Loading...In my previous post I started explaining that if you were to read 1 Peter, and didn’t see his name as the first word, you would probably never suspect it was written by Jesus’ disciple; on the contrary, it sounds a lot like something Paul wold have written. (All this is taken, in edited form, from my book Forgery and Counterforgery [Oxford University Press]; this is an academic book, but I’ve tried to make it completely legible to non-scholars.)
It has nonetheless become virtually de rigueur among scholars to discount the Paulinisms of 1 Peter, as evidenced in such major commentaries as those of Goppelt, Achtemeier, and Elliott, and especially in such a full-length study as that of German scholar Jens Herzer. It should be pointed out
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What are we to make of these passages in Matthew 27? Is Matthew claiming that Jesus was not the only resurrected being? Doesn’t this upset the entire premise of Jesus’s unique status?
50 Then Jesus cried again with a loud voice and breathed his last.[r] 51 At that moment the curtain of the temple was torn in two, from top to bottom. The earth shook, and the rocks were split. 52 The tombs also were opened, and many bodies of the saints who had fallen asleep were raised. 53 After his resurrection they came out of the tombs and entered the holy city and appeared to many.
Technically these people are not “resurrected” the way Jesus was, for matthew or other Christians. They come back to life with the assumption they will die again later, they ar not made eternal divine beings. The better word for that kind of “being raised” is “resuscitation” rather than “resurrection.” But it’s such a strange story (among other things: why are they reaised but don’t come out of their tombs for three days?!?) that even now some evangelicals who believe the Bible is “inerrant” claim that it didn’t really happen.
I don’t suppose there are any good reasons to suspect that the author of Acts is also the author of 1 Peter, other than both Acts and 1 Peter try to reconcile the teachings of Paul and Peter?
None, basically. Different writings styles, different themes, and, importantly, very different soteriologies. 1 Peter is intent on Jesus providing a sacrifice/atonement for sins, and Acts gets rid of all traces of atonement (along with the Gospel of Luke)
Hello Bart/Dr Ehrman.
I read a comment where someone said that believing in the concept of “no heaven is found in the Old Testament” is absurd.
This person also said that if someone were to read the Psalms carefully there are various references to the afterlife with the divine.
How would you respond to this?
Thanks.
I’d suggest he read my book “Heaven and Hell” to see what I say bout thost passages. 🙂 He is probably referring mainly to “Sheol,” and appears to think it means something other than it does. Check out my book and you’ll see.
Helli Bart/Dr Ehrman
When did you first realize and finally come to the conclusion that Jesus never taught eternal torment for the lost souls?
Thanks.
Some years ago I suppose. When you simply read the passages iwthout presupposing that he is speaking about “hell” in terms that people today think (and that we were all raised thinking) you realize he never talks about torment for eternity; he talks about “destruction” and “annihilation,” not torture.
I am a lawyer, meaning I am an advocate, so everything I write has a point of view. Or as Dale Martin might say, “an ax to grind”. Hence, it doesn’t bother me that the authors of the New Testament had an ax to grind. Indeed, it means I don’t have to tie my faith to acceptance of a particular point of view expressed in the New Testament. My view about Paul is that he definitely had an ax to grind, and so did the other authors. Context is that which is scarce. No, I didn’t have that insight (whatever it means). But everything has to be viewed in context. Including the New Testament and its authors.
About a year ago, I noticed that the epistles of 2 Peter and Jude have a lot in common. Some web searches brought up all kinds of conflicting ideas about it. What do scholars think about this? Was one of them copying from the other? One website I was looking at suggested they both had content from 1 Enoch. What is your thinking about all this?
Wow! Very interesting. Thank you. I think another option is that people dreamed that Jesus had been resurrected and believed their dreams to be true like people often believe their dreams to be true even today. Look at some of the dreams in the Old Testament.