(32 votes, average: 4.94 out of 5)
Loading...Easter celebrates the greatest irony of the Christian religion: those who worship Jesus do not believe what he taught but what his followers taught about him after his death. That is especially true about one key question the Christian faith addresses: what does it mean to be saved after we die? Around the world today, billions of Christians believe that Jesus died and then on Easter, was raised from the dead and taken up to heaven to live with God. As a corollary, they believe that when they die, they too will go to live with God. That is not at all what Jesus thought.
Jesus did not believe a person’s soul would live on after death, either to experience bliss in the presence of God above, or to be tormented for sins in the fires of hell below. Jesus did not believe the soul would go anywhere after death. As a Jew of the first century he did not think the soul could exist outside the body.
Christians two thousand years later do not understand what it means to be human as Jews did in Jesus’ day. Most Christians view the soul as…
Jesus’ followers adopted a radially different view of the afterlife than Jesus. Want to see what that means and how it happened? Join the blog and you’ll get all of this post, along with four other posts each and every week — with archives going back nine years. And even better: every penny of your small membership fee goes to charity! Click here for membership options
[Questions not related to the post]
I am currently watching the Yale New Testament Lectures by Prof Dale Martin. Is this what they mostly teach on Universities? I know some Evangalical Seminaries diagree on like the authorship of NT and I would like a confirmation on the consensus of what scholars think about this lecture series.
Ps. My Bible knowledge is sunday school and I do not know these part of scholarships.
Yes, the views he sets forth are standard, even though he is more knowledgable about them than most…
I personally think the Yale series on the old testament is much better. Christine Hayes is really pretty good. The New Testament guy on the other hand is a little bit disorganized if you asked me.
“Pie in the sky, bye and bye”? In Luke 17:20,21 Jesus tells us “the kingdom of God is within you”. That Augustinian belief of “original sin” and literalism (5th c.) died when allegorical Adam was crucified BY Jesus. The new Adam is alive in us today, here to stay, if we will dwell there. Isaiah says “Cease ye from man whose breath is in his nostrils . . .” (2:22). The very first “Adam” (Gen 1:26, in Hebrew, but rendered “man” in English) didn’t contain even a pinch of dust when Elohim spoke them into being! ¿Can the “image and likeness” of God, be so unlike God, as to be made of dust? Jesus nailed up the allegory of Dusty, Adam, of Gen 2:7. The Adam/Man of Gen 1:26 is alive forevermore. So, Plato, or Bible? QED?
Did the early Christians and 1st century Jews figured out a solution to the nitty-gritty problem of how at the resurrection of the body, God would reanimate the corpses of those eaten by wild animals, which in turn were eaten by humans, hence the particles of the original corpses became incorporated into bodies of other individuals? Similar conundrum when corpses were burnt to ashes, which ended up dispersed into the soil, then taken up by crops which were then eaten by humans. I won’t envy God tasked with sorting out which particle belongs to which person!
We don’t know how they discussed it in the first century but by the end of the second century there was fascinating discussion of it among Christians, such as AThenagoras. I talk about these issues in my book Heaven and Hell.
Prof Ehrman,
According to Jews of the first century (at least Paul, and maybe Jesus in Mark 12:25) weren’t the resurrected forms of humans essentially new, perfected vessels that somehow retained our identities? Therefore one can make the argument (and philosophers have since before Jesus, as with the ship of Theseus) the particles that belonged to your Earthly self themselves weren’t an issue, if God recalled and restored according to the information that defines us? By modern analogy, the way existing software might be transferred over to new hardware. It’s a vexing question to say the least – corporeal, yet somehow imperishable.
I’m going to have to check out your new book!
Paul certainly thought the resurrected body was glorified and made immortal. Jesus never talks about it, and either do other Jews, that I know of. Later Christians did though. It became a big issue.
Didn’t you say Jesus believed in the resurrection of the dead? I found meohanion’s reference to Mark 12.23 quite interesting. “Is not this why you are wrong, that you know neither the scriptures nor the power of God? 12.25For when they rise from the dead, they neither marry nor are given in marriage, but are like angels in heaven.” This struck me similar to Paul. 1 Cor 15: What is sown is perishable, what is raised is imperishable.25 15:43 It is sown in dishonor, it is raised in glory; it is sown in weakness, it is raised in power; 15:44 it is sown a natural body, it is raised a spiritual body. If there is a natural body, there is also a spiritual body.”
It seems that early Jews believed in collective punishment. The community was responsible for the enforcement of religious norms, and the existence of sinful activity within the community represents a failure for which the whole that could be justly punished. Could the influence of Greek philosophy, Hellenization, in the 2nd century BCE, have led to a more individualistic conception of justice? It seems to me that Jewish apocalypticism could reflect an absorption of Greek culture, as well as a reaction against Greek rule.
It’s good to have such an important point made so concisely and clearly! Paul and his visionary “Christ Jesus” contributed enormously to that Hellenized view, is the impression I’ve gotten. The historical Jesus might not even have had much truck with gentiles, or have had much to do with the sick, since gentiles and the sick would have been “unclean”. If Jesus was at all popular isn’t it likely that he would have been more Maccabean in his outlook and teaching than not? An emphasis on purity and strict observance of the law? Shunning unclean things and unclean people? The Pauline Christ Jesus reversed all that, or rather Paul did, since he apparently rankled at the strictures of the law, had a Greek outlook as well as a sophisticated command of Greek– the language mirrored the manner of his thought? I’d say, the historical and authentic Jesus is dead and buried in more ways than one.
Bart, although a bit out of season, have you ever written about why Christmas is always on December 25th? Anything to do with Emperor Constantine? Thanks!
I have, and concluded that there’s not a clear and certain answer.
Was there a theory of souls in Jesus’ time and subsequently?
For example, was there discussion of whether souls were created with the body or were pre-existing in some supernatural realm? Or whether souls were like or unlike angels or other extramundane beings?
Yes, in different contexts/environments; the typical Greek view was different from the typical Jewish. I talk about this in my book Heaven and Hell.
Talked to a friend who’s a deacon of the Swedish church (deacons in Sweden are social workers who work for the Church). Apparently Jesus celebrated the Easter meal on Thursday, was crucified on Friday and resurrected on Sunday. So I guess they wish to harmonize Matthew (Easter meal) and John (Jesus crucified while the Easter lambs are being slaughtered). I suppose it wouldn’t be difficult to find lamb in Jerusalem on Thursday, but did the lambs need to slaughtered at the Temple or was that just an optional extra?
THat’s the standard view. Though I suppose everyone would call it the Passover meal, not the Easter meal. This is the Synoptics version. Yes, for Jews animals could be sacrificed to God only in the Temple.
Passover and Easter have the same name in Swedish (påsk).
Glad påsk 😇
I’m in a “fools rush in” mode today, so I want to take issue with the idea that no Jews believed the soul lived outside the body in late Second Temple times. For example, in Wisdom of Solomon, “the souls of the righteous are in the hands of God . . . they are at peace” (3:1,3). While the timing is ambiguous (as the NRSV note says), I read this as saying that the souls of the righteous are enjoying their reward now, until the day of judgment when they will be reunited with their bodies. (Many Orthodox Jews believe this today.) Certainly in Wis. 2 there is a sense that the wicked can torment the body but they can’t touch the soul. There wasn’t any one dominant view among the Jews just then, though all seem to agree that bodily resurrection (if it comes) comes at the final judgment.
That being so, I have to ask why the gospels, having taken a different view, include quotes from Jesus that counter their position.
Books such as the Wisdom of Solomon were written in Greek in Greek-saturated settings (such as Alexandria, Egypt), and were not then and have never since been accepted as Hebrew Scriptures. Maybe Dr. Ehrman was thinking only of Palestinian Judaism—Jesus’ context—and not the emerging philosophical Judaism of the Diaspora (which went on to incorporate some Greek thought into rabbinic Judaism just as happened with Christianity)?
It’s the only thing I can think of; because I think you make a valid point.
I remember you quoting the story of the sheep and the goats to show that proto-Christians accepted the idea that a human being could be righteous.
Then I was listening to Dale Martin’s course online and he was talking about the parents of John the Baptist parent and the gospel of Luke itself said that they were righteous.
“In the time of Herod king of Judea there was a priest named Zechariah, who belonged to the priestly division of Abijah; his wife Elizabeth was also a descendant of Aaron. Both of them were righteous in the sight of God, observing all the Lord’s commands and decrees blamelessly”.
So, this would seem to contradict later Christian ideas.
Dr. Ehrman, do you think that Jesus was actually a Pharisee, and that this was the basis / influence for his belief in a coming resurrection, given that he was (apparently) not an Essene, and the Sadducees did not believe in any form of afterlife? I’ve always thought that he probably was, which, if true, would be ironic, given the manner in which the Pharisees are lambasted throughout the New Testament. Or, were there other Jewish sects of his time that held similar beliefs but were not Pharisees?
No, I don’t think he was a Pharisee; and yes, lots of Jews had similar views to PHarisees without being one of them.
Somewhere at school I heard that one of the reasons for lambasting the Pharisees is that they were the biggest competition with the Jewish Christians. Do you think there’s evidence to support that idea?
Yes, that’s widely thought. AFter the destruction of the Temple in 70 CE the other parties died out (those who weren’t actually destroyed in the war).
I’m interested in what you said in this link: https://lithub.com/on-early-judaism-and-its-conception-of-the-afterlife/
“According to Josephus, the Pharisees believed that after death good souls pass “into another body.” This may sound to modern ears like reincarnation, but it is usually thought that Josephus means they held to the doctrine of resurrection: the soul would not remain naked but would be re-embodied. Wicked souls, on the other hand will “suffer eternal punishment.””
If Jesus were more allied with the Pharisees, then wouldn’t Christians have inherited this thinking?
Other concurrent ideas: the Bahir is attributed to a first century sage.
“There is a striking affinity between the symbolism of Sefer HaBahir, on the one hand, and the speculations of the Gnostics, and the theory of the “aeons,” on the other. The fundamental problem in the study of the book is: is this affinity based on an as yet unknown historical link between the gnosticism of the mishnaic and talmudic era and the sources from which the material in Sefer HaBahir is derived? Or should it possibly be seen as a purely psychological phenomenon, i.e., as a spontaneous upsurge from the depths of the soul’s imagination, without any historical continuity?”
Bahir, Encyclopedia Judaica, Keter Publishing
Josephus is usually thought to be tailoring his descriptions of the Jewish sects to his Roman audience, explaining what they believed in terms familiar to Romans, and, especially, downplaying their apocalyptic elements. So it’s a bit hard to know how to take this kind of description.
Josephus on the Pharisees in Antiquities:
“and when they determine that all things are done by fate, they do not take away the freedom from men of acting as they think fit; since their notion is, that it hath pleased God to make a temperament, whereby what he wills is done, but so that the will of man can act virtuously or viciously. They also believe that souls have an immortal rigor in them, and that under the earth there will be rewards or punishments, according as they have lived virtuously or viciously in this life; and the latter are to be detained in an everlasting prison, but that the former shall have power to revive and live again; on account of which doctrines they are able greatly to persuade the body of the people; and whatsoever they do about Divine worship, prayers, and sacrifices, they perform them according to their direction; insomuch that the cities give great attestations to them on account of their entire virtuous conduct, both in the actions of their lives and their discourses also. ” Sounds like early Christianity but perhaps with a little reincarnation in the mix.
“Sounds like early Christianity but perhaps with a little reincarnation in the mix.”
TheologyMaven,
I’m not sure this necessarily follows. If Josephus was writing for a Roman audience, their concept of the afterlife, good life or bad, was an incorporeal awareness and in writings describing it (Lucian of Samosata, highly recommended!), it was this lack of physical existence, not the lack of being on “the surface” that the shades keep complaining about.
So that would be a striking idea to a Roman audience not requiring reincarnation (on earth): physical experience “and life” albeit in the afterlife (in “Hades”).
Just my thoughts, no expertise here.
This is indeed puzzling I accepted Josephus at his word when talking about Pharisees. If indeed he was coloring all his descriptions for the Romans, then wouldn’t he not have said this “souls have an immortal rigor in them, and that under the earth there will be rewards or punishments, according as they have lived virtuously or viciously in this life; and the latter are to be detained in an everlasting prison, but that the former shall have power to revive and live again” because neither physical resurrection nor reincarnation were Roman ideas?
I’m not sure!
Prof Ehrman,
I have also thought that Jesus was probably a Pharisee. Please why do you think otherwise, and what Jewish sect are you most likely to associate him with?
Most Jews were not connected with any sect at all, so I’m not sure there’s any reason to think Jesus was. He does seem to share a lot with Pharisees and Essenes, but there were not many members of either sect and Jesus appears to have fundamental disatreements with both (he condemns Pharisees a lot in the Gospels, as you know; I imagine some of those passages are authentic.
But maybe those passages were added because of Jewish Christians’ later competition with the Pharisees. Like asking Irenaeus about Gnostics, not exactly the straight scoop. David Bevin has this post on Jesus and the Pharisees which is a different take.. https://www.jerusalemperspective.com/6618/
Between later competition with the Pharisees, and what Jesus might have said in terms of gentle nudges to his fellow who were trying to be good.. I think it’s hard to tell what Jesus really thought of them.
Interesting take @dankoh
Looking forward to Barts comment
I have to agree with dankoh – I don’t think it can be said that the Jews of Jesus’ time (and certainly not before) had only one view of the afterlife. There is both archaeological and textual evidence (in the Bible itself) for the practice of necromancy, for example. It may be that many Jews believed a person completely ceased to exist after death, but humankind has always had an intuition that the dead continue to exist in some form, whether or not they call that a “soul”. Belief in some sort of afterlife is a universal phenomenon, and care and provision for the dead goes back to when we shared the planet with other human species. The Jews didn’t live in a vacuum, and like all peoples throughout history, were influenced by the cultures and ideas around them.
Excellent post Bart. To understand certain themes the way you do now in comparison to how you were raised is truly inspiring.
Thanks for this, Dr. E. Very well put and I was really drawn to it.
Curiously, “the souls of the righteous are in the hands of God . . . they are at peace” (3:1,3)” doesn’t necessarily imply the souls are the Hellenistic/non-corporeally oriented form of souls.
I read it as “those who are righteous [now] are at peace [now],” (like an inner peace) which is directly in line with much of what’s in the wisdom literature regarding the behaviors and feelings of the wicked and the righteous.
What do you think about the theory that 7Q5 from the Dead sea scrolls is an early fragment of the Gospel of Mark? How accepted is this idea among scholars today?
No, that’s been disproved.
Great stuff! Two thoughts/questions come to mind. 1) Does this then make Judaism a more convincing belief? And 2) “Within decades very few of his followers believed what he did”. Was his own death and resurrection the overwhelming conviction within those few believers to cause essentially an explosive growth,there after, in this new found religion?
1. Convincing for whom? That’s always the question. 2. The resurrection, yes; the death, no. I talk about it all in my book The Triumph of Christianity.
“Jesus did not believe the soul would go anywhere after death. As a Jew of the first century he did not think the soul could exist outside the body.”
Hmm, you’re ascribing this view to Jesus on the basis that he was a first century Jew?
In “Heaven and Hell,” you note that Jews living before and contemporaneously with Jesus held to a range of views about the afterlife, including the view of an “interim” state between death and resurrection. You were more circumspect there about what Jesus may have thought concerning an interim state, suggesting, “This [the question of an interim state] was never an issue with the historical Jesus, so far as we know. Possibly Jesus never spoke about what would happen in the meantime because he thought there would not be much of a meantime: the Kingdom of God was to arrive right away” (183).
If Jesus never addressed the question (so far as we know), and for the reason you suggest, why not remain circumspect – or have you since come across evidence to support this stronger claim?
Both on the basis that this is what Jews at his time believed and on the basis that this is his consistent teaching in his sayings.
There’s a disconnect between my question and your response.
“…this is what Jews at his time believed…”
It’s not the *only* view. As you’ve written and as I’ve already mentioned, it’s one among a range of views that Jews at Jesus’s time believed, so why ascribe *this* view to Jesus?
“…and on the basis that this is his consistent teaching in his sayings.”
Which sayings? You don’t cite them in “Heaven and Hell,” where you take a more measured view and say that Jesus doesn’t address the issue. If you now think that Jesus did address the issue, which sayings address it?
Sorry — I don’t have the thread of the comments you’re responding to; you’ll need do tell me what the back and forth is about before I can come back to your forth.
When you were a christian, how did you justify such a discrepancy? After all, modern day christians essentially adhere to a pagan view of the afterlife like you said, as opposed to the jewish idea of the afterlife held by Jesus. What was your view of the afterlife at the time?
Also how is a spiritual view of the afterlife consistent with the creed, which has an explicit reference to an actual kingdom on earth? “He shall come again with glory to judge the living and the dead, and His kingdom shall have no end ” (if he is supposed to come back again, that has to be on earth, not in a spiritual afterlife).
1. I suppose I didn’t think there *was* a discrepancy. 2. It is claimed that the kingdom will be in heaven, after the earth is judged.
Dr Ehrman, Why must the kingdom be something that has not yet taken place? “To him who loves us and freed us from our sins by his blood,6and made us to be a kingdom, priests serving his God and Father”
This of course is a quote from Revelation chapter 1. Is it not obvious that in his mind the kingdom was very much present, And that he was a citizen of it?
Is this not consistent with Luke/acts as well?
Luke and Acts are certainly heading that way. It’s the direction things were tkaing fifty years after Jesus’ death. But not during his life or soon after, if our sources are to be trusted.
“Not during his life or soon afterward, if our sources are to be trusted.”
May I ask, what sources? Mark and Matthew and the Pauline epistles I assume. Are we to argue that a paradigm shift occurs between them and Luke/Acts? In a span of 15 years?
I appreciate that you concede that Luke/Acts and Revelation lean toward the idea that the Kingdom was present, may I ask, how would that have changed your worldview in the time in your life that you were a fundamentalist? How could that change the worldview of premillennialists today?
It starts with the later Pauline letters it continues (but not in a huge way) in Luke-Acts, is more pronounced in John, and is very thorough by the Gospel of Thomas. But (a) developments like this are *never* linear: they happen differently and in different rates in different times and places and (b) shifts can happen *VERY quickly. Think of the shift in governmental policies and majority opinions when it comes to politics and social agenda. I do not think that I would call it a “paradigm” shift though. Usually that term is used of totalizing shift that is complete and irreversible.
Dr.Ehrman,
Does Judaism teach people are just “asleep,” waiting to be raised from the dead, after they die?
In Christianity,the common thought is you go straight to heaven or hell,right?
This probably has something to do with the “soul” aspect being prevelant in Christianity,I’m guessing.
It depends which Jew and which CHristian you’re asking. Most Jews think death is the end of a human’s existence; most Christians think the soul goes to its eternal fate.
How do you explain Jesus’s promise to the thief on the cross?
An interesting point is that the belief in a bodily resurrection alines well with both mormon and jehovas witnesses teachings. JW’s teachings are a bit closer as they believe people are dead and no spirit going anywhere, where as Mormons believe you are going to a temporary holding place (paradise or spirit prison).
I think the passage in Luke is not something Jesus himself said, but that it certainly represents Luke’s view (50 years or so after Jesus’ death). I talk about it, of course, in my book Heaven and Hell.
Bart: “Within decades very few of his followers believed what he did about the coming kingdom of God to come to resurrected faithful here on earth.”
Already Paul seems to have started to believe that he would go to be with the Lord at his death so certainly such beliefs began to infiltrate early on. But I think a sizable majority continued to believe in a Kingdom of God to be established on earth. Does anyone else really start to criticize this belief before Eusebius in the fourth century?
That’s a good question. I’m not sure off the top of my head. The view came to be known as “chiliasm,” but I don’t recall who first opposed it.
On the contrary, Easter is about what Jesus taught: the bodily resurrection of the dead.
The ancient Jews believed in a resurrection of the body. In death there is no hope for man but for the call of God to life.
Job 14:7-15
For there is hope for a tree,
When it is cut down, that it will sprout again,
And its shoots will not fail.
“Though its roots grow old in the ground,
And its stump dies in the dry soil,
At the scent of water it will flourish
And produce sprigs like a plant.
“But a man dies and lies prostrate.
A person passes away, and where is he?
“As water evaporates from the sea,
And a river becomes parched and dried up,
So a man lies down and does not rise.
Until the heavens no longer exist,
He will not awake nor be woken from his sleep.
“Oh that You would hide me in Sheol,
That You would conceal me until Your wrath returns to You,
That You would set a limit for me and remember me!
“If a man dies, will he live again?
All the days of my struggle I will wait
Until my relief comes.
“You will call, and I will answer You;
You will long for the work of Your hands.
Might this idea explain why the gospels changed what Jesus (and Paul) preached? They were expecting the end of the world to happen any moment now, so it didn’t matter if there was a slight delay before the bodily resurrection. But as it became clear this was going to be delayed, the Jesus Movement cast about for a way to provide immediate rewards and punishments while waiting for the final judgment.
I got some sense of this from your “Heaven and Hell.”
On my iPhone the blog is chopped off even after logging in.
It ends here. “Christians two thousand years later do not understand what it means to be human as Jews did in Jesus’ day. Most Christians view the soul as “
Shouldn’t we take the Egyptian beliefs into this equation as well???
Since they stayed there for some hundreds years they for sure was familiar with beliefs of an afterlife. In fact 3 types of afterlife can be found there.
“Egyptian religious doctrines included three afterlife ideologies: belief in an underworld, eternal life, and rebirth of the soul.”
Based on that I would assume later focus on this is because of what you address here, the talk about suffering. I just find it hard to believe it was non existent for them before Jesus death and Greek social impact.
Maybe it is like you say, that it was something like described in the dead Sea scrolls. Maybe it was more. In anyway they had some care for the dead taken their culture of Bury before sunset, building tombs and caring for the dead in general.
I thought about including Egyptian religion in my study of heaven and hell, but the more I researched and thought about it the more I realized that in fact neither Jews nor Christians were much influenced by Egyptian views at the time. They are very very different indeed.
“Jesus did not believe a person’s soul would live on after death, either to experience bliss in the presence of God above, or to be tormented for sins in the fires of hell below.”
This is conjecture, not fact.
“Neither belief – bliss for souls in heaven above or punishment in the depths below– was taught by Jesus.”
But . . .
“And Jesus said unto him, Verily I say unto thee, Today shalt thou be with me in paradise.”
Luke 23:43
Nope not a conjecture; it may not be true, but I’m not guessing. I’ve done a ton of research on the problem. If you’re interested, you may want to read my book on Heaven and Hell where I discuss it all (including, of course, Luke 23:43).
Dr. Ehrman,
In his later letters, when Paul presumes he may die prior to Jesus’ return, he seems more favorable to an intermediate state between earthly death and the bodily resurrection. For Paul, will this in-between stage be like the Greek’s immortality of the soul? Will we have some type of a body, or any abilities?
He doesn’t say.
Hi Professor, it does seem reasonable to me that people would interpret hell from Jesus’ sayings, could you please address the following? I realize tough to address all so whatever you can manage appreciate it.
Matt: 8 11:12
Mark 9 43-47
Luke 16 22-31
Matt 25: 41
Matt 7: 19
Matt 13 40:43
I’m not able to answer six questions at once. 🙂 Could you pick one of the verses, explain why it causes problems for my view, and then I can respond to that? (As you probably know, I deal with these in my book where on Heaven and Hell)
Thanks. If all the verses are addressed in the book, I’ll look for explanations there and come back if seem insufficient.
I gather from your response that none of these verses pose a problem for your views.
Nope!
What do you think of the parable about the rich man and Lazarus (Luke 16:19-31).
I don’t think Jesus spoke it and that it is a parable, not a statement of reality. I discuss it, of course, in my book Heaven and Hell.
Your thought that Jesus believed in no ‘spiritual afterlife independent of life on earth’ appears premised on what I think is yours as well as others brought up in fundamentalist background misunderstanding of his teaching regarding the Kingdom of Heaven.
The Kingdom that Jesus taught was imminent is certainly on the physical plain of the earth, but it does not entail total absence of births and deaths, total absence of sickness, and total absence unpleasant physical phenomenon,
Best is to view Jesus teachings and views on Kingdom of God as same as Jeremiah’s ‘New Covenant’ (31:30 where there is no mention of abolition of death) and Zechariah’s ‘new Jerusalem’ ( 13+ which he explicitly describes as including plagues and unpleasant natural phenomena) and Isaiah ‘New Heaven and Earth’ (65 where prophet explicitly states births and deaths continue)
I actually wasn’t brought up as a fundamentalist; but even if I were, I don’t see how it would be relevant, since the view I have has been common among scholars in Europe and the US for over a century, starting Albert Schweitzer. What does fundamentalism have to do it?
So Bart, what about the verse where Jesus says “in my father’s house there are many mansions (aka rooms.) I go there to prepare a place for you.” Doesn’t this imply he means heaven?
There is also the bizarre scene in Matthew where the dead rise after the crucifixion. Don’t all these zombies wandering around Jerusalem conflict with both Jewish and Christian views of the afterlife? Why did the author of Matthew include this scene in his gospel when it could be so easily disproved? (If it really happened it would have been mentioned by every contemporary historian.)
Yes, by the time you get to the Gospel of John, Jesus is no longer preaching a future resurrection of the dead but eternal life now, and a spiritual reward in heaven after death. My point is that this is not what Jesus himself taught. And no, I doubt if Matthew worried about being disproved. ONe should always reflect on the fact that he convinced just about *all* of his readers for 2000 years!
One more question: The verse in Matthew actually mentions the saints rising from their tombs. Didn’t the idea of saints come much later in Christianity? Were there any Jewish saints buried in Jerusalem in 30 AD?
“Saint” simply means “holy one,” and is a term/concept that had been around for a long time –already in the OT.
Hi Dr. Ehrman,
I’m a recent subscriber and I greatly enjoy your blog! Here is my issue/Q: The Christian religion that developed after Jesus died came to believe he was both fully human and fully divine. He lowered himself to human form so that he could suffer/die to take away the sins of the world. He was physically resurrected and taken into heaven. The reward for believers would be an eternal afterlife in a new body, spent in heaven in the presence of God. MY ISSUE– in this Heaven, is there any reason why Jesus the God and Jesus as Man must remain joined? 1/3rd of the Godhead became human for about 30 years to save us from our sins. But after all the NT promised has been accomplished, was this lowering for all eternity still necessary? In my layman’s search for answers, I have not come across any theological explanations why God must remain joined to Man in the afterlife in Jesus’s physical body. My question: Is it the general Christian view that Jesus must remain in a physical body throughout eternity, and if so, why?
I think the idea is not that the pre-incarnate Christ entered into a man or became partly man: he *became* flesh. That is, he transformed into a human; so that’s what he is — he’s not joined to a man but he is an incarnate (in-fleshed) divine being. It’s a bit tricky to figure out in part because it’s not clear how early church fathers think about Christ in the present, up in heaven. Early on, Christain teachers thought that Christ was returning to earth stillas the human he was when he left it. How that affects things like “omnipresence,” I don’t know!
Prof Ehrman,
Q1. By definition, please, what is the difference between these groups? – Apostolic Fathers and Church Fathers.
Q2. Which of these groups would be responsible for the writing of the NT canon (apart from the undisputed Pauline epistles) and the determination of the NT canon?
Thank you.
1. The term “church fathers” usually refers to orthodox Christian authors from the second to the sixth century (or so). The term “apostolic fathers” is a subgroup of that larger group, proto-orthodox fathers mainly from the second century. They include the authors/writings of 1 and 2 Clement (two different authors, neither of them Clement!), the letters of Ignatius, Polycarp, the Martyrdom of Polycarp, the Didache, the letter of Barnabas, the Shepherd of Hermas, Papias, possibly Quadratus, and the letter to Diognetus 2. None of them wrote any of the books of the NT canon. They are called “apostolic fathers” becuasee they were thought, traditionally (and wrongly) to have been associated with/followers of the apostles.
I should have said your training as a Christian was as a fundamentalist rather than that you were brought up as a fundamentalist
One characteristic I see in fundamentalist is a rather ‘magical’ view of Jesus .
Obviously that he can be born without a father and his ‘physical’ body can resurrect .
Anyway they see think Jesus (or Son of Man) can or could or will in the future somehow ON EARTH abolish unpleasant natural phenomena, stop human aging (or at least physical death), stop the common cold and hay fever, etc
This is really different from views of prior prophets Jeremiah, Isaiah, Zechariah and tho these prophets looked forward to new covenant, new Jerusalem, new heaven and earth as strongly as Jesus looked forward to Kingdom of Heaven, It does not look like the prior prophets expected the new ‘whatever’ to do away with tornados births deaths and so on
Anyway I do not think there is enough evidence to conclude that Jesus view of Kingdom of God was so radically different from that of his predecessors
My view is that Jesus’ view of teh kingdom is very much in line with that of his predecessors. But he is most influenced by those who are *closest* to him in time — just as more people are influenced by the views of modern religious figures than those living, even int he same tradition, centuries ago. (And my having once been a fundamentalist has nothing to do with that view. 🙂 )
Dr. Ehrman,
In 1 Thess. 4 the implication is that those who have died experience no conscious existence until they are resurrected at Jesus’ return, is that correct?
No, it doesn’t indicate whether they are conscious or not.
Dr. Ehrman,
There was an argument that the James in 1 Cor. 15:7 is James, the brother of Jesus because if it were another James, it would have read i.e. James, son of (so and so). What do you think about this?
I think it’s absolutely right.
Dr. Ehrman,
Do you think that the appearance of the spirit of Samuel is evidence of a Jewish belief in an intermediate state?
No. I talk about it in my book on Heaven and Hell.
Dr. Ehrman,
So the first evidence we have anywhere in Jewish heritage for an intermediate state would be when Paul alludes to it in 2 Cor. 5 and Phil. 1?
No, it goes much farther back, to 1 Enoch. But that’s the earliest in the Christain tradition.
Dr. Ehrman,
I read that the standard dating for 1 Enoch is 100 BCE. Do you agree that’s the correct date?
No. It is third century BCE. (It consists of different texts woven together: the part I’m referring to is the Book of the Watchers, which is ch.s 1-36).
Dr. Ehrman,
I was watching a YouTube video of you in an interview on “Heaven and Hell.” There was a question about Hebrews 11 and how the writer alludes to Jesus saving people in Hades. In 1 Thess. 4, in Jesus’ return, Is Jesus also rescuing the souls in Sheol or Hades as he resurrects them?
All it says there is that the dead in Christ rise up. It doesn’t give other information (e.g. if they were actually resident elsewhere; or if they simply didn’t exist in the interim; or anything else.)
I read a column in a newspaper about the idea that people write in favor of religion for the religious and others write opposing religion for the atheist, non-believer but few write for the quasi-religious. Do you think there is a place for that?
Big place for it!
Dr. Ehrman,
On a religious talk show, N.T. Wright said something that seemed very odd. He said that Paul, at the time of his conversion, was in meditation about the throne chariot in Ezekiel where the prophet sees the whirling wheels. Is there any evidence for this?
Ha!! Really?? Surely he said that this is an option he (Wright) has considered, not that it’s something that happened.
Dr. Ehrman,
Do you think Paul knew the book of Wisdom? Does it indeed feature an intermediate state?
I”m not sure. Which passage are you thinking of?