Loading...After all the tangents and side-tracks, I can return now to my reminiscences of my relationship with Bruce Metzger. Perhaps I should say a few things about his personality, as I perceived and experienced it.
I think everyone who knew him would say that he was a true Christian gentleman. He was respectful of all people, polite to a fault, and cordial. But he was not someone that anyone became intimate with. I am sure that I came to be closer to him than any PhD student he supervised in his 40 plus years teaching at Princeton Theological Seminary. He as much as told me so. I knew his wife and his two sons (a bit); he invited my family to Christmas dinner; for several weeks I lived with him and his wife in their home. But there was always a kind of distance to him as well. He never let down his hair. The best I can put it is that he was cordial rather than warm and intimate.
He was a shy man. You would not know that from his public persona, but in personal contact he was shy and was not all that easy to talk with. We had a joke about it among the graduate students. One of my friends was in his home turning in a late paper; they made some small talk; there was a silence; and out of the blue, Metzger pointed to a grandfather clock in the room and said, “I *made* that clock!” For years, whenever my friend and I would be talking and there was a pause, one of us would say, “I *made* that clock.”
One day I came over to his house to give him a chapter of my dissertation. He had told me on the phone that he might be in the back yard mowing his lawn. That’s where I
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Loved this! Thanks.
“was always grateful for what he received, great and small, and was always willing to give back to others.” a sign that Bruce Metzger was a distinguished yet humble intellectual. You must have benefited and are fortunate to be associated with a prominent scholar.
Another unrelated question:
If we for the sake of argument accept the idea that Jesus was buried in a tomb (which I know isn’t likely).
Would it be unlikely that the memory of where the tomb was located was correctly passed on for 3 centuries until Helena? (When the holy sepulchre was installed)
Why?
It would be extremely hard to imagine. There’s no record of it before then, even in writings connected with Jerusalem. In any event, Helena didn’t build the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. Constantine himself did. It was built on top of a shrine devoted to Aphrodite.
Why would there be a tomb under the shrine of aphrodite though?
The idea that was propagated is that the pagans desecrated Christ’s burial place by building a temple to a pagan divinity over it; Constantine had it then reverted to its rightful status.
Yeah, but that seems to be just a story told to promote it. If true, that implies that the holy sepulchre indeed was the believed tomb of Jesus when the shrine was built. Is there any reason for there being a tomb under the shrine apart from it indeed being believed to be the tomb of Jesus (so apart from the story)?
Oh, I don’t think the church is actually located at the site of Jesus’ tomb! Almost every place in Israel where tourists are told “this happened HERE!” is just made up.
As I can’t reply to your last comment I will do it here. If you don’t think that the story is true, but we know there was a roman shrine on top of a tomb. How do we explain that?
What I’m saying is that the traditional place thought to be Jesus’ burial spot is now the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem. It was constructed on orders of Constantine in a spot where a shrine to Aphrodite was standing. The workers who destroyed the shrine claimed that they found the burial site of Jesus underneath. Local legend, of course.
The Jesus’ burial place story is probably just a local legend indeed. But there IS an actual tomb present so the workers did find something. Namely: an anonymous tomb under the shrine of Aphrodite (which they decided to attribute to Jesus). My question is though: what was a tomb doing under that shrine? Wouldn’t it be a bit weird to randomly build a shrine on top of a tomb?
We don’t know. The rumor was that they did it to defile the burial place of Jesus with a foul pagan shrine. Holy places were often built on holy places.
The Jesus’ burial place story is probably just a local legend indeed. But there IS an actual tomb present so the workers did find something. Namely: an anonymous tomb under the shrine of Aphrodite (which they decided to attribute to Jesus). My question is though: what was a tomb doing under that shrine? Wouldn’t it be a bit weird to randomly build a shrine on top of a tomb?
I think I answered that already.
Yeah but as we concluded that rumor was just a local legend. Is there any thinkable actual reason for there to be a tomb under the shrine other than intentional sacrilege?
I am aware we don’t know, I just wonder if we can come up with an alternative plausible explanation?
I thought I answered this. A holy person’s tomb was considered a sacred space. Religions often built shrines on someone else’s sacred space in order “take it over” for themselves. So it’s completely thinkable.
Could you maybe lay out the sequence of how you think it would have happened? Like: 1.the rumor was spread that it was jesus tomb 2. Hadrian fecided to build a shrine on it 3. Constantine had the shrine destroyed and made it a christian place again.
Or do you think the rumor that it was jesus tomb only spread after discovering that there was a tomb under Aphrodite’s shrine?
Everything that I think we know about the incident comes to us from Eusebius. I discuss it in my book The Triumph of Christianity, and don’t really have any additional information about it. My sense is that htey wanted to find a spot they could say Jesus was buried, they chose that spot, it gave them a chance to destroy a pagan shrine to make it Christian, and they claimed the pagans had desecrated it by building their shrine there. I don’t think the place itself, historically, has anything at all to do with the place Jesus himself was buried. It’s like most of the “sacred places” in the holy land. Later locals simply came up with traditions associating them with biblical figures and Jesus in order to highlight the importance of their own locale, even though they were just making it up. (If you go to Israel, you’ll see “where Jesus walked on water” and “the cave he was born in” and “where he turned water to wine.” It’s all just made up later.
“My sense is that they wanted to find a spot they could say Jesus was buried, they chose that spot, it gave them a chance to destroy a pagan shrine to make it Christian”
Okay let’s say that this is what happened. The Christians chose that spot to destroy the Pagan shrine because they where looking for a spot anyways and they disliked Pagans.
But when they destroyed that shrine, instead of just saying that spot was Jesus’, they actually found an empty tomb below it. Why would that shrine have such a tomb below it if the shrine was not intentionally built on top of Jesus’ tomb to desecrate it like the story goes. That just doesn’t make sense to me
How do we know they found a tomb below it? (Answer: Because they said so.)
But there is a tomb there so somehow that tomb must have been built, I know they may have built it after they destroyed the shrine but if we assume for a second that that tomb was already there, is there a way to explain that without the story being true?
Maybe we should go on to a different topic? (There isn’t a tomb of Jesus there, btw. There’s a place where they say Jesus’ body used to be, but that ain’t the same thing) (It’s an AMAZING site, btw)
Mr. Ehrman, do you think he was sad to see you turning into an atheist? Because I’m pretty sure he loved you in his way, and, from what I can infer from all I’ve read about him, he was really devout.
Yes, I think he probably was.
Bart, growing up in a conservative “non-denominational” church, I was taught that the wine of the New Testament was non-alcoholic. I found a blog post from 2015 where you touched on this topic, but I’m curious if you could elaborate on how individuals and the NT church treated wine and alcohol.
Specifically:
Did the wine of the the Lord’s supper contain alcohol?
What is the origin of the term “fruit-of-the-vine”, and does it have any alcoholic or non-alcoholic connotations?
Is it possible that Jesus or one of his apostles ever became drunk (Luke 7:34)?
What was the alcohol content of wine back then?
Yes, all wine in antiquity was alcoholic. Fruit of the vine normally refers to alcoholic wine. It’s absolutely possible they got drunk. I’d be amazed if they didn’t. I don’t know what the levels of alcohol were, but it’s an excellent question. It was traditional to mix wine with some water, which may suggest that it was more potent than what we go for today. Or maybe it’s just hard for me to imagine someone wanting to water the stuff down.
Bart,
If your biggest problem with believing there is a God is the ‘problem’ of suffering, you should reconsider. That’s relatively easy to reason out. We have all lived before, and most will reincarnate. You ‘reap what you sow’ from life to life. That’s basically all there is to it, say the Masters. Think Tower of Siloam.
Good karma gives human birth. Really good karma brings a living Master into your life. Not so good karma gives various degrees of ‘misery’ or ‘suffering.’ It’s just a matter of viewpoint, and ours is limited (so we don’t get confused knowing of prior relations when they reincarnate as friends or family).
Jesus refers to reincarnation several times: John the Baptist –“He IS Elijah….” coincidentally indicating that all Masters are one when it comes right down to it. Does this not make sense? How are all those living before Jesus and never knowing of him to be saved? Or some tribe in the Amazon or marooned on some Pacific island? They take rebirth, along with their actions from previous lives. What about child prodigies? Mozart just popped out writing symphonies cold at age 5? I don’t think so.
“We have all lived before, and most will reincarnate.”
Bold statement.
Well, that explains why the worlds number of human inhabitants is growing constantly, while more and more animals go extinct.
It’s not pollution.
It’s because of reincarnation more souls are ascending into human form, while less insects and lower memmals are needed as physical shelter for the wandering souls.
Seriously?
I allow myself to doubt…
Sounds like you were fortunate to have such a person in your life. A sermon on Philemon? Interesting that he chose that of Paul’s letters. I assume that he was not so old school that he was pro-slavery! Or maybe he related Paul’s views on slavery to graduate students?!
Oh no, he was socially liberal in many ways. Rumors were that he was opposed to Vietnam, e.g. And so far as I could tell, there wasn’t a racist bone in his body.
To be clear, I meant, jokingly, that he thought of graduate students as slaves, not that he was “relating”, i.e., telling his students about slavery. He sounds like a very “Christian” man in the best sense.
He sounds like an extraordinary man.
Hi Dr Ehrman!
What do you think of Gary Habermas’ arguments for the resurrection? Specifically- how valid are near-death experiences in the discussion, and, if there was no resurrection how can one explain so many people believing to have seen a risen Jesus? Is resurrection not then the most plausible explanation for the accounts?
He refers to you often!! So I’m interested to hear your take on him.
Thank you!
I don’t think NDE’s have any relevance; they would suggest, instead, that Jesus never died. Which would mean he couldn’t have been raised.
It’s easy to explain why so many people claim to have seen a risen Jesus. For one thing, we actually only have one author from all of antiquity who claims to have done so (Paul). The other appearances are not claims to have seen Jesus but claims that other peole claimed to have seen Jesus. When the Gospels say that Mary saw him, we acctualyl don’t have Mary writing to tell us that, but someone living decades later saying that about her. Just as records of people who claimed that other miracles happened, say, at the hands of Muhammed.
I have recently read Ecc 9:5 where it says (NRSV) “The living know that they will die, but the dead know nothing; they have no more reward, and even the memory of them is lost.”
This seems to bear out what I believe you suggest, that when we die we are no longer conscious of anything – ie the dead know nothing. However I find the second half of the verse puzzling. Does this mean that their memories are wiped clean as well (ie extending the idea of their knowing nothing) or does it imply that those left behind just forget about them thereafter?
I’ve consulted various translations but I cannot get a clear understanding.
Doesn’t everyone mow the lawn wearing a three piece suit? Oh, just me and Bruce, then 🙂. But seriously, fascinating post.
Professor how are the passages of Mark 9:1 and Mark 13:30 where Jesus says that the kingdom of God will come before the current generation passes away understood by biblical scholars who are still Christians and how did you understand those passages within your Christian faith when you were still a liberal Christian?
When I was a Christian *scholar* I understood that he thought the end was coming in his own generation and that he had made a mistake about htat. I also thought that if the incarnation were true, then he really was a human, and if so, he could make mistakes. To think he couldn’t be fully human would be the heresy of docetism.
I have a similar question about whether Jesus ever sinned. At least three things strike me as possibly rising to level of sin: calling the Syro-Phoenician woman a dog; “calling” his disciples to, in effect, leave their families destitute; condemning the goats at the final judgement to eternal torment-though I know you argue that instead Jesus is condemning the goats to eternal death. (I think it’s a pretty good argument but for me it’s inconclusive. Nevertheless, combining that with the notion that the final judgement is a parable or metaphor makes it more persuasive.)
So, as a liberal Christian, would you have argued that it would be docetism to say that Jesus never sinned at all?
I don’t think any ancient Jew would consider those things sins. And no, I didn’t think humans *had* to sin — Adam didn’t, e.g. So the Second Adam didn’t have to either.
I’m probably missing something-or maybe just refining my question-but, as fully human, “could” Jesus have sinned even if he didn’t “have to”? Just like he “could” have been mistaken?
Would it be docetism to say that Jesus could not have sinned–even if it would not be docetism to say that he did not in fact sin?
Or does the question not even arise if we have no reason to think that Jesus did in fact sin?
There were big debates about that in medieval Christianity: was Christ “able not to sin” or wsa he “not able to sin”? In Latin: Posse non peccare or Non posse peccare. Depends who you ask? You can see how interesting arguments could develop on both sides.
In the period included in “Heaven and Hell” did the following two ideas appear? (1) People go to hell because God respects their freedom to choose evil and live in the kind of world created by evil which continues for them after death. In other words, God doesn’t actually send them to punishment in hell. They’ve created hell for themselves. (2) Hell is simply separation from God which people have the freedom to choose by not responding to God’s offer of love and mercy.
The first might be a form of justice. Especially the second sounds like a theological way of letting a loving God off the hook for the fact that some people wind up in hell.
1. No. 2. No.
I’m trying to get a feel for what the historical Jesus was like by identifying a couple of 20th or 21st Century figures who might have resembled him–but with a modern substitute for his apocalypticism. One reason I’m looking for such figures is that I have trouble overcoming a picture of Jesus as a mostly passive figure which I don’t think is accurate.
I’m thinking that some kind of revolution that brings a utopian society might play a role in a modern worldview that’s similar to the importance that apocalypticism had for First Century Jews.
How similar do you think Ghandi and Martin Luther King were to the historical Jesus? Admittedly they were not obscure and were more (though not completely) successful than Jesus. But all three: practiced non-violent action; championed an oppressed people; were prophetic moral and social critics; and communicated a vision of future liberation in a better world. And they were all killed for their views and actions.
On the other hand, maybe the closest to Jesus-including his apocalypticsm-are contemporary fundamentalists and evangelicals who believe that the Rapture or Second Coming is just around the corner.
They certainly had lots of very simiilar ideas — ont surprising especially for King, given his Christian commitments.
Criterion of Embarassment: How do we know what would be embarrassing to a 1st-century jew?
You have to read a lot of first century Jewish writigs.
Dr. Ehrman, This is off the subject, but I’ve been listening to one of your lectures on the triumph of Christianity. If the emperor Julian (the Apostate) had lived and had a long and successful reign, what do you think are the chances that he would have turned the empire back to paganism? I suspect that even if he had, Christianity would have eventually won out because of its exclusivity and evangelism. Just like to see your thoughts.
I doubt if he would have succeeded, but I often wonder. I tallk about the issue briefly in mny Book Triumph.
I’ve enjoyed the personal posts. Have you considered writing a memoir?
Not really. I’m too self-centered as it is….
Sorry for the unrelated question. I was wondering, have you written about or do you know someone who has written about, what exactly was happening in those very first house “churches” around 50 AD, before there really was even a church? Everything I’ve read gives a broad picture, but I’m trying to understand in close up. “Hey guys welcome to our probably end of the world meeting, first we’ll have a little spirit action, a bit of speaking in tongues etc. and later there will be snacks!”
I’m referring to the very early meetings in a place like Corinth, which as I understand it was probably a mix of Jews and Pagans. There was the female prophesying, speaking in tongues, Eucharist, baptism, communal stuff. But, my main question is, what were they imitating? Were they imitating pagan rites? Jewish synagogue worship? Mystery rites? They must have had some cultural relationship to what they were doing? I have a hard time believing it was all totally unknown for them. What exactly did they think they were doing?
Anything you can point me to would be appreciated. Currently reading Misqouting Jesus (my daughter thinks it’s about mosquitoes and Jesus) and really enjoying it.
I”m afraid we don’t have any explicit discussion of what was actually happening during the entire course of their worship services — just general ideas (scripture, prayer, singing, Lord’s supper, prophecying, tongues speaking, and so on)
“we actually only have one author from all of antiquity who claims to have done so (Paul).” Paul was never a witness of the crucifixion or resurrection. He never even met Jesus. Paul and his companion appeared when they persecuted the genuine followers of Jesus. None of Paul’s companion confirmed what Paul saw or heard were true. Christians only relied heavily from the infamous persecutor.
“Gospels say that Mary saw him, we actually don’t have Mary writing to tell us that, but someone living decades later saying that about her.” You are absolutely right. Similarly, we don’t have Jesus and his disciples writings about all that Christians preach about what they supposed to have said.
” Just as records of people who claimed that other miracles happened, say, at the hands of Muhammed.” The miracles of Jesus in the Quran was revealed by the Angel Gabriel to Prophet Muhammad. It was not the invention of the prophet. Quran is 100 % from God which contain more than 150 miracles. It is the only book composed with more than 10 mathematical formula which no human could have written.
Hi Dr Ehrman!!
1.Do you think it is at all possible to find any old sermons of yours or Metzger’s online?
2. What were Metzger’s theological beliefs?
Thank you!
None of mine. Metzger’s? I doubt it. All this was before Internet. He held to all the traditional beliefs about God, Christ, Trinity, and so on. He was not committed to the complete inerrancy of the Bible, but held it in extremely high esteem as the Word of God.