Loading...Here are some questions I’ve recently received from blog readers on various intriguing topics, and my responses.
QUESTION:
Thanks for the extremely helpful distinction between apocalypticism and eschatology.
I would appreciate clarification on another distinction, namely the distinction between “consistent” eschatology and the “realized” eschatology promoted by C.H. Dodd.
If I understand correctly, the “consistent” eschatology of Schweitzer argues that Jesus’s teaching consistently refers to the Kingdom of God being something that was coming in the future, at the end of time. This contrasts to “realized” eschatology, in which Jesus is understood as saying that the Kingdom of God has been fully realized in the present, through Jesus’s person and ministry, and that no future expectation is required. Am I correct in this understanding?
If my understanding is correct, would you agree that the realized eschatology argument seems to be a case of “special pleading,” invoked because the proponents of it don’t like the idea of Jesus getting his apocalyptic eschatology so desperately wrong?! I mean, if many Jewish people at the time of Jesus were holding to an apocalyptic eschatology, in which they anticipated being liberated from the Romans, and with the Davidic monarchy being reestablished, would not a “realized” eschatology that left the “Messiah” dead and kept the Romans as oppressors, be cold comfort indeed?!
Get access to Dr. Ehrman's library of 4,000+ articles plus five new articles per week about the New Testament and early Christianity. It costs as little as $2.99/mth and every cent goes to charity!
Unlock 4,000+ Articles Like This!
Given this is a questions post: what do you make of Pilate’s remark to Jesus in John 18, “What is truth?” What might it have meant for John’s writer/s?
I think on one level it is meant to show that Pilate was clueless about what Jesus was talking about and simply had no access to what was really true. Didn’t even know what truth was. He thought power was truth. Wrong….
The way I see it, Mark 14:62 makes it clear that Jesus told the High Priest (who was Caiaphas) he would witness the Parousia. In other words, Jesus prophesied the High Priest would be alive at the time of the second-coming (Messiah coming on the clouds of heaven). Well, history and the passage of time not only reveal this prophecy failed to come to pass but Jesus’ eschatological prophecies also became unfulfillable. It is undeniable that Jesus’ disciples believed the eschaton (Parousia) was near, at hand, coming soon and imminent. We even know that Peter, John, James (the Lord’s brother) and Paul all made it clear in writings attributed to them that they believed the eschaton was imminent. So, was Jesus not saying that this generation he called an “evil and adulterous” one was to be the “Last Generation”? Surely you will agree that no apologist on earth has the authority, ability and power to raise expired, unfulfilled and unfulfillable prophecies from the dead.
Yes, I think he clearly thought it was the last generation. And, of course, modern apologists are not the only Christians in history to argue he meant something else!
Thanks Bart. You’re correct about apologists arguing against this truth. They have to resort to tampering with the evidence (changing the facts) by twisting the meaning of the words “this generation” (Greek: “e genea aute”) to mean “that generation” (one sometime in a zillion years from now perhaps). They refuse to accept the fact that all of the disciples knew precisely what Jesus meant; and if we examine the Synoptics we find several instances where these same Greek words were used and in every case there was no doubt whatsoever they meant “this present generation” (or the one they were then living in). In “Essays Upon Some Controverted Questions” (1892) the renowned British scientist, T. Huxley, laid it out as succinctly as possible by essentially saying that if Jesus made these prophecies, then assuredly the mere effluxion of time (history and the passage of time) reveals that he (Jesus) was under an illusion and is responsible for what Huxley called a “prodigious error”. My opinion is that (1) apologists cannot handle the truth; and (2) no apologist on earth can raise expired, unfulfilled and unfulfillable prophecies from the dead. This truth has set me free from error.
Bart, in the late 1970s when I was writing my dissertation in political science I wrote an essay (never published) equating Socrates’s notion of the paradigmatic city and Jesus’s kingdom of god arguing their equivalence as models for acting in the mundane world. Your writings have convinced me I was wrong. Jesus was not a Greek philosopher but a misguided end timer like all others.
Yeah, not sure if Jesus would have gone with the philosopher-king or the noble lie!
Dear Bart,
author of
Misquoting Jesus, Jesus Interrupted, and Forgery and Counterforgery
People who hold the HOLY BIBLE dear to their hearts read your books to be careful about taking the HOLY BIBLE at face value.
With our Lord and Savior of the World, Jesus Christ reading from HOLY SCRIPTURES in the gospels and with Jesus saying not a letter of the law will disappear (Matthew 5:18, Luke 16:17, Isaiah 40:8, Psalm 119:89, 119: 160, Romans 3:31, Galatians 3:17-18, etc.), we come to you earnestly and carefully not to lose our Christianity and belief in God about this issue of carefully holding the HOLY BIBLE at face value, dear to our hearts.
So, Christians have to come to terms about Gilgamesh and the Hebrew account of Noah.
Christians also have to come to terms about Atrahasis, another Sumerian account that includes the genesis of humans being bioengineering which has been verified by Science (Greg Braden and Lloyd Pye).
You care about the efficacy of scripture. As most Christians own a Bible and cherish it, and since people think God is a god of truth, people should know about New Testament criticism, Sumerian epics, and science?
Yes, people should know about everything important. Would that it were possible!
I think the analysis by scholars, such as yourself, have shown that some of the disciples of Jesus believed that they had seen him after his crucifixion. Do you think that some of the disciples of Jesus believed that they had seen him ascend into heaven? Thanks in advance for your comments.
I doubt it. We have only one narrative of it, in the book of Acts.
That’s been my thinking as well. So, do you think the idea of Jesus ascending into heaven and sitting at the right-hand of God came from the Jerusalem church or was that something later Roman Christians came up with? If the Jerusalem was teaching that, and nobody there believed they had seen it, then the Jerusalem church had to be making up this part of its theology.
I’d say the *idea* of him being at the reight hand of God is already there in NT times (e.g. Luke 22:69). But there is only one narrative that describes it happening.
Someone said, for example, this is a good read:
The Book of Genesis: A Biography (Lives of Great Religious Books)
Part of: Lives of Great Religious Books (24 books)
by Ronald Hendel
41 ratings averaging 4.4 stars and many editorial reviews
Genesis: one of the Bible’s most influential books
Genesis has been the keystone to almost every important claim about reality
And it continues to play a central role in debates about science
Acclaimed biblical scholar Ronald Hendel explores its impact on science
Galileo made the radical argument that the cosmology of Genesis wasn’t scientific evidence
Spinoza argued that the scientific method should be applied to Genesis itself
Steefen
Genesis, being derivative, has unearned credit and everyone who knows Genesis needs to know that as well.
Still waiting patiently for moderation of my comment and an answer to my question contained therein. Thanks.
Sorry. I got to it today. Wish I could get to all of them more quickly!
Dear Bart: I know you are busy and really understand and appreciate more and more the time and effort involved in this blog which is so helpful and serves such worthy causes. You are commended for making this all possible and for sharing so generously of your time in helping me find the truth which has set me free from error. Sending positive thoughts you way. Shalom.