Loading...QUESTION:
Why do you suppose no one has had visions of Jesus since the Gospels? And why have there been visions of Mary instead?
RESPONSE:
Another good question. The answer is: people *do* have visions of Jesus (all the time)! I could have approached the topic in a number of ways in my book, but this is what I say there:
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Jesus’ Appearances in the Modern World
And consider the modern appearances of Jesus. Some of these are documented by Phillip H. Wiebe, in his book Visions of Jesus: Direct Encounters from the New Testament to Today (My footnote says this: I should stress that Wiebe is not a religious fanatic on a mission. He is chair of the Philosophy Department at Trinity Western University and is a serious scholar. Still, at the end of the day, he thinks that something “transcendent” has led to some of the modern visions of Jesus he recounts. In other words, they – or some of them – are veridical.) Wiebe narrates twenty-eight case studies, which he examines from psychological, neuropsychological, mentalist, and other perspectives. Included is a vision of Jesus experienced by Hugh Montefiore, a well-known New Testament scholar at Cambridge University and later bishop of the Church of England, who converted to Christianity from Judaism at age sixteen because he had a vision in which Jesus appeared to him and told him to “follow me” – words that, at the time, the young Monefiore did not know were drawn from the New Testament.
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This is a really interesting topic. If you bloggers out there want to learn how modern appearances and visions of the parts of the Christian godhead and angels were a core part of the experiences of the early Mormons, go to:
http://video.pbs.org/video/1460817958/
This is PBS Frontline documentary. It is free. There is also a part 2.
Bart, one question: You often refer to “critical scholars”, as in, for example, at the top of page 110: “…the majority of critical scholars of the NT for more than a century…”.
I asked you about “majority” before, but now I need to ask: What would a scholar be if not “critical”? Maybe this is a dumb question, but you put the two words together as though to distinguish these scholars from …?
thanks
A non-critical scholar, as I use the term, is one who simply accepts the teachings of the New Testament as accurate without a crticial evaluation of them, as done by fundamentalists and some conservative evangelical scholars.
As always, thank you for you time. Best, tracy
When could you ever ask a dumb question, Tracy? Look at it more like making a “critical inquiry”. ‘-)
Funny that with appearances/visions as with other miracle stories there has always been too much time elapsed, too few witnesses, or hard evidence has been lost (like the film in the story). God and Jesus certainly seem intent on staying mysterious and hidden to those skeptics who I thought they wanted to save.
Thoughtful, simple, profound observation.
Don’t you think the fact that some Pentecostal Christians tend – when they gather for worship – to work themselves into a frenzied emotional state, might go a long way to accounting for these strange goings on?
I”m afraid I’m not an expert in modern religious practices. So I don’t know!
By no stretch of the imagination am I an expert, but I would have to say YES, considering what experiences I’ve had with Pentecostal/Charismatics!
It was really rather frightening to enter into the youth group meeting, after services, to retrieve my daughter and her friend from their service, both but age 12, only to find the entire lot of them, near 200, laid out on the floor! So many faces were still streaked with tears, and every darn one of them seemed totally unconscious, which was explained as “the power of the Holy Spirit poured down upon them!”
Every single one of them had been “knocked clean off of their feet!” and I was prohibited from stooping down to “awaken” my daughter and her friend until such time as “the Spirit released them” from their “slain” state.
Both of them, however, upon hearing my voice took to the motions of waking slowly, and seemingly with a measure of disorientation. I was certain, at that point, they had faked what had been EXPECTED of them – and merely appeared to have been so “slain” if so that the youth group leaders would (I thought, as been my brief experience in the Assembly of God, at age 15) get their cotton pickin’ hands off them!) They were the first two to come out of their “comas” and leave the room to many a “Praise the Lord” whispers among the youth group leaders.
Out in the car both girls were unusually quiet. I broke the silence by asking if they didn’t want to talk about what had happened to them. My daughter, immediately burst into tears for as afraid as she that she was going to go to hell for having faked being slain. She nor her friend wanted to be the only ones among so many who didn’t have the experience. The youth group leaders would not ALLOW for them NOT to have the “experience”, and just as I thought, had their hands all over those who didn’t “go down”. They all did. They all had to. Some, with much resistance, which my daughter and her friend described as “scary” as those who resisted were pounced on, grabbed hold of and screamed at until they were reduced to emotional messes and crumbled.
But of course, and just as troubling to my daughter, was the fact that some kids, in particular those who had been “born into the church”, went right down, or began to speak “in tongues” while the songs were being sung and the youth minister spoke in sweet, hushed, tones, encouraging all to allow the Holy Spirit of God to have his way with them. This troubled my little girl because she thought she wasn’t “right” with God because the Spirit wasn’t coming down upon her as she saw the Spirit come down upon so many and so easily, and they quite seemed to enjoy the experience.
“We didn’t know what else to do, Mommy,” she said. But to fake it, or be accused of being demon possessed and yelled at. It took me the better part of remainder of the day to take them through the New Testament showing them that God doesn’t give us a spirit of confusion and Jesus was never ever “slain”, nor did he speak in tongues, and that even Paul referred to the practice as the “least of the gifts”, and even how wrong it was for there to be “tongues” when there was no interpretation of what was being said, which had always troubled me. There was always tongues and people going down or jumping around like maniacs (I was never one of them) but never interpretation but on rare occasion when the pastor would speak of the imminent return of Jesus, so we’d all best get right with him, and of course we couldn’t be right with him if we weren’t slain.
I can’t even begin to number the many within that church who claimed to have seen and talked to Jesus, face to face. By no means can I explain the many strange things that occurred in that church, like the impossible wind that came out of no where and blew through the vast hallways. Many experienced that, to include myself. Nor can I count the times I would fall on my knees and beg God to allow me the same slain experience, and oh how I so longed to see, for myself, this man Jesus. I never saw him and such prayers went unanswered, which for a time caused me to think that surely there had to be something wrong with me. How comforting and freeing it is to know far, far better than that now.
Of course, it’s possible that the visions were “veridical” in the sense that people were seeing *something*, but what they were seeing wasn’t the real Jesus, and it had *no* real *religious* significance.
*If* they saw things that were “really there,” I’d guess that they were “thought-forms” that someone present – or possibly even someone not present – was unconsciously “creating.” And it may have involved contact with another dimensional realm, where “thought-forms” are more typically floating about.
There’s so much we don’t know, that hints at strange capabilities of the human mind! And, somewhat disturbingly, the human subconscious.
Wilusa – to that I offer you a sound AMEN!
My wife and I saw Jesus in NC. We were on our way from Durham to Graham, NC on the new (at that time) HWY 40 – discussing our engagement and what changes would be in store for us regarding dedication to God – when I looked across the highway and say a man (I immediately considered to be Jesus) walking in the opposite direction along the shoulder. I whipped my head back around and after a moment asked my wife (then fiancee) “um… did… you… seeeee…” and she interrupted “…Jesus walking along the highway?” We both went silent for awhile contemplating and trying to make sense of what just happened.
To this day, we can’t describe him and neither of us have an explanation of how we knew it wasn’t just a guy. It was years before we told anyone about the occurrence.
If you saw Jesus, Dary, then I’m jealous; though I yet believe that once I heard the angels sing – back when I was but a child, and yet so innocent and knew next to nothing about Jesus.
I was participating in a seminar one day when a man gave a testimony. He was a college student at the time, walking with his friends along a highway. They decided to take time off from college studies to “spread the Gospel”. The highway was an abandoned stretch and because it was late dusk, it was cold out; the desert gets cold when the sun sets on the horizon. A man (stranger) approached them and they all broke into conversation. The man giving the testimony asked if the stranger was cold and offered him his most favorite of all hoodies. The stranger accepted it and walked away. A few seconds later the young men turned to see the stranger, but he wasn’t there – he (for lack of a better descriptor) disappeared from view. With our limited human brains (compared to omniscience) how can we possibly explain that?
Interesting accounts. Too bad the film has disappeared.
I encourage readers of this blog to Google the Christian Century Blogs and read the article entitled “Bart Ehrman is Part of a Legitimate, Ongoing Conversation” written by Greg Carey on 4/15/14. Bingo! He has hit the nail on the head and I could not agree with him more.
http://www.christiancentury.org/blogs/archive/2014-04/bart-ehrman-part-legitimate-ongoing-conversation
Dr Ehrman: I am reading your recent book (almost done with Chapter 7) and i’ve been reading with keen interest these latest posts dealing with the key theme of that book, namely how a Jewish apocalyptic preacher from Galilee became God. I have read most of your other books and have been impressed with your clear and logical style. I also agree with you on most of the historical arguments you’ve made. I do have one issue I’d like your help with and this current post is a good stepping stone. Here goes: I’m having trouble understanding just why Jesus’ most immediate followers/disciples would make a jump from post-resurrection visions of Jesus to believing that he had been exalted by God to be the Son of God. If, as you argue, Jesus never made this claim during his ministry and that his disciples at most understood him to be a powerful preacher of the coming apocalypse, i.e., the Son of Man, the Messiah, what would prompt some of them after having a vision or visions of him after his death to believe that his status was greater than the Son of God or the Messiah? Was it the nature of the visions? Were their visions of such power that their experience of a divine being was unmistakeable and the only logical conclusion they could come to was that Jesus was even higher and more divine that just the Son of Man?? Or, did Jesus’ inner teaching to his closest disciples convey this idea? You point out in your book that people in ancient times, including some Jews, were not disinclined to believing in visions especially of loved ones following their deaths. So, the fact that some believed that Jesus appeared to them after his death is understandable and can account for their excitement and confusion when they happened. However, it’s just not clear to me how these earliest disciples would arc intellectually or psychologically from belief in a Jewish apocalyptic preacher, Son of Man/Messiah who suffers an “ignominious” death on the cross that seemed to have negated all that he taught and predicted would soon come about, to a belief that a vision of his resurrected body means he is the Son of God with all that entails and all that follows from that assertion (which you explain quite well in your book). I have trouble with the last part of this arc–from visions of a resurrected body to Son of God status. And, as you argue in Chapter 7 of your current book, very shortly after Jesus’ death (2 years or so) there is at least one pre-literary tradition that Paul taps into that elevates Jesus to the status of pre-existing with God. Your main argument is that it was the visions. Ok, I accept that. But why? What is prompting this quite extraordinary shift in belief following these visions? If you have mentioned this point here or in your book and I missed it or misunderstood it, I am very sorry for making you repeat it here.
I try to explain this in the book. Short story: since they were apocalpyticists, they thought if someone “lived again” he had been brought back in his body. But Jesus’ body was no longer with them. Where was it then? It must have been taken up to heaven. And what did ancient people think of someone who had been taken up to heaven? He had been made a god.
“Son of Man/Messiah who suffers an “ignominious” death on the cross that seemed to have negated all that he taught and predicted”
Indeed. It was this very truism that lead me right out of Christianity. Jesus and HIS (sorted through and poured over) teachings.
P.S. For a clearer understanding of who it was that Jesus was, and what his mission was, I beyond highly recommend the book The Jesus Dynasty, by Dr. James Tabor.
Montefiore was attending an English boarding school at the time, which would have been Christian, and of course England of his time was a Christian country. But of course he would never heard the words “follow me” in connection with Jesus.
Thanks for that, jrhislb. It never would have occurred to me.
Joseph Smith, the founder of the Mormon Church, as well as successors claim to have seen and spoken with Jesus. I’m skeptical–not that they claimed it, but that it actually happened.
In the records of the LDS church there are six versions of the ‘first vision’ of Joseph Smith and within these are references to an actual meeting with Jesus Christ. It is interesting that the earliest record is in Joseph Smiths own hand writing and he identifies the one who appeared to him as the Lord who was crucified for the world. In later version which in most cases were written by others … this experience is enlarged to include two personages who looked identical. One introduces the other as My Son. It is interesting the the LDS missionaries use the later versions in their missionary outreach.
Doesn’t this imply we know what Jesus looks like?
I have a friend who happens to be a Lutheran minister that is often claimed to look like Jesus…or Charles Manson.
I remember from my History of Art class in the late 60s seeing a slide of a statue of “Christ as the Good Shepherd” which at the time was thought to be the oldest depiction of Jesus. It showed a youth without a beard. I also have seen the mosaic ceilings of the two Baptistries in Ravenna (early 6th century?) that depict Jesus being baptized. The later Orthodox Baptistry shows a bearded Jesus. The earlier Arian Baptistry shows a Jesus without a beard.
“The oldest known portrait of Jesus, found in Syria and dated to about 235, shows him as a beardless young man of authoritative and dignified bearing. He is depicted dressed in the style of a young philosopher, with close-cropped hair and wearing a tunic and pallium – signs of good breeding in Greco-Roman society.” This comes from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Depiction_of_Jesus which is worth reading.
Thanks Dr. Ehrman. I remember reading that. I just wasn’t clear on what would have prompted the earliest Christians to make a transition not just to a god, but to a higher divine being and then to some kind of equality with God the Almighty. That’s a very bold leap so something very powerful must have happened or some thought that making that leap would better convince others of Jesus’ power. Thanks.
More Fodder for Your Canon: http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/04/20/did-the-virgin-mary-warn-rwanda-s-holiest-town-of-the-genocide.html
The date, 1956, is interesting to me because this was the second “great awakening” of the 20th century, which produced Dennis Bennett, Francis MacNutt, Kathryn Kuhlman, and so on. People stated that “miracles” happened through such people. This leads me to a conclusion that our “universe” (in a broad sense) is an exquisite, complicated, elegant structure, and that there may be more going on than we’ll ever know.
Bart,
In your debate with Licona a few weeks ago you said that Paul’s claim that Jesus appeared to him may have been based only on a *dream* of Jesus. I was curious if you think this could also apply to Peter, James, and some of “all the apostles” in 1 Cor 15:7. Also, what is Paul’s purpose in mentioning non-corporeal dream appearances of Jesus in 1 Cor 15:5-8 since they cannot directly support Jesus’ corporeality?
Yes, I do. They certainly thought they saw Jesus bodily, but we don’t know if they were awake or asleep.
Bart,
Just to clarify, are you saying that some of the people in 1 Cor 15:5-8 may have been asleep when they saw what they thought was a bodily Jesus (i.e., they were dreaming) and then when they woke up they did not realize they had been dreaming? If they woke up and knew they had been dreaming, do you agree they would have known it was not a bodily visit by Jesus?
I’m saying that many people see something in a dream and the believe it’s real. Sometimes they don’t know they were dreaming but other times they know it was a dream but believe it was a truth revealed to them. Still happens today, all the time.
Bart,
Two questions:
1] Do you think the resurrection up to heaven belief could even have *originated* with a dream of Jesus that the percipient (presumably Peter) *knew* was a dream? This seems far fetched to me, unless you are suggesting the drempt Jesus *told* Peter that he was bodily resurrected up to heaven. Is this what you are suggesting? I have all along thought your view was that Peter had an *awake* and *solid looking* vision of Jesus projected into external space like sometimes happens in bereavement and that led him to conclude Jesus was bodily resurrected up to heaven.
2] If we grant that a dreamer (who knew he was dreaming) might believe that Jesus’ bodily resurrection up to heaven was revealed to him in a dream, how could this function as proof to “others” that Jesus was bodily resurrection up to heaven; i.e., what is Paul’s purpose in mentioning *non-corporeal* dream appearances of Jesus in 1 Cor 15:5-8?
1. I think the problem is that we think “it was just a dream” and many people in the ancient world thought, “God has revealed this to me” So yes. Many ancient people did not differentiate dreams from visions. 2. It was perfectly possible to say “I saw Jesus” and mean it was in a dream, that God had revealed the truth to me one night. Look at Daniel 7, e.g. These are “night visions” — i.e. dreams.
Bart,
If a drempt Jesus *told* Peter that he was bodily resurrected up to heaven, then where did Peter’s subconscious get this idea in order to produce such a dream?
Uh… You’re asking why a particular person would have had a particular dream?
Bart,
Peter could not have just randomly drempt a Jesus that *told* Peter that he was bodily resurrected up to heaven. Peter’s dream would have been shaped by events, hopes, and surrounding cultural beliefs. So yes, I am asking you what factors generally could have generated a dream in a dejected Peter where a drempt Jesus verbally states that he has been resurrection up to heaven. I assume the answer would lean heavily on Jewish and Hellenistic beliefs that people could be resurrected and heroes could be bodily translated and immortalized up to heaven.
An undigested potato? Seriously — we cannot determine what causes dreams during sleep any more than we can determine what causes visions when awake. I don’t think our discussion is going to go anywhere. I get that you don’t buy it, and that’s fine. I don’t have any compelling reason to sell it! It strikes me as a possibility. I’d suggest we move on to other topics now.
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Ok Bart, thanks for the exchange. Sorry if you found my question too far out there. It just seems to me that some kind of cognitive reasoning, conscious or unconscious, needed to be done in order to produce the kind of dream you are proposing and for Peter to find it believable.
Bart,
One other question on this same topic. If any of the appearance traditions in 1 Cor 15:5-8 had corporeal narratives that were previously passed on to the Corinthians, why in your view does Paul not refer back these corporeal appearance narratives in 1 Cor 15:36 & 52? For example, in 1 Cor 15:36 one might have expected Paul to write something like “Fool! With the same body that Christ had in the appearance accounts that have been proclaimed to you. What you sow does not come to life unless it dies.” In 1 Cor 15:52 one might have expected Paul to write something like, “For the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised imperishable, and we will be changed, just like Jesus was [with implied reference to the corporeal appearance narratives that the Corinthian community presumably would already have known about].” Thoughts?
I think that’s exactly what he is indeed arguing. My sense is that the Corinthians would not have had any problem seeing that this was his point. “With what kind of body will they be raised?” He then answers the question. “With THIS kind of body.” It’s a bodily resurrection.
Bart,
In your recent debate with Licona, you mentioned that the creed may have ended with just the appearance to Peter (1 Cor 15:5a) and the appearance to the twelve (1 Cor 15:5b) could be a rumor that Paul picked up during his travels. Do you also think the appearance to the twelve could be a rumor if it was part of the formal creed? My thinking is this would be less likely because a formal creed would probably get more vetting and have more opportunity for correction, and Paul might be more careful about making sure a formal creed came from a reliable source before preaching it. What do you think?
I believe we’ve discussed this already.
I think we did about a year or two ago and at that time you said the creed consisted of all of 1 Cor 15:3-7. In your recent debate with Licona you seem to have changed your mind and paired it down to vs. 3-5 and floated the idea that it may only have been vs. 3-5a. Hence my question above.
My view is that we don’t know where Paul got his information from. I’m sure he heard it from somewhere!
Ok thanks Bart. I really appreciate your work.