Loading...My new online course focusing on what scholars know about the four Gospels will soon be available on my personal website. Neither the course nor the website is part of the blog, but I am announcing it here because I know a number of blog members would be interested. The course is based on a set of remote lectures that some of you attended, and includes additional instructional materials. If you did not come but would like to know more about it, you can check it out here: https://www.bartehrman.com/courses/. It consists of eight thirty-minute (or so) lectures, with the title: “The Unknown Gospels: Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John.” (I call them “unknown” because most people don’t know what scholars say about them.)
I’m envisioning the course as part of a long series covering the entire Bible, both Hebrew Bible and New Testament, called “How Scholars Read the Bible.” The series as a whole will be devoted to showing what historical scholars argue, believe, think, and think they know about the Bible, with some attention paid to their reasons for thinking so (some people know what scholars have to say but often don’t know why). In a sense, the various courses I’m doing for it are further attempts to do what I do on the blog: provide scholarly information to lay readers/listeners in terms they find completely accessible and interesting.
My first course in the series was a six-lecture introduction to the Book of Genesis, and my current plan is to alternate courses between the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament. I also produced a one-lecture course – this one was available free of charge to anyone who wants it – on the question “Did Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John Write Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John (another title I rather like); you can find that one here: https://www.bartehrman.com/did-matthew-mark-luke-john-write-the-gospels/
The newer, more in-depth course on “The Unknown Gospels” digs into other important issues connected with the four Gospels, crucial for understanding them and yet widely unknown. Among the questions I deal with are:
- How have scholars studied and come to understand these texts over the centuries?
- What has led them to the views they have?
- When were the books actually written (decades after Jesus’ life)?
- What sources of information did their authors have (largely oral but some written)?
- How consistent are they with one another in both detail and overall portrayal of Jesus? And just how significant are the differences among them?
- How do the inconsistencies among the Gospels actually help us to understand each one of them better?
- How reliable are they for knowing what Jesus really said and did?
- How did scribes who copied them change their texts?
- Why did we get these four Gospels, and not others? Who decided? On what grounds? And when?
- And so on….
Later in the series I will..
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In this post and the next two I’ll be summarizing what I cover in each of the eight lectures. These are the issues that I should think anyone would need to know about to have an informed understanding of the Gospels.
Lecture One: The Unknown Gospels: A Bird’s Eye View
After introducing the major topics of the course, in this lecture begin by summarizing the narratives of the four Gospels taken as a whole. Throughout the course I will be dealing to a great extent with how they differ from one another — so much so that they can not be read as a single book but as four distinct and different books. Even so, the four narratives share a number of common features and perspectives, and in order to understand the distinctive message of each one it is important to recognize what they have in common.
These books are the basis of Christian faith in Jesus and for understanding historically what he actually said and did. But they are even more than that. They are important narratives from the earliest Christian times, which can be studied like other ancient texts by being situated in their own historical contexts and read like other writings from the period. When we take a historical approach to the Gospels, a number of major critical issues emerge that need to be addressed. The views of scholars on many of these issues are not widely known to the reading public.
The rest of this lecture summarizes some of those problems: Who wrote these books? When did they write them? What sources did they use? Why are there so many differences among them? How do we explain accounts (apart from miracles) that are simply not plausible? And do contradictions and historical errors necessarily compromise the value of the Gospels and their importance? (Spoiler alert: NO! They actually help us understand the Gospels better.)
Lecture Two: The Rise of Historical Scholarship
This lecture explains when, why, and how scholars started interpreting the Gospels from a historical perspective rather than a theological or religious perspective guided by faith. Almost all the early historical scholars were indeed committed Christians; but they realized that the Gospels present historical difficulties and they were not afraid to understand what they were and figure out how to solve them.
The lecture shows how historical problems with the Gospels were recognized already by some Christian scholars of the second and third centuries. Early intellectual heavy-weights such as Tatian and Origen realized there were contradictions between the Gospel accounts and devised ways of dealing with them. After that, throughout most of the Middle Ages these problems were by and large glossed over, but a big change occurred with the Reformation, starting with Martin Luther.
The major turning point, however, occurred in the Enlightenment at the end of the eighteenth century and on into the nineteenth, as scholars began to realize that the ancient biblical authors did not have modern (scientific) understandings about how the world and wrote their accounts of Jesus from their own theologically oriented perspective. Rationalists at the time such as Hermann Samuel Reimarus and Heinrich Paulson proposed entirely new, revolutionary, and highly controversial ways of interpreting the Gospel accounts and the historical life of Jesus himself.
I suspect that most Christians — and those with Christian backgrounds — are at least dimly aware of some fairly clear differences, contradictions, inconsistencies, implausibilities, etc, among the gospels. Describing a number of those at the outset seems like it could be a useful way of introducing a broader discussion of the differences, etc. It would make people receptive to their consideration.
In your experience what would you say are a couple of these? The first one that occurs to me is where – Jerusalem or Galilee – Jesus’s followers first encounter him after the resurrection.
I think one major reason people are not more aware of differences is that most people are familiar with the gospels mainly from the readings at weekly services. The selection is from a single gospel with no chance to compare it to a similar reading from a different gospel. And each gospel is frequently not read in order from one week to the next. There is little or no context for each reading.
Yup, that’s a good one. The day Jesus died is another one. The possibility of Joseph and Mary’s sojourn to Egypt is another. Lots of good ones!
Going back to your upcoming book on Christian love and charity, it recently struck me that Christian European countries may be some of the most warlike and imperialist in history. In the last few centuries we colonized almost the entire world. Are you going to address the possibility that the preaching of Christian love and charity is a way for people to pretend to themselves that this is how they act without actually doing so, at least not in their colonies? Even if they practiced a fair amount of charity in their own societies perhaps, at least in recent centuries, that was more a function of their increasing affluence due in part to exploiting colonies and political battles over how to share the growing pie than to a commitment to love and charity.
Marxists might call it false consciousness. Freudians might see it as some kind of defense mechanism, eg, compensation?
I think you are onto something here, Seeker1952. See Bart’s recent post on religion & ethics, about which I commented that I’ve known religious types who weren’t bothered too much by ethics. And the ethics of consistency & integrity is the core of your query here. It reminds me of some the responses that banks in particular (here in Australia at least) seem to make in the face of declining customer service – choosing not to invest money to fix that problem but just spend less on advertising that there isn’t a problem. Lots of people will just believe what they’re told rather than care about what they can see. Never ignore the psychology in all this.
I have been enjoying the course so far, thank you! Do you plan on including a bibliography along with each course? I think that would be valuable.
I hope to do so.
no question this time! just thank you Dr Ehrman
Prof Ehrman,
Doesn’t John 20:1-10 and 20:11-18 appear to be two seams from two different traditions or accounts merged in the Gospel of John?
They appear to me as though they could be read independently and they would make perfect sense if read so. They do not seem to work well in the sequence in which they appear.
Take for example why Mary Magdalene didn’t seem at all surprised by the presence of the two angels in verse 12 especially when they were clearly not there earlier in verse 5? Wouldn’t they have all left the tomb at the first instance? Why did she stay after the disciples had left? In this order, it throws in an additional bit of detail that is not present in the rest of the gospels. Mary goes to the tomb – goes back to inform the disciples – she returns with the disciples – the disciples confirm and leave – Mary checks the tomb again – Jesus appears to her.
What are your thoughts, please?
Yes, it’s a good point. THey do seem to be independent, linked by “Mary” but in a way that doesn’t quite make sense.
Secondly, Luke presents all the post-resurrection activities in a day with Jesus ascending to heaven on the same day as well. The book of Acts (most likely written by the same author) seems to hold a different view.
Acts 1:1-3 appears a general statement and may have no direct consequence on the next couple of verses which seem to point that Jesus stayed 40 days performing convincing proofs and speaking about the kingdom (verses 3-4). During this period, he instructs them not to leave Jerusalem as emphasized in Luke 24:49. Rightly so, the Ascension takes place in the succeeding act in verses 9 – 11 (post all the convincing proofs and messages).
If my sequencing is right, Luke holds to a same-day Ascension whereas Acts has Jesus appearing to the disciples over a period of 40 days.
Your take on this, please. Thank you.
Yes, I think that’s right. And very interesting. There are a number of explanations. Maybe Luke wanted to bring closure to his Gospel but then when writing the Acts (much later? somewhat later) realized that it made sense to *begin* it with the resurrection instructions. Since the two books circulated independently of one another (so far as we know: they are never placed next to each other in our manuscripts), he wasn’t too worried about it? It seems unlikely that he simply wouuld have forgotten later….
Dr Ehrman,
I eagerly look forward to this intriguing study.
Is there good evidence that the ethical principle expounded by Jesus was familiar to the Jews of his day and how widespread and accepted was this knowledge? It seems unknown to the “Rich, young ruler”, and the lawyer of Luke 10.
It seems that charitable conduct towards the poor as taught by the prophets such as Amos and in the poetic OT was not practiced?
Yes, the ethics of Jesus are found both in the Hebrew Bible and in the teachings of other Jews of his day.
I’m really enjoying the course! I’m up to the fourth lecture.