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The Historical Jesus

Changing the Past in Light of the Present
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Changing the Past in Light of the Present

Canonical Gospels, Historical Jesus

Changing the Past in Light of the Present

Did people in oral cultures even care if stories were changed? We do! We have an interest not just in story but in establishing with some kind of accuracy what actually happened in the past, whether it is about the Civil War, the assassination of JFK, or the last election. Did people in oral cultures have a way to know the past with historical accuracy? Did they care? Here I end this thread on what we know about how oral cultures passed along their traditions – not just their myths and customs but also the past events that affected their communities, in what Jan Vansina calls “testimonies” about the past, as shared by word of mouth in non-literate cultures. Were they concerned to repeat the past "accurately"? Again this comes from my 2017 book Jesus Before the Gospels (HarperOne). ****************************** Traditions that are passed along by word of mouth in oral cultures experience massive changes not simply because people have bad memories. That may be true as well, but even more important, as Vansina [...]

BDEhrman2024-02-19T18:20:56-05:00February 20th, 2024|Canonical Gospels, Historical Jesus|

Proof That Historical Narratives (not just myths) Constantly Change in Oral Cultures

I have been discussing some of the many problems with assuming that oral traditions are passed along intact, without significant change, in oral cultures. In graduate school we all learned that they are and did, so that, for example, the fact that we might have a saying of Jesus or story about him in a source 50 years removed from his life isn’t really a problem. It would have been kept intact from the beginning without being changed. That’s how oral cultures work and always have worked. Nope. Not true. At least based on the hard-core research that actually examines the question. My previous two posts have marshaled some of the evidence. Here I continue on the theme, again in an excerpt from my 2017 book, Jesus Before the Gospels (HarperOne). *************************** Given these realities (that oral traditions are constantly changed when told and retold in oral cultures), as attested by numerous anthropological studies, why is it that people in literate cultures so often claim that people in past oral cultures had phenomenal memories and [...]

BDEhrman2024-02-09T12:03:03-05:00February 18th, 2024|Catholic Epistles, Historical Jesus|

When is “The Same” Memory/Tradition/Story Not Actually “The Same”?

Do we mean the same thing by “the same” that people in oral cultures do? Here I pick up on my discussion of oral cultures; in the previous post I talked about how Milman Parry began to study one such culture, and his discoveries were starting. Professional memorizers/reciters would claim that various performances of the “same” tradition/account/story/song was in fact the “same” as earlier performances. But, well, apparently not. At least by our standards. Again, this is excerpted from my book Jesus Before the Gospels (HarperOne, 2017). ****************************** How different could “the same” song be in different versions? Social anthropologist Jack Goody has noted that when Milman Parry first met a singer named Avdo, he took down by dictation a lengthy song that he performed called “The Wedding of Smailagić.” It was 12,323 lines in length. Some years later Albert Lord met up with Avdo again, and took down a performance of “the same” song. This time it was 8,488 lines.[1] Parry himself observed this phenomenon. He at one time had Avdo sing [...]

BDEhrman2024-02-21T11:24:26-05:00February 17th, 2024|Canonical Gospels, Historical Jesus|

How Do We Know About Oral Cultures? By Starting Where You’d Never Suspect!

How do oral cultures “work”? How do they pass along their traditions? How accurately? And why did scholars first get interested in the question. Not at ALL in the way that you might think! Here’s how I discuss the matter in my book Jesus Before the Gospels (HarperOne, 2017). The Beginning of Studies of Orality: Singers in Yugoslavia The twentieth-century study of oral cultures can be traced back to the groundbreaking work of Milman Parry (1902-35), a scholar of classics and epic poetry at Harvard, and his student Albert Lord (1912-91). As a classicist, Parry was especially interested in the Homeric Question, which is actually a set of questions about Homer, the alleged author of the great classics the Iliad and the Odyssey. Was there a Homer? Were these books actually written by him? Were the two books even written by the same person? Even more, is each book itself a single literary composition? Is each of them instead a collection of earlier stories that have been patched together? Is it possible [...]

BDEhrman2024-02-09T12:25:13-05:00February 15th, 2024|Canonical Gospels, Historical Jesus|

A Less-Expected Argument that Jesus Preached the End of All Things

In my previous posts I've given some of the arguments for thinking Jesus delivered an apocalyptic message that the end was coming soon with a divine intervention in which all the forces of evil would be destroyed and all people judged. I’ve actually saved what I consider to be the strongest argument for last, a final coup d’grâce. The argument is both simple and compelling. I wish I had thought of it myself. In a nutshell, the argument is that we know beyond any reasonable doubt what happened at the very beginning of Jesus’ public ministry and we know what happened in its aftermath. The continuity between the two is Jesus’ public ministry itself. This ministry began on a decidedly apocalyptic note; its aftermath continued apocalyptically. Since Jesus is the link between the two, his message and mission, his words and deeds, must also have been apocalyptic. That is to say, the beginning and end are the keys to the middle. Here is how I explain it in chapter 8 of my book Jesus: Apocalyptic [...]

BDEhrman2024-02-07T15:25:09-05:00February 4th, 2024|Historical Jesus|

How the Gospels Transformed the Apocalyptic Jesus

Contrary to the claims of the “Jesus Seminar,” Jesus is best understood as delivering an apocalyptic message – or so I began to argue in my previous post, where I explained that all the earliest Gospel sources independently record Jesus delivering apocalyptic teachings. Equally interesting, some of the most clearly apocalyptic traditions come to be “toned down” as we move further away from Jesus’ life in the 20s to Gospel materials produced near the end of the first century. Sources closest to Jesus: apocalyptic; sources further removed in time (as the end doesn’t come) less apocalyptic. And then non-apocalyptic. Eventually anti-apocalyptic. I resume here with another extract from my book Jesus: Apocalyptic Prophet of the New Millennium (1999). ****************************** Let me give one example. I’ve already pointed out that Mark was our earliest Gospel and was used as a source for the Gospel of Luke (along with Q and L). It’s a relatively simple business, then, to see how the earlier traditions of Mark fared later in the hands of Luke. Interestingly, some [...]

BDEhrman2024-02-07T15:22:17-05:00February 3rd, 2024|Canonical Gospels, Historical Jesus|

The Jesus Seminar and the Non-Apocalyptic Jesus. Hey, Why Not?

I have recently received several questions more or less out of the blue about what I think about the “Jesus Seminar” and its views of Jesus. I looked and it appears I’ve only had one brief posting on this issue, so I thought I should say a few things, first by explaining what the question means. The Seminar was made up of a group of about fifty New Testament scholars who, in the 1980s and 1990s, met twice a year to discuss the ancient Gospels (mainly the canonical Gospels and the Gospel of Thomas) to determine which traditions about Jesus were likely to be authentic, and which, as a corollary, were likely to have been later creations of the early church as they told stories about Jesus. The members of the seminar would then vote on each tradition – after extensive, learned discussion -- and publish the results of their votes. The voting procedure proved to be controversial. The Seminar’s original raison d’être was to establish what Jesus actually said, and so they [...]

BDEhrman2024-01-28T12:17:26-05:00February 1st, 2024|Canonical Gospels, Historical Jesus, History of Biblical Scholarship|

When Is Forgiveness not Forgiveness?

Does love really "mean never having to say I'm sorry"? Is "unconditional forgiveness" possible? Is it even Christian? Is forgiveness itself always possible, conceivable, feasible, expected, required, helpful? Actually, what is forgiveness? These are questions people often ask. When they ask what Jesus thought about the matter they usually get it wrong. And as it turns out, so did his own disciples. So I'll be arguing in my book, tentatively titled The Origins of Altruism. Here's another extract from my sketch of the book as it looks at this point in the pre-writing stage.... ****************************** Part Four: Interpersonal Forgiveness (ch. 6 on Greek and Roman World; ch. 7 on Jesus and his followers) Whereas “charity” is the manifestation of agapē principally to outsiders in need, “forgiveness” is its manifestation principally to those with whom one is in close contact. The importance of “forgoing anger” (a very broad and – as I’ll argue – somewhat problematic definition of forgiveness) was widely acknowledged in the Greek and Roman worlds. But the conditions under which it was possible [...]

BDEhrman2024-01-15T13:58:54-05:00January 23rd, 2024|Book Discussions, Greco-Roman Religions and Culture, Historical Jesus, History of Christianity (100-300CE)|

Love in Action: Christian Views of Charitable Giving

As I indicated in my previous post, the ethics of Christian love (and the very term used for it) differed from what could be found broadly in the Greek and Roman worlds. This different understanding of love had concrete practical implications, especially in how early Christians understood charitable giving. That will be the next part of my book, The Origins of Altruism, as I explain here as I continue to extract from the initial sketch of the book I've written for myself. ****************************** Part Three: Charitable Giving (chs. 6, on the Greco-Roman world, and 7, on Jesus and his later followers) Since love in the teachings of Jesus and then agapē in the early Christian movement was not an emotion, connected with personal feelings or passion but a kind of disinterested activity in relation to others, including strangers, its most concrete manifestation involved providing resources for those in need. In the broader Greek and Roman worlds, virtually all the discussion of personal resources (money and goods) focused on the very wealthy. Moral philosophy was written by elites [...]

BDEhrman2024-01-15T13:58:45-05:00January 21st, 2024|Book Discussions, Greco-Roman Religions and Culture, Historical Jesus, History of Christianity (100-300CE)|

Is Christian Love Different from Love?

One of the most talked about and least understood teachings within Christianity is the idea of love. Do you want some evidence of the misunderstanding? Read 1 Corinthians 13, the "love chapter," in its original context (coming between, well, 1 Corinthians 12 and 14! A little consideration almost no one has thought about!), and then consider it in relation to the 498 times you've heard it in weddings. I'm all for it's being read at weddings! But, uh, is Paul talking about marital bliss? Uh, nope, not at *all*..... I am in the middle of a thread excerpting a sketch of my book (which I'm still researching; won't start writing for a while). So far I've talked about what it's about. Now I'm getting into some detail, by describing the book chapter by chapter -- including the opening bit about Christian ethics and the opening section that deals with love in the Christian tradition. ****************************** The book will comprise an Introduction and four main parts containing two chapters each. Introduction (ch. 1) I’ll [...]

BDEhrman2024-01-15T13:58:37-05:00January 20th, 2024|Book Discussions, Greco-Roman Religions and Culture, Historical Jesus, History of Christianity (100-300CE)|

The Fate of Jesus’ Ethics after His Death

Did Jesus' followers actually follow his teachings? In my previous post I pointed out that Jesus had a radical ethic, a view based on the teachings of Hebrew Scripture but radicalized because of his understanding of the apocalyptic event very soon to occur with the end of history as he knew it. As we know from history, those who expect the End soon can behave in extreme ways (sell the farm!). Jesus' teachings, as I indicated, are, in shorthand, "prophetic ethics on apocalyptic steroids." How did his followers carry on his teachings? That's what I deal with here, as I continue to excerpt a sketch of my book that I myself wrote for me myself (I won't start writing the book itself for some months probably. Still have work to do). Here I explain the book's basic plotline, theses, and organization. ****************************** The ultimate argument of my book is that after Jesus’ death, as Christianity expanded throughout the Roman world, eventually to conquer it, converts to the new faith naturally accepted and adopted [...]

BDEhrman2024-01-15T13:58:26-05:00January 18th, 2024|Book Discussions, Historical Jesus, History of Christianity (100-300CE)|

The Origins of Altruism: My Next Book as It Stands Now
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The Origins of Altruism: My Next Book as It Stands Now

Book Discussions, Greco-Roman Religions and Culture, Historical Jesus

The Origins of Altruism: My Next Book as It Stands Now

My book I'm working on now has gone through significant transformations since I first conceived of it a few years ago. I am at the stage now (finally!) where I really think I know what it's going to be. It started out as a book dealing with the history of charitable giving, morphed into a book on the broader subject of ethics as taught by Jesus, moved onto the specific question of how the Christian concept of "love" differed in significant ways from what could be found generally in the Greek and Roman worlds, shifted to add a discussion of how the Christian idea of "forgiveness" also differed fron what was found elsewhere and ... and ended up where it is now. It is really a book about altruism in the Christian tradition and its effect on the ethical views and practices of western culture. My tentative title is: The Origins of Altruism: How the Teachings of Jesus Transformed the Conscience of the West. As always, I have no idea if my publisher will go with it or [...]

BDEhrman2024-01-16T14:50:37-05:00January 17th, 2024|Book Discussions, Greco-Roman Religions and Culture, Historical Jesus|

Nazareth in the Time of Jesus: the Archaeological Record
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Nazareth in the Time of Jesus: the Archaeological Record

Historical Jesus, Mythicism

Nazareth in the Time of Jesus: the Archaeological Record

I have been talking about the question (which I bet never occurred to you before!) of whether there actually ever *was* a Nazareth in the days of Jesus. Many “mythicists” who deny that Jesus existed use as part of their argument that Nazareth itself was made up. I’ve discussed this view over two posts to show how the arguments are highly problematic, in particular those mounted by Reneé Salm based on what he claims are archaeological facts. Here I continue by showing what the archaeologists themselves have had to say about it. This too is taken from my 2012 book Did Jesus Exist: The Historical Argument for Jesus of Nazareth. ****************************** There is an even bigger problem however with Salms’s view, however. There are numerous compelling pieces of archaeological evidence that in fact Nazareth did exist in Jesus’ day, and that like other villages and towns in that part of Galilee, it was built on the hillside, near where the later rock-cut kokh tombs were built. For one thing, archaeologists have excavated a [...]

BDEhrman2023-12-24T10:44:31-05:00December 27th, 2023|Historical Jesus, Mythicism|

Did Nazareth Even Exist?

I’ve been thinking and talking about the town of Nazareth a lot lately. ‘Tis the season! Last weekend I did my quarterly webinar with Platinum blog members (you should look at the benefits of the Platinum level! Private webinars!) on whether Jesus was actually born in Nazareth (most of the New Testament appears to thing so). And that made me think of an even more radical view that I think is dead wrong. Many of you will know about the vocal group of non-believers called “mythicists,” who think that Jesus never existed at all, but was completely fabricated, a complete myth. No man Jesus. Invented wholesale. I wrote a book years ago trying to explain why that almost certainly just ain’t true. A lot of mythicists were pretty ticked off about my book and I received some rather venomous responses. But hey, what’s life without a little spice? In this case, sliced habeneros straight on the tongue…. In any event, some mythicists argue as evidence for the non-existence of Jesus the non-existence of the town [...]

BDEhrman2023-12-15T20:25:57-05:00December 21st, 2023|Historical Jesus, Mythicism, Public Forum|

So: Did Anyone Think of Jesus as a Miracle-Worker Before His Crucifixion?

This is the final, and most important, of my posts on the miracles of Jesus. In it I raise the question – without being able to come to an absolutely definitive answer – of whether Jesus was thought to be a miracle worker already in his life time or if, instead, miracles came to be ascribed to him only later by followers who believed he had been raised from the dead. I incline toward the latter view. To set the stage for and make sense of what I have to say, I include the final comments from the previous post: ****************************** In the other two Synoptics there is a different understanding, one that can be seen most clearly in the saying preserved in Matthew 11:2-6. Here we are told that John the Baptist, who is now in prison, has heard about “the deeds of Christ,” and sends some of his disciples to him to ask if he is the one to come at the end of time, or if there is someone else. Jesus replies: [...]

BDEhrman2023-11-27T14:56:27-05:00December 6th, 2023|Historical Jesus|

What’s the Point of Jesus’ Miracles?

I have been talking about the stories of Jesus' miracles, and am raising the question of whether they necessarily go all the way back to Jesus' lifetime, as tales told while he was still living. I pick up where I left off last time, after showing that Jesus' miracle-working abilities increased with the passing of time. ****************************** Not only does Jesus become increasingly miraculous with the passing of time, these miracles are all told in order to make a point. The stories about Jesus as the miraculous Wunderkind reveal that he really was the Son of God endowed with supernatural power straight from the womb; as a five-year old he was already the Lord of life and death; as the resurrected savior he was manifestly a superhuman being of giant proportions. In more general terms, the miracles in our later accounts repeatedly show that Jesus was the spectacular Son of God. He was far superior to all his enemies (even if these were only the aggravating kids down the street). He was more powerful than [...]

BDEhrman2023-11-27T14:51:35-05:00December 5th, 2023|Historical Jesus|

Was Jesus Considered a Miracle Worker During His Lifetime?

In my discussion of whether the historian can deal with the category of miracle, I’m now at the point where I can deal directly with the miracles ascribed to Jesus. This is an issue that I have dealt with in several books, including, most recently, Jesus Before the Gospels. It will take three posts for me to cover the waterfront here. This is how I began dealing with the issue in the book. ****************************** The Miracles of Jesus When one discusses the activities and deeds of Jesus, it is very hard indeed to avoid talking about his miracles. Miracles are everywhere in the Gospel accounts of Jesus’ life. He is miraculously born to a woman who has never had sexual relations. From the beginning of his public ministry to the end he does one miracle after the other, conquering nature, healing the sick, casting out demons, and raising the dead. So abundantly attested are Jesus’ miracle-working abilities that even scholars who are otherwise skeptical of the supernatural biases of our sources sometimes [...]

BDEhrman2023-11-27T14:32:08-05:00December 3rd, 2023|Historical Jesus, Public Forum|

How Exactly Could the Virgin-Born Jesus Have a Twin Brother?

I have mentioned in passing that there were some early Christians who thought that one of Jesus’ brothers, Jude (or Judas: both are translations of the same Greek word), was actually a twin. Not just of anyone, but of Jesus himself. Some readers have expressed surprise in the most succinct way possible, by asking: “Huh??” I talk about the matter in a couple of my previous publications, especially when speaking about early Christian apocryphal texts that deal with the missionary exploits of the apostles after Jesus’ death. We have several of these, including an Acts of Thomas. Like the other apocryphal Acts (such as the more famous Acts of Thecla – an account of the adventures of the apostle Paul's most famous legendary convert, an upper-class woman named, obviously, Thecla), this one celebrates the virtue of celibacy and sexual renunciation, and it actually uses the idea that Jesus’ had an *identical* twin to advance its views. I’ll explain how it does that in the next post. In this one I’ll deal directly [...]

BDEhrman2023-11-15T10:09:18-05:00November 12th, 2023|Christian Apocrypha, Historical Jesus|

A Bizarre Scene in the Gospel of Philip: Jesus Kissing Mary

Did Jesus and Mary Magdalene have an affair? Now that I've mentioned the Gospel of Philip, I can't help but repost a blog from a few years ago, dealing with one of the most intriguing, not to say titillating, passages from this otherwise somewhat obscure Valentinian Gospel. My original post on the topic was in a thread that was discussing whether Jesus was celibate or not, and I argued that the modern idea that he and Mary were intimately involved is ... a modern idea (without any foundation other than wild imagination and wishful thinking ) A number of readers responded to my post by pointing out that the non-canonical Gospel of Philip sure does seem to *say* they were intimate! So, what do I have to say about that? I have a reasonably full discussion of the relevant issues in my book Peter, Paul, and Mary Magdalene. In the book I put the discussion in the context of – yes, you guessed it -- Dan Brown’s Da Vinci Code, the one source many people [...]

BDEhrman2023-10-29T17:13:17-04:00November 5th, 2023|Christian Apocrypha, Historical Jesus|

Another Mythicist View of Jesus’ Brothers
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Another Mythicist View of Jesus’ Brothers

Historical Jesus

Another Mythicist View of Jesus’ Brothers

In my previous post I pointed out that mythicists have a real problem on their hands when it comes to insisting that Jesus didn’t exist (well, they actually have a *boatload* of problems; but this is one of them): Paul actually knew, personally, Jesus’ own brother, James. It’s hard to say that Jesus never lived if he in fact had a brother…. It doesn’t solve the problem to say that this was in fact Jesus’ cousin, since, well, he would still then be the cousin of (the real) Jesus (!) (plus the word Paul uses is “brother” not “cousin”) and it doesn’t work to say that he is Jesus’ brother meaning he is a member of the Christian church (since Paul differentiates him from himself and Peter by calling James the “brother” – and both Peter and Paul were also members of the church!). Mythicists have tried other approaches, including the one I discussed yesterday, of trying to claim that there was a group of fervent missionaries in Jerusalem called “the brothers of the Lord,” [...]

BDEhrman2023-10-12T17:21:29-04:00October 17th, 2023|Historical Jesus|

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