Loading...Did all the early Christian groups agree that Jesus’ death and resurrection brought salvation? Why was Paul gathering money for the Christians in Jerusalem? And, well, what do I myself now do on Sunday mornings since I don’t go to church? This is this Weekly Readers’ Mailbag, with the normal range of unrelated but interesting questions! If you have a question you would like me to address, ask away!
QUESTION:
To which of the other early variants of Christianity does this creed (1 Cor 15:3-5) apply just as well as to the proto-orthodox? If it applies to most just as well, then Paul could have been the founder of the proto-orthodox variant of Christianity.
RESPONSE:
Ah, good question! Just to refresh everyone’s memory, this is the passage where Paul indicates that “Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures” and that “he was raised from the dead on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures.” So the question is: did all early Christians agree that it as the death and resurrection of Jesus that brought salvation?
Many Christians today would be surprised even by the question. Of course that’s what brings salvation! That’s what it means to be Christian, to believe precisely that. Right?
Well, it actually depends whom you ask. As it turns out, there were early Christian groups who thought that answer was…
The Rest of this Post is for MEMBERS ONLY!!! If you don’t belong yet, join! It costs far less than a Big Mac a month, and is so much healthier for you! Remember: all membership dues go to charity!
Similar experience here around the same time frame. Was easier for me as I never really fit in in a church environment. I’m married with kids now, and Sundays are our family day, no work or toil allowed. We love it 🙂
Your answer to the first question implies that all the biblical authors did, in fact, believe that the death and resurrection brought salvation and that one further had to believe in it in order to gain that salvation. I thought that Luke did not believe that Christ died for our sins, and I didn’t know if any of the synoptics said anything about having to ‘believe’. I know it is very important for John that one believes. Are both things important for all the biblical authors?
Right, Luke does not seem to have a doctrine of atonement. He still thinks Jesus is the only way of salvation and that his death gets people there.
Yes, but I’m asking about ‘belief’. It was very important to me, my church and, well, everyone I knew in my earlier years that not only did Jesus’ death get you there, but you had to ‘believe’ it did. This also seems important for Paul. I just don’t see in the synoptics Jesus state this as he does in John. I’m sorry to press the point. This just seems like linchpin of evangelicalism.
Yes, the Synoptics appear to want to give the words of Jesus as they imagined he spoke them, rather than stress their own soteriological views. (Though there is a lot implicit in how then narrate their stories)
His death or believing that his death had salvific power?
His death is understood in Matthew, Mark, and John to have brought about salvation; in Luke it is as well, but the mechanism for how it happens is different.
S
Makes it sound like one needn’t become a Christian then….no need to believe it?
What would anyone have needn’t Paul or any Christian proselytizers for? Sounds like J’s death did the trick.
I know I’m being simplistic but wasn’t there more required–like baptism?
A person certainly had to believe. And it was expected they would be baptized.
For what it’s worth,
I once complied of 20 NT verses that said explicitly that one must believe or be condemned. In chronological order, the first would be I Cor. 3:11 but it’s not so explicit: “No other foundation can any one lay than that which is laid, which is Jesus Christ.”
Then comes Mark 16:16–in the part not original to Mark.
Then Mat. 10:30 and Luke 10:16.
Then a lot of John: 3:18, 3:36, 6:28-29, 6:53, 8:24, 12:48, 14:6, 17:3,
And the letter 1 John: 2:21-23, 3: 6,8,10 and 4:3, 5:5, 5:12
2 John 9
So we don’t get more explicit formulations of this absolutist formulation until the 80’s though, of course, it could have been the view of a handful or of many–who knows?– before then.
This may be a silly question, but it’s bugged me at times. Did non-Jews – Christian or non-Christian – in Paul’s era resent being called “gentiles” (which I assume was a Jewish term for them)? I’d certainly resent someone’s calling me a “gentile”! Or an “Irish-American,” or any other term that I wouldn’t use myself.
Were they really being called “gentiles”? Or did that actual term only come into use later?
The Greek word for gentiles just means, literally, “nations.” I don’t know if anyone objected to it as a term.
The Hebrew word for Gentiles, “Goyim” also just means “nations”. When Jews refer to the Goyim they simply mean all the other nations besides the nation of the Israelites. That is, Goyim simply means all the people of the world apart from the people who worship Yahweh: Judeans, Galileans, Samaritans, Idumeans, etc.
One thing I disliked in my Jewish relatives when I was growing up in the 50’s was the way, one might say, some their noses went up, sometimes, when they they would say, “Goyim” (gentiles). I didn’t understand it but felt uncomfortable hearing it. And these were Reform Jews! But, all in all, they were pro-labor, pro-union, Democrats who hated racism, and worked for civil rights. I think the “attitude” arose when it involved one of their children marrying a gentile.
Do you know anything about the Voynich manuscript? It appeared in Italy sometime during the Renaissance and seems to be written in some kind of code that no one has been able to decipher.
Don’t know about it! It’s amazing what I don’t know about!
Dr. Ehrman, I’ve convinced at this point that the phrase “died for our sins” does not mean what current Christian theologians and clergy claim that it means, namely, that Jesus was purposely killed by God (i.e. according to God’s plan) in order give Christians an avenue or a means by which to achieve “salvation.” That meaning of “died for ours sins” is, as far as I can see, a late 1st century, early 2nd century conjecture, which first only began to be formed within the communities that wrote the Gospel of John and the pseudapigraphal epistles (e.g. the Johns, James, 1 and 2 Peter, etc.) simply out the the necessity to justify why the Parousia and the Day of Resurrection stubbornly refused to come. Every day that Jesus did not return the more and more his death seemed meaningless and purposeless. But if his death could be reinterpreted to have actually already effected some sort of change for the better, then his death was not meaningless at all, but had already caused an appreciable change. And that’s when those later Christians hit on the idea that Christ’s death somehow absolved believers of their sins, so that they were essentially ever-ready for the Day of Judgment. Just stay focused on Christ’s sacrifice at all times, and you will be forgiven all sins when the Day of Judgment arrives. (I’m reminded of the Bhagavad Gita, in which Krisha tells Arjuna that as long as a faithful Hindu keeps Krisha the Supreme Universal Power within the believer’s mind at all times, especially upon death, that believer will not only skip the nether regions of the afterlife, but the believer will achieve the upper most eschalon of Moksha, i.e. Hindu heaven; that is, Hindu’s who keep ever attentive to Krisha in their minds and souls will reach paradise, just as Christians who keep Christ everpresent in their minds and souls will reach paradise.)
Anyway, what I think Paul and other early Christians mean when they say that Christ “died for our sins” is that God killed the Messiah in a shameful way as punishment for the disobedience and “hard-heartedness” of the Jews (and possibly the Gentiles as well). That is, God had sent the Messiah down to earth to test humanity to see how they would react, and since they didn’t show proper appreciation and deference, God killed their Messiah, seemingly out of spite and castigation. That’s what the early Christians meant by saying that “Christ died for our sins”. They meant that the Messiah was literally taken away from us instead of ushering in the Messianic Age, because we were all ungrateful and unworthy of him, “as it is written” (cf. Isa. 53:6-7). It’s both a justification for the unexpected, untimely death of the putative Messiah, while at the same time an attempt at fingerpointing and chastisement (cf. Psalms 5:11, 79:1-9, 89:39-53, ). “You ungrateful little children. The Messiah was here, ready to usher in the Kingdom of God, but when God saw how ungrateful and unappreciative his children were, he took the Messiah back! And God will only return his Messiah when you all learn to appreciate what you have lost!” That, I believe, is what the early Christians such as Paul meant when they say that Christ “died for our sins”. (cf. Rom. 5:6-11, 6:1-7; 2 Cor. 5:14-17)
I don’t buy it. How could God have expected people to recognize a man who was not “a figure of power and grandeur” (as Bart has often put it), did not have forces to drive out the Roman rulers nor spoke about doing so (as far as we know), and his remarks about the Son of man coming (aside from the issue of whether he was even talking about himself) were not made to the general public but during his so-called trial. So could Jews have been expected to readily recognize this man as the messiah–a kingly figure who would rid the Jews of their enemies and usher in the kingdom of God? No. No good historian would think so nor would the God of the Jews have thought so. I’ve heard this from certain conservative Christians my whole adult life, complaining and judging with the rhetorical question, “How could the Jews not have recognized their own messiah?!” Because they had no good reason to expect a figure whom only future Christians might recognize as a messiah but which Jews could hardly have been expected to.
Right, but that’s the criterion of dissimilarity at work, is it not? It seems that the first disciples no longer believed that Jesus was the Messiah after he was humiliated via his crucifixion. As you say, why would any first century Jew (or Gentile) believe in a crucified messiah? So why did they believe? The answer seems to be that they genuinely believed that they saw Jesus after he was dead. As far as I know, scholars like Bart would agree with this. I think the historical issue has to do with understanding why they believed that Jesus had risen.
Not sure how you mean it is at work–that it is likely they genuinely believed he rose from death, otherwise no one would have recorded such a crazy claim? Either some had experiences of some sort and some, no doubt, as always, as with people today, some just heard the stories and believed.
Yeah, pretty much… I probably phrased it poorly… The fact that some Jews (the first Christians) did believe in a crucified Messiah is an example of the criterion of dissimilarity… it’s not what we would expect from any first century Jew… so this seems to argue that, at the very least, some of these Jews really did believe that Jesus had risen from the dead… I don’t think you’d disagree… I think my point was that I agree that no Jew should have believed in a crucified Messiah (so the common fundie astonishment that the Jews didn’t is without merit)… but the fact that some did lends support to the claim that they believed Jesus had actually risen… precisely because they would never have believed him to be the Messiah (after his death) for any other reason… no doubt many just heard the story second-hand, but some definitely believed they had personally seen him (Paul included).
I have not been a churchgoer since my teens and I never was anything other than agnostic – church attendance was for social reasons. But that apart: newspapers; classical music (Mozart being the daddy); cooked breakfast; roast dinner and wine in the evening pretty well sums up my Sundays. The only difference is that I usually play a round of golf, as well as watching sport, between breakfast and dinner.
Sounds fantastic!
I’ve had many spiritual moments in my life–I can’t say many of them occurred in church. I was fortunate enough to have some very intelligent articulate priests serving the parish we attended for most of my childhood, and I learned a great deal from them. And I enjoyed singing hymns (the good ones). But the rote aspect of religious ritual has always been a problem for me, and that, not any crisis of faith, has mainly kept me from attending mass for a long time now. Maybe I’d have been happier in a more spontaneous devotional environment, but I like being a lapsed Catholic too much, and I’d have probably stuck out a bit in a black church. 🙂
If you’re being thankful, logically speaking, you must be thanking something. And if there were a beneficient deity looking down on us, wouldn’t He/She feel thanked simply by our making the most of the lives we’ve been given? Isn’t that the point? Would an infinitely wise and powerful entity go to all that trouble, across all those billions of years, just to hear us mouthing prayers for a few brief millennia?
It’s not all nonsense. Loren Eiseley, the evolutionary biologist, wrote of being in a desert, looking for fossils. He saw the bones of ancient dead birds trapped in the rock, and he felt a sense of despair–the futility of life–then he saw a flock of migrant birds pass overhead, the descendants of the fossils lying below him, and he made a sign to the heavens. “It was not a mocking sign and I was not mocked.” The Sign of the Cross.
You say, “If you’re being thankful, logically speaking, you must be thanking something.” I’ve experienced feeling thankful without a thought that I was thankful TO anyone or anything to accept that there is a logical connection between the two. It just ain’t so. In some realm of pure linguistic logic, perhaps, but not, as they say, on the ground, in the heart, in the mind and gut. I’m thankful to be alive and to be a conscious being rather than to not be at all. That’s all; that’s it. I have no idea if there is a Being to thank. I tend to think not.
Good for you! Putz away!
Gotta have at least one day to just enjoy yourself!
Check your tags – entire post is viewable to those not logged in.
BTW, just so you know – in my area is a church that welcomes agnostics and folks who have doubts. I reckon after 3 1/2 of your books, that’s where I’m headed.
corrected it. Thanks!
Just curious, do you read or listen to any politically conservative points of view?
I sometimes force myself to listen to Fox News just to see how they are spinning things.
Thanks, just wondering. I try to listen to all sides of anything, no matter how hard it may be.
Ha!
So sorry, I don’t know what that means.
About the money question to the church in Jerusalem, I believe the área around Jerusalem was repeatedly bit by a famine during the reign of Claudius, with one of the worst famines ocurring in Judea around 46 – 47 CE. I live in a country where 60 % of the population lives below poverty líne with less than US 2.00 per day to live on. Here we have the Catholic church and fundamental evangelistic churches who ALL preach the tithe. The money is then often sent to mother churches in the US to finance their missionary work. People don’t have enough money to send their children to school, and they all give their tithe from the little they have because they are told if they don’t, God will not bless them. And the pastors use those verses to justify preaching the tithe, out of context. My sense is Paul collected the money for those of the church affected by the famine, not for ‘the Church’ as such.
Dear Dr Bart Ehrman,
I am from Sydney in Australia. Are you planning an Australian tour anytime soon? I loved your debate with Dr Michael Bird who I love as a fellow Australian (although he is not a Sydneysider) and because he is a first-rate New Testament scholar.
I have numbered this comment. I have quoted from your excellent book God’s Problem: How the Bible Fails to Answer Our Most Important Question – Why We Suffer which I am currently reading under number ‘2’. My questions are found with the first sentences under numbers ‘3’ and ‘4’ respectively.
(SKIP THIS PARAGRAPH IF YOU LIKE) 1. I have tremendous respect for you as a New Testament scholar even though I left atheism in university to become a Protestant Trinitarian Christian who believes, though each are distinct persons, God the Father is YHWH, the Son / the Johanine ‘Word’ (now Kurios Jesus of Nazareth [Johanine Word made flesh]) is YHWH, and the Holy Spirit (Hagios Pneuma) is YHWH. The view that Jesus is YHWH is not necessarily patripassianism (contrary to what you said in your Ehrman-Bass debate). I became a Christian after I encountered the mainstream (not the mythicist fringe) scholarly work on the historical Jesus and early Christology during my first year of university by scholars like yourself. As I studied the historical figure of Jesus as an atheist, the only response I found I could bring myself to make to what I read was the response of devoting my life to following Jesus of Nazareth believing in his utter worthiness to receive my worship as my Kurios (Lord/YHWH) as the man who is considered by the New Testament writers to be YHWH. I recognise YHWH as the One (tri-personal) eternal Creator of all things (Deut. 6:4; 1 Cor. 8:6) and the (tri-personal) One who gives His people the Spirit of the Lord as He promised through His prophets (Joel 2:28; Acts 2:17,33 ‘Jesus is also the one who has given the Spirit to us’ CEV [different from the CEB which I will use later]).
2. In your book God’s Problem: How the Bible Fails to Answer Our Most Important Question – Why We Suffer (2008, HarperOne: NY, p. 73) you state that:
‘We are told that Solomon had more than a thousand wives and concubines (11:3). This in itself was not a problem in a period in which polygamy was widely practiced, and it was not condemned by the Law of Moses (to the surprise of many readers today) … His foreign wives induce him to worship their gods. God becomes angry and vows that “I will surely tear the kingdom from you.” And this happens. Solomon’s son Rehoboam takes the throne after his death, but the tribes in the northern part of the land decide to secede from the union and start a nation of their own under a rival king, Jeroboam.’
3. Why do you say that Solomon’s polygamy was not a problem and Solomon’s polygamy was not condemned by the Law of Moses?
Deuteronomy chapter 17 verse 17 states, regarding Israelite kings such as Solomon, that ‘the king must not take numerous wives’ (CEB, http://www.commonenglishbible.com/explore/passage-lookup/?query=Deuteronomy+17%3A14-17). As you know, this commandment should be taken together with Deuteronomy chapter 28 verse 36 which states for the polygamous Israelite king that ‘The Lord will send … the king that you appoint over you far away to a nation that neither you nor your ancestors have known’ (CEB, http://www.commonenglishbible.com/explore/passage-lookup/?query=Deuteronomy+28%3A36).
4. Isn’t commanding Israelite kings not to take numerous wives, and pronouncing curse (of exile for example) to fall upon Israelite kings in the event that they do take numerous wives to ‘condemn’ such behaviour in the Law of Moses?
Having said that, I am quite happy to say that you are correct to point to Solomon’s idolatry as the focus of the 1 Kings chapter 11 passage but this is only because it is also the focus of God’s words in 1 Kings chapter 9 of which the chapter 11 passage is a continuation. The Law of Moses condemns Solomon’s polygamy but God was angry because, when He appeared to Solomon, he specifically told Solomon not to go off to serve other gods (9:6), zooming in on one of many commandments in the Law of Moses.
5. I have posted a version of this at the discussion forum: https://ehrmanblog.org/forum/the-hebrew-bible/discussion-regarding-bart-ehrman-in-book-gods-problem-on-king-solomon-polygamy-and-the-pentateuch/
6. Marriage according to the the Bible is between one biological male and one biological female. Anything sexual activity outside the bounds of a marriage between the marriage of a one biological male and one biological female is to miss the mark in terms of living in the ‘fear of the Lord/YHWH’ (Acts 9:31; cf. Prov. 14:26) who is Jesus Christ. That includes both polygamous sexual relationships of every sort and same sex sexual relationships of every sort.
7. I refer you to following excellent scholarly works for further detail:
Köstenberger, AJ & Jones DW 2010, God, Marriage, and Family: Rebuilding the Biblical Foundation, second edition, Crossway, IL, p. 33.
Köstenberger, AJ & Köstenberger, ME 2014, God’s Design for Man and Woman: A Biblical-Theological Survey, Crossway, IL, p. 51 & p. 62.
8. Full reference for your book that is used in this comment:
Ehrman, BD 2008, God’s Problem: How the Bible Fails to Answer Our Most Important Question – Why We Suffer, HarperOne, NY.
I’d be happy to answer your questions if you space them out and give them one at a time.
Dear Dr Bart Ehrman,
Ok, I’ll shorten the previous comment, and only ask one question. I’ve highlighted the question with asterisks and capitalization of letters of the word ‘question’.
In your book God’s Problem: How the Bible Fails to Answer Our Most Important Question – Why We Suffer (2008, HarperOne: NY, p. 73) you state that:
‘We are told that Solomon had more than a thousand wives and concubines (11:3). This in itself was not a problem in a period in which polygamy was widely practiced, and it was not condemned by the Law of Moses (to the surprise of many readers today).’
Deuteronomy chapter 17 verse 17, a verse which you never quote in your book to support your argument that polygamy was not prohibited in the Law of Moses, states, regarding Israelite kings such as Solomon, that ‘the king must not take numerous wives’ (CEB, http://www.commonenglishbible.com/explore/passage-lookup/?query=Deuteronomy+17%3A14-17). As you know, this commandment should be taken together with Deuteronomy chapter 28 verse 36 which states for the polygamous Israelite king that ‘The Lord will send … the king that you appoint over you far away to a nation that neither you nor your ancestors have known’ (CEB, http://www.commonenglishbible.com/explore/passage-lookup/?query=Deuteronomy+28%3A36).
This is interpreted by scholars as condemnation and/or strong disapproval of polygamy with monogamy as the ideal. I provided two references towards the end of my previous comment but I will add one more to the list (Copan, P 2011, Is God a Moral Monster?: Making Sense of the Old Testament God, Baker Books, MI).
*QUESTION*: So is it not the case that commanding Israelite kings not to take numerous wives, and God pronouncing curse (of exile for example) to possibly fall upon Israelite kings in the event that they do take numerous wives to ‘condemn’ such polygamous behaviour in the Law of Moses?
By numerous wives what is meant is no more than one except in the case of Levirate marriage which has God’s support for worlds in which widows exist (but no widows in an ideal world obviously). Similarly, an Israelite king may also inherit wives from another Israelite king and the most compassionate response to women would be to continue to formally, by retaining their position and status as king’s wives, receive a king’s care and protection (2 Samuel chapter 12 verse 8).
Regards,
Colin Lok
Sydney, Australia
Reference:
Ehrman, BD 2008, God’s Problem: How the Bible Fails to Answer Our Most Important Question – Why We Suffer, HarperOne, NY.
It’s a complicated question, wiht a complicated answer. Here let me give you the shortest version I can. There are several literary sources lying behind the books of 1 and 2 Samuel and 1 and 2 Kings, and these different sources had different views about the kings and the idea of kingship, what was right with them and what was wrong. That’s why you find so many tensions in the narratives on such points. Any standard introduction to the Hebrew Bible will lay all that out if you want to pursue it further. (E.g., John Collins; or Michael Coogan; I discuss it more briefly in my Introduction to the Bible.)
Are you familiar with Creating the Old Testament: The Emergence of the Hebrew Bible, edited by Stephen Bigger? If so, what is your opinion of it?
Nope, don’t know it.
I love the answer to Sunday mornings. It sounds quite familiar to me from the “huge gap” to no longer belonging “there.”
Add a mystic experience in there for yourself and then life will be pretty much fully sampled 🙂
Do you think that it is possible that Paul was anxious to bring James a collection in order to fully gain James’ acceptance of Paul’s mission to the gentiles?
Yup, I think that’s a big part of it.
I am beginning the Great Courses Greek 101 series. What edition of the Greek NT do you recommend for your students? I see there are a UBS edition and a “Reader’s Greek NT” (Zondervan). The latter seems to follow the preferences of the NIV translators. Am I correct in that surmise?
The Zondervan is *probably* just another version of the UBS text, though I don’t know for sure. (Virtually everyone on the planet uses the UBS text, including translators of every major translation)
Your comment is awaiting moderation.
Glad to be a member learning so much. I think Paul invented the idea of Human sacrafise which was not the condition for sin atonement. Only animal blood and even flour was offered for atonement. Im guessing this is why they declare Jesus as the “slain Lamb” they basically had to metaphorically present Jesus as a Animal even though his Human, im guessing because to relate to the O.T. There are descrepentency through out the bible and Paul even attested that in Galatians 1:6 for desciples not to turn to other Gospels. So it’s clear then as Bart Pointed out there are other Gospels which are the Gnostics that contend to Pauls one sided narrative. And they suprisingly reveal Jesus may have escaped death and his sin atonement human sacrafise was just made up…
Also, why was the church in Jerusalem experiencing serious hardship at this time?
Did they all stop working due to the belief that Jesus was coming soon?
How did James and Peter who were not from Jerusalem make a living in Jerusalem?
There was apparently a famine going on at the time. And my guess is that the leaders were financially supported by the (poor) community.
If the apostles did steal the body of Jesus and one of them was eventually arrested by the Sanhedrin, if the apostle ended up confessing that he and the others stole the body right before he was sentenced to punishment would the Jews let him off the hook or would they still administer the same punishment (stoning, crucifixion, etc.) for stealing the body of Jesus to deceive people?
There would be no way to know.
Did James also believe that Jesus died for our sins? Did his beliefs in the death and resurrection vary from Paul’s?
Yes. And I think on this point they were agreed.
If we don’t believe that Jesus’ brother James wrote the Letter of James, how could we know from the less-than-historical Gospels or other docs what James believed on this point?
The epistle of James doesn’t say anything about his beliefs about such things.
What part(s) of the NT does?
The NT never explains James’s view of Jesus’ resurrection, except when Paul says that his views were those of others before him (1 Cor. 15)
My questions have been in reference to David’s question on June 27, “Did James also believe that Jesus died for our sins? Did his beliefs in the death and resurrection vary from Paul’s?” and your answer the next day, “Yes. And I think on this point they were agreed.” I don’t think Paul’s saying that the belief of those who came before him is enough evidence to know if James did indeed believe that Jesus’ died for their or anyone’s sins.
What I’m trying to say is that Paul indicates that James did agree with him on these particular points (not other ones), but that we don’t have any writings from James to indicate one way or the other.
It makes little sense to think that Jesus thought his death was to be atoning if he desperately questioned God from the cross for abandoning him, and called out for Elijah to come and save him:
Mark 15:34-38 King James Version (KJV)
34 And at the ninth hour Jesus cried with a loud voice, saying, Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani? which is, being interpreted, My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me? 35 And some of them that stood by, when they heard it, said, Behold, he calls Elijah. 36 And one ran and filled a sponge full of vinegar, and put it on a reed, and gave him to drink, saying, Let alone; let us see whether Elijah will come to take him down.
One of the reasons I think Dr. Ehrman is right to view Jesus as an apocalyptic prophet is what Jesus says from the cross. Mark records Jesus and the crowd saying:
34 And at the ninth hour Jesus cried with a loud voice, “Eloi, Eloi, lema sabachthani?” which means, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” 35 And some of the bystanders hearing it said, “Behold, he is calling Elijah.” 36 And someone ran and filled a sponge with sour wine, put it on a reed and gave it to him to drink, saying, “Wait, let us see whether Elijah will come to take him down.” (Mark 15:34-36)
Jesus here cries out to God wondering why God abandoned him to the cross, and begging for Elijah to come rescue him. The call to Elijah seems to be a reference to the prophesy that Elijah is supposed to return just before the terrible day of the Lord:
5 “Behold, I will send you Elijah the prophet before the great and awesome day of the Lord comes. 6 And he will turn the hearts of fathers to their children and the hearts of children to their fathers, lest I come and strike the land with a decree of utter destruction.” (Malachi 4:5-6)
Some think that John the Baptist completely fulfilled Malachi’s prophesy. But although John came in the “Spirit and Power” of Elijah (Luke 1:17) – meaning that the Spirit that filled and enabled Elijah also filled and enabled John the Baptist – John was not the reincarnation of the Old Testament prophet, and hence when asked if he is Elijah, John responds “I am not !” John 1:21:
And they asked him, “What then? Are you Elijah?” He said, “I am not.” “Are you the Prophet?” And he answered, “No.” (John 1:21).
So Jesus must have thought that the end of days was near at hand if he was calling out for Elijah to come save him.
Bart,
In your view, was the 1 Cor 15:3-5 creed formulated mainly for use by those who were already Christians, i.e., it was *in-group* community tradition, or was it formulated mainly for out-group proclamation/apologetics, or both? Also, how do you think it was used after is was formulated?
1. I should think you could make an argument either way. 2. Definitely as a statement that Christians would state as what they believed. But in what context for what purpose — I imagine it varied a lot, but we have no evidence at all about it, just what Paul says about it.
Bart,
Do I understand correctly that, in your view, Peter and the 12 may have spoken only Aramaic and traveled in circles largely separate from Paul? Have you ever elaborated on this anywhere?
Yes, that’s right. They only rarely interacted with Paul and we don’t know how it worked. But lower class day workers from Galilee were not trained in Greek for the most part.
Bart,
Do you think Paul might only have spoken Greek (so needed a translator when speaking to Peter)?
That’s what I think, yes.