simply a matter of taking everything with a massive grain of salt, but at the same time, the core spine of the story is lurking in there.
While the historical criteria used seem quite sensible to me, do we have any evidence as to how well they work in practice? That is, have they been used to address a historical problem in antiquity where new evidence was discovered that corroborated the conclusions arrived at using the criteria?
Great question. For the materials I work with (antiquity) it’s hard to know what new evidence might show up to show us we were right, or wrong, all along.
Bart,
I want to know what you make of these familiar quotes of James’ at the end of paragraphs four and five (circa 110-180 CE):
http://www.earlychristianwritings.com/text/hegesippus.html
Sorry — I don’t have time to read articles while dealing with members’ comments.
Not an article, Bart, two quotes in Hegesippus: “Father forgive them for they know not what they do” and “You will see the Son of man coming with Power and on the clouds of heaven” — spoken by … JAMES.
Attributed to James by a second century source. And attributed to Jesus in a first century source.
Dr. Ehrman you may want to give members access to the (old) video course on the subject you recorded for the great courses (I think). This helped me tremendously!!!!!!! You had segment(s) on using the different scholarship criteria: independent attestation, dissimilarity, and contextual credibility. For example, independent attestation criteria using Josephus, Paul, and the Gospels (Mark), on Jesus’ brother James. Three independent sources, Jesus had a brother, James. I don’t think you have ever FULLY explained the (your) three main criteria before on this blog. Some hits here and there. Books and videos, yes.
Maybe I’ll give fuller posts to this. I can’t post my videos from the Teaching Company because of copyright issues…..
Brad Billups, I recently bought and have gone through Bart’s entire 24-lecture course by The Great Courses (aka The Teaching Company). The content and presentation of the course are excellent. The course is still on sale at a hugely discounted price: only $35 for the audio download or $60 for the video download.
I liked the video presentation, but the audio content is the same because there are very few visuals. I have no financial relationship with the company other than being a customer, so here’s the link to the course: http://www.thegreatcourses.com/tgc/courses/course_detail.aspx?cid=656.
Prof. Ehrman,
Let’s stop pretending that we have real “sources” of information about Jesus. The different sources — Mark, Q,, M, L and John — don’t corroborate each other. Each source has different stories and different statements by Jesus, often inconsistent. Why isn’t there any overlap between the sources? Matthew and Luke copied material from Mark, instead of presenting their own unique versions of the stories recounted in Mark. This is very suspicious.
Why don’t the so-called “sources” each give their own unique accounts of Jesus’ miracles? Evidently, Matthew and Luke didn’t have any information about these miracles, so the authors had to plagiarize the stories from Mark — without any confirmation.
When the different “sources” (story tellers) deal with the same events — such as Jesus’ arrest, crucifixion and resurrection — the accounts are inconsistent and full of improbable events. Even Jesus’ words are sometimes inconsistent (e.g., he’s forgiving and condemning). Prof. Ehrman has written about the many contradictions in the gospels. We cannot trust much of what we find in the gospels.
We can pretend that there are many different “sources,” but actually, they aren’t dependable sources. They are uncorroborated tall tales, such as Jesus sending demons sent into pigs, raising people from death, etc. What we really have are a lot of myths and legends about Jesus. We have no way of determining whether these stories are true (aside from broad facts such as that he must have been crucified).
Various writers have pointed out how the stories in the gospels are made up, based on stories from the Old Testament. L Michael White (who Prof. Ehrman respects) has written a book “Scripting Jesus” which shows how the authors of the gospels tailored their gospels to suit their own agendas. The author of Matthew used alleged prophecies in order to make up stories about what Jesus did. This is pure fiction. The author of Matthew didn’t have any first-hand sources. He simply copied form Mark and Q — which he often twisted. He fabricated stories to suit himself. There is no evidence of an actual “M” source.
So, Prof. Ehrman, how can you claim that we have different legitimate sources? We don’t have reliable sources. We merely have a bunch of dubious story-telling by people who never met Jesus. I’m sure you know this. But then you lapse into claiming that we have real sources, even though the so-called sources are full of far-fetched events and blatant contradictions.
In reality, we have FAIRY TALES about Jesus — such as Jesus walking on water, rising from the dead, flying up into the sky, casting out demons, seeing Moses on a mountain and so on. Sorry, I don’t consider these fairy tales to be “sources.” Do you?
Ancient historians have to contend with the fact that their sources contain non-historical material. That’s true of Livy as much as of Luke. So what historians have to do is figure out what is historical in them and what not. But denying that they are sources is not good historical method, in my judgment. (And in the judgment of virtually all ancient historians; otherwise they wouldn’d be historians)
Yes, you have to go with the sources you have, for better or worse, The sources for Jesus’ life (Mark, Q, M, L, John), however, aren’t of the caliber of other historical sources in antiquity. The stories are so bizarre and far-fetched that they’re not believable.
Aside from preposterous miracle stories, the gospel writers pretend to know things that they couldn’t possibly know , such as what Jesus said to Pilate, how Jesus prayed when he was alone and what Jesus said on the cross, even though none of his followers were there to hear him.
The Jesus sources don’t even corroborate each other (borrowing doesn’t count as corroboration). Paul provides some small corroboration, enough to establish that Jesus was a real person, but….
When we strip way all the outlandish stories, how much is left? Can we trust what is left? If we identified the gospels as tall tales, instead of “sources,” we would keep a more accurate perspective on what the gospels really are and what can be known about Jesus.
I’d suggest you look at my discussion in Jesus: Apocalyptic Prophet of the New Millennium. It may not be to your satisfaction, but I at least explain how I think we can use the Gospels as sources.
I read “Jesus: Apocalyptic Prophet.” I liked it. I appreciate your methods. Sure, Jesus must have been an apocalyptic sect leader from Galilee who was crucified by the Romans. It’s hard to explain the origin of Christianity without Jesus. I enjoy your books and blog. Thanks —
Just a questio related to this and an earlier post. How do we know that Matthew and Luke didn’t have access to Mark.
They did have. He was a major source for most of their stories.
Thanks, that’s what I thought. I must have missunderstood.
Prof. Ehrman,
You wrote a book “Forged” about fraudulent writings. But actually, all of the four gospels are fraudulent. The Gospel of John, for instance, pretends to recount long speeches given by Jesus some 60 years earlier, as if a stenographer wrote down verbatim what Jesus said. Obviously not true. Water into wine — obviously made up. Raising Lazarus — unbelievable and not mentioned in the other gospels. Jesus in John’s gospel doesn’t match the Jesus in the synoptic gospels. John’s gospel is a fraud, a pile of lies concocted by a skillful writer or writers.
The Gospel of Mark consists mostly of preposterous miracles such as demons sent into swine, Jesus walking on water, etc. Pure fiction. All the gospels — not just the later ones that didn’t make it into the New Testament — are a series of fabrications. The author of Matthew’s gospel willfully changed various passages that he lifted from Mark’s gospel (e.g., Mark 10:18 vs. Matt. 19:17). Matthew dishonestly put words in Jesus’ mouth. This is forgery.
The forgery didn’t begin later with the non-canonical gospels. The forgery and fraud started at the very beginning. No, Jesus didn’t float up into the sky. He didn’t bring anyone back to life. He didn’t multiply fishes and loaves. He didn’t forgive his tormentors while he was on the cross. He didn’t resurrect. He didn’t predict his own death or the destruction of the Temple. He didn’t talk with Pilate. The stories about Jesus are improbable and/or laughable nonsense.
The four gospels are a tissue of lies. Forgery? Yes, it’s all fake.
By “forgery” I am referring to works written by someone claiming to be someone (famous) other than who she or he is. It’s *related* to the idea of a fabrication (of information, speeches, events, etc.), but it is not the same thing.
Thanks for your clarification. I get your point. And I presume you got my point. I’m a lot more skeptical than you are.
If the gospels were based on “oral traditions,” why weren’t the authors of Matthew and Luke familiar with the traditions used by Mark? Matthew and Luke didn’t present their own unique versions of the events in Mark. These events were major occurrences in Jesus’ life, and yet Matthew and Luke didn’t have their own independent info about them. Instead, Matthew and Luke merely copied and edited material from Mark. Apparently, the authors of Matthew and Luke hadn’t heard the alleged oral traditions used by Mark. That’s why the authors of Matthew and Luke had to borrow wholesale from Mark. Matthew and Luke didn’t know anything more about Mark’s events than what they read in Mark’s gospel. So, where’s the evidence of a widespread oral tradition before the gospels were written?
How could Luke and Matthew have totally missed out on hearing about all the oral traditions allegedly used by Mark? If the oral traditions found in Mark were floating around, why didn’t Matthew and Luke know of them? This is very suspicious. There is no evidence of an oral tradition shared by Mark, Matthew and Luke. The synoptic gospels don’t overlap with different versions of the same events. Instead, the later gospel writers used Mark and Q. Matthew and Luke didn’t corroborate Mark or Q — they just took material from Mark and Q without supplementing them (never mind Matthew’s many blatant fabrications that he added in).
Only the most basic facts about Jesus (e.g., he was crucified) are common to all the gospels, but even with these facts, the details vary. Each gospel source has its own particular set of quotations and stories (except when borrowing). For some reason, Mark lacked the Q source. If Q goes back to the 50s, as many scholars believe, Mark must have been writing when the Q source existed, and yet he was ignorant of Q — as well as ignorant of Jesus’ teachings that show up in Q. What an oversight. So… Matthew and Luke had Q, but Mark was totally in the dark about the Q traditions and/or writings??? Strange.
The so-called independent sources of information (Mark, Q, M, L) don’t substantiate each other — as they should if there really were underlying oral traditions in circulation at those times. Each gospel is full of improbable and impossible happenings, without any hint of a common origin or a common oral tradition behind them. If there were oral traditions that were common knowledge among the early Christians before the gospels were written, evidence of these traditions should show up in different forms in the gospels. They don’t.
The questioner at the beginning of this topic has it quite right :
“I find it hard to accept that what we have in the New Testament is the authentic material was actually said and done by Jesus (in the strict historic sense).”
Indeed. The gospels are NOT historical documents. There is little or no reason to distinguish between the canonical gospels and the non-canonical gospels. They are all fabrications.
It’s not just the later gospels of Peter, Judas, Mary and so on that are fake. The canonical gospels are also fake. The first gospel, Mark, is a lot of incredible miracle stories and tall tales. The gospel of John is an obvious piece of fiction. The gospels are made-up stories and made-up quotations from Jesus — written down by people who never met him.
The fraudulent fabrications began with the first gospels — Mark, Matthew, Luke and John — not just the later ones written in the second and third centuries. I don’t trust documents that are full of fairy tales about virgins births, turning water into wine, casting out demons, walking on water, Jesus flying up in the sky, Jesus coming back to life, etc.
Let’s tell it like it is: ALL the gospels are a CROCK.
Frank of Boulder….
I think you made your point…several times.