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Loading...I have been posting all ten of my April 18 posts from previous years in celebration of the ten-year anniversary of the blog on April 18 of *this* year. Here now is a post from 2018 that focused on a book I had written years before that! The book I’ve always thought was my best piece of scholarship.
Enjoy!
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I am in Houston for a few days, giving talks at Rice University on the use of literary forgery in early Christianity. To prepare for the talks I decided to read through my 2013 book Forgery and Counterforgery: The Use of Literary Deceit in Early Christian Polemics. Of all the books I’ve written, I am proudest of this one. It is the very best I can do in terms of real scholarship. I don’t believe I’ve talked about it much on the blog, since it’s not a book for general audiences. But I thought it might be worthwhile to say something about it in a post or two, and there’s no better way to do that than to give the opening few paragraphs.
As will be obvious, the study was written for scholars, but there’s nothing too difficult about it, except a couple of unusual words. “Orthonymous” means “written under a correct name” so that an orthonymous writing is one that bears the name of the actual author – as opposed to a “pseudonymous” writing that is written in the name of someone other than the author; the term “homonymous” means “having the same name” and it refers to a writing written by someone who has the same name as another person who is more famous and is thus mistaken as coming from the other person (like if someone whose name really was Stephen King – but who was not THAT Stephen King – published a novel in his own name).
Anyway, here is how I start the book.
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Arguably the most distinctive feature of the early Christian literature is the degree to which it was forged. Even though the early Christians were devoted to the truth– or so their writings consistently claimed – and even though “authoritative” literature played a virtually unparalleled role in their individual and communal lives, the orthonymous output of the early Christians was remarkably, even astonishingly, meager. From the period of the New Testament, from which some thirty writings survive intact or in part, only eight go under the name of their actual author, and seven of these derive from the pen of one man. To express the matter differently, only two authors named themselves correctly in the surviving literature of the first Christian century. All other Christian writings are either anonymous, falsely ascribed (based on an original anonymity or homonymity), or forged.
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Oh yes, the first Bart book I bought during the height of my faith crisis, and I wanted all the details supporting his conclusions. The adage “be careful what you ask for” came to mind, but the book was exactly what I needed at the time
What are the most commonly accepted stories about the apostles and their families? Were many wives and children abandoned? Did those lives change again with the crucifixion?
Offhand I don’t know of anyone who’s talked much about it; but the Gospels indicate that the family was indeed abandoned. What happened to them, God knows…
According to Paul, the disciples and apostles, including Peter, travelled with their wives and had families. (1 Corinthians 9:5)
So clearly the impression that Mark and the gospels give about Jesus’ disciples leaving everything behind wasn’t as extreme as a plain reading of it would imply.
Yes, he’s referring to their travels long after Jesus’ death; I don’t recall anything about their families in Paul’s comments though.
Looking forward to reading that. May I ask, what is the difference between BCE and BC, CE and AD? I see they have the same sayings so I’ll assume one is just a secular version
Yes, that’s right. BC means “Before Christ” and AD means “Year of our Lord.” For someone who doesn’t consider Jesus to be their lord, it doesn’t make sense to say “in the year of our Lord 158.” And since everyone now uses the same calendar (Jews, Muslims, atheists, and so on) historians many decades ago decided to move to more neutral designations “Before the Common Era” (BCE) and “Common Era” (CE). “Common” in the sense that everyone dates the eras the same way.
I used to think AD meant After Death.
Off topic, but why do we have so many NT manuscripts compared to other ancient documents? Is it because we look for NT documents more? Is it something about how they were made?
It’s because the vast majority of all of our manuscripts of ancient writings come to us from the Middle Ages, and the one thing scribes in the Middle Ages were most interested in copying was the New Testament. Given the choice of copying the writings of Paul or Plautus, it was normally a no-brainer.
I was reading about the Council of Calchedon, OK it was Wiki, but I was surprised that the early church’s notions of Mary were so involved and sophisticated. How did this happen in such to me a relatively short time?
Well, in a sense it was four centuries of talking about her and thining about her significance, so it really wasn’t that short a time (think how much “democracy” has developed in just, say, 200 years)
I recommend Norman Tanner’s book, The Councils of the Church: A Short History
Your Forgery book was my most fun read!
It’s like how many claimed Satoshi Nakamotos there are.
So, first in new Jesus news, researchers announced an *underground* Early Second Century Christian city in the Anatolia that held up to 80k.
Celebrating!
This dovetails with the planned evacuation of Petra in AD 106.
I’ve now done a whole year of research on my hypothesis of Yeshuaʻ being patrilineally Nabāṭū and I’ve never seen anything fit like Legos before!!!
Once you understand deified kings –
Aretas IV’s birth name, Aeneas, meaning, “God in a mortal body. Obodas inscribed as Obodas the God in the Judaean Negev.
Herod the Great had just took northern Galilee from Nabataean aegis in 20 BCE.
So, “…on this Petra I will build my church.”
What is Petra famous for?
Matthew 13:14
The Narrow and Wide Gates
Matthew 13-14 “Enter through the narrow gate
For wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it. 14 But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it.”
The Siq
https://www.canstockphoto.com/the-siq-narrow-pass-to-ancient-city-9211020.html
Now I’ve got to read your book on Revelation – that’s the time of the undergrounding.
Revelation 7:16 “…neither shall the sun light on them”
Ok, forgot to add the link to a Smithsonian article on the discovery of the Early Second Century Christian underground city:
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/huge-underground-city-refuge-early-christians-turkey-180980090/#:~:text=Able%20to%20hold%20around%2020%2C000,reports%20Smithsonian's%20Elizabeth%20Djinis.
Lots of artifacts.
.
I like Bart and Diane so much (emet Diane on your webinar) I will explain my new Hasmonean + Herodian expansion findings – and I welcome being proven wrong – and no one should believe in my Jesus being patrilineally Nabataean (King Malichus II) hypothesis until I publish my ebook.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hasmonean_dynasty#/media/File%3AHasmonean_kingdom.jpg
The vowel shift from a to e seems to be one marker I look for? It’s not always an indicator, just an easy place to start. Gamla, Gadara, Medaba, Adora, Peraea (and more, I’m still googling), all have Nabataean artifacts of significance.
And of course, Peraea was directly of the kingdom of Nabataea, per historians of that time period. Meaning the culture was definitely there, and deified humans would be understood by some, and not by others.
And the reason I am looking at this is just because my birthday showed up in the Edgar Cayce readings as significant. Just trying to suss the simulation, or not.
https://www.edgarcayce.org/about-us/blog/blog-posts/august-the-lives-of-leila-one-soul-s-journey-through-incarnations/
While reading Matthew tonight, I noticed something odd. In the story of Jesus telling a tax collector to follow him, Mark and Like both report the tax collector’s name was Levi (Mark 2:9 and Luke 5:27), but in Matthew the name of the tax collector is Matthew (Matthew 9:9). Why is Matthew changing Mark here? What problem did he have with this tax collector being named Levi?
Yup, that’s a traditional argument for why the Gospel of Matthew was written by Matthew, oddly enough. The fellow had two names nad he preferred Matthew. 🙂 The problem in Mark is that when he lists the twelve disciples, Levi is not one of them, even though he’s just narrated his calling. There *is* a guy named Matthew, though. So the author of the Gospel of Matthew solved the problem by making it the calling of Matthew instead of Levi.
A question about Matthew:
Matthew 5:17 ( Think not that I have come to abolish ….. I have not come to destroy but to FULFIL).
Most English Bibles say “ fulfil”, which would have sounded blasphemous to the priests, as the Law was fulfilled and the Prophets…. well…. they spoke of the future, and they spoke not of Jesus.
In a minority of Bibles I have encountered COMPLETE rather than fulfill. This sounds so much what Jesus was, in fact, doing: expanding, re-interpreting, filling gaps, completing the known texts , prophetically telescoping 2000 years ahead into what today is Reform Judaism.
So it shows in the medieval Primitive Hebrew text by Shem-Tov ( an otherwise regrettable Matthew text), translated by George Howard, where the word is ״ להשלים״, le hashlim, literally to complete, just as the related word Shalom comes from “ complete” ,” perfect”.
In the contemporary excellent Hebrew translation of Matthew by Tyndale House, the word is given as למלאות, le mal’ot, which literally means to complete.
It means more to “ fill” than to “fulfill”.
What does the Greek version allow? Could “fulfill” and “complete” be options, subject to interpretation, or does the Greek indicate one and not the other?
Many thanks
Gisele
http://www.giseleben-dor.com
THe Greek word is PLEROO, which normally means to fill something up. or fill it out. Since it’s hard to fill the Law, typically it is taken to mean “fulfill” — the normal meaning in the NT (e.g., Jesus first works in Mark: “the time has been fulfilled”) In this sense it means something like “brought to full completion” Jesus’ idea of the fulfillment of the law, of course wsa not necessarily that of other Jewish leaders and teachers.
Many thanks, Prof Ehrman!
Very helpful, and perhaps a bit closer to Tyndale’s Hebrew than to most English translations.
I have noted three instances of Jesus breaking the Sabbath laws, two in the Gospel of Matthew and one in the Gospel of John. In each case, according to the Torah, Jesus could have been executed, as it is clearly stated “whosoever doeth any work in the Sabbath day, he shall surely be put to death” [Exodus 31:15]. The same is true for blasphemy, of which Jesus was accused several times. But I find it somewhat perplexing that none of these instances which were basically “open and shut” cases against him and clear-cut justifications for capital punishment, were ever brought up in any of the accounts of his trial before Caiaphas or Pilate. As these instances became known throughout Judea and particularly in Jerusalem, I find it hard to believe they were not brought up. Do you think that this might be due to the writers of the Gospels writing with a bias in favor of Jesus, and perhaps, deliberately omitting these obvious transgressions? Not to mention overturning the tables of the moneychangers in the Temple, a crime that most assuredly had serious consequences.
Ken W.
New Jersey
I don’t know of any open and shut cases, and the great scholar of both NT and Judaism, E. P. Sanders said he didn’t either. Which ones are you thinking of — where Jesus actually violate the dictates of Moses, not simply interpretatoins of the laws?
Exodus 31:15: “Six days may work be done: but in the seventh is the sabbath of rest, holy to the Lord: whosoever doeth ANY work in the sabbath day, he shall surely be put to death.” In Matthew 12:2 the Pharisees saw Jesus’s disciples breaking the Sabbath law with his permission. In Matthew 12:10 Jesus faith-heals a man with a withered hand in the Synagogue on the Sabbath, against the warnings of the Pharisees. In John 5:18 after advising a man with an infirmity to carry his bed closer to the Bethesda fountain on the Sabbath “the Jews sought the more to kill him, because he not only had broken the sabbath, but said also that God was his Father, making himself equal with God.” For each transgression of the Sabbath laws regarding work, Jesus legally could have been put to death. Open and shut. No?
Ken Wachtell
New Jersey
As you probably know, Jewish teachers had incessant arguments about what constituted “work.” The Torah does not say. Does helping a sheep out of a pit count? Does accidentally knocking off grain from the stalk count? Does walking a mile count? Does … healing someone count? THe Pharisees thought so. Others did not. The Torah doesn’t say. So Jesus is violating one interpretation of the Sabbath law, not what hte law itself says.
As the high priests were obviously trying to make a case against Jesus, doesn’t it seem strange that they didn’t call the Pharisees, as well as other Jews, who had seen Jesus healing on the Sabbath and interpreted it as work, as witnesses, instead of the “false witnesses” that the Gospels say they did call? Or did they actually call them, but were omitted from the gospels in favor of Jesus? The same questions might be raised with regards to the charge of blasphemy, also heard and interpreted by Pharisees and other Jews. As one Commentary noted, the Gospels were written at a time when historically there was much “antagonism between the Church and the synagogues” and the writers may have been more inclined to put the blame for Jesus’s death on the Jews, rather than the Romans or Jesus himself. Possible?
These groups were at each others throats and the Sadducees never would have felt a need to consult with the (powerless and disreputable) Pharisess for help. (So far as we know they never did) But as to your last sentence, yes I agree with that.
The most problematic thing Jesus said about Shabbat is that it was made for man, and not man for Shabbat. Man was thus the lord of Shabbat. The fourth commandment- ahead of respecting one’s parents or of refraining from murder and other capital crimes- , was to remember the ” Sabbath of the Lord”. This was not Man’s day. It was God’s day. It rings familiar: ” do this in memory of me”, Jesus asks. So did God. Violating the slightest law of Shabbat was a personal insult to God, who requested to be memorialized on the completion of his unprecedented creatio ex nihilo feat: his day of rest was to be respected.
As Jews could not apply the death penalty in those days , the priests , in order to solve a serious problem, leaned on the only transgression that interested Rome, a political one, one they themselves also feared , knowing what a tragedy an insurrection would be. And weren’t they correct? . Did not the later Jewish insurrections cost the Nation of Israel everything, placing so many of us in a frightful diaspora for 2000 years? Jesus himself prophesied it.
Response: Since, as you say, the Pharisees, by their interpretation of the Sabbath laws, thought that Jesus had definitely transgressed, isn’t it all the more perplexing as to why they did not even mention those transgressions to the High Priest, Caiaphas, who was deciding his fate? Especially, since any one of those transgressions was punishable by death.
Was this a deliberate omission of the writers, in favor of Jesus?
Ken Wachtell
Jersey City, NJ
Not necessarily. The Pharisees had little to do with the priests in the temple and the Sadducees in general– and almost certainly nothing to do with the high priest himself.
As the high priests were obviously trying to make a case against Jesus, doesn’t it seem strange that they didn’t call the Pharisees, as well as other Jews, who had seen Jesus’s healing on the Sabbath and interpreted the action as work, as witnesses, instead of the “false witnesses” that the Gospels say they did call? Even though the Sadducees and Pharisees were at “each other’s throats”, didn’t they at least have something in common: trying to stop Jesus and any rebellion he might lead? Or did the high priests actually call them as witnesses, but whose testimony was omitted from the gospels in favor of Jesus? Possible? Who were these “false witnesses”, anyway?
I believe I answered this already? The Pharisees were not seen as important figures in Judaism, especially in Jerusalem; the leaders would never have even thought about consultin gwith them.
Didn’t both the Pharisees and Sadducees sit on the Sanhedrin in Jerusalem? If so, they must have had some contact. No?
“The Pharisees and Sadducees made up the Sanhedrin, a council of seventy men, who made all the decisions for the Jews. The tiebreaker was the high priest, who was called the nasee. In modern Hebrew, nasee means president.” [Wikipedia].
So far as we know there were not any Pharisees in the Sanhedrin.
I’m surprised at that response as most websites, sources I’ve read either state that the Pharisees were definitely part of the Sanhedrin or that there is some controversy as to their inclusion. But I’ve not seen a website that states that, categorically, they were not part of the Sanhedrin. Could you refer me to those sources? I’d be interested in reading their accounts of the issue.
Thank you.
That’s weird. Well, I’d suggest you look at E. P. Sanders book on Judaism Practice and Belief for an authoritative account.
The writers of the Gospels refer to the witnesses in Jesus’s “trial” as all “false”. Do you think the writers were all hostile sources still infuriated at the execution of their leader?
Absolutely. They were not disinterested observers!