Loading...During my recent posts on the story of Jesus and the leper in Mark 1:40-44, I got a number of comments from readers that made me realize that I wasn’t being at all clear about what I was talking about. For a professional communicator, that is, well, an unsettling thought!
These comments came from people who appear to have understood that I was talking about what really happened (historically) in the episode. Did Jesus really get angry or did he really feel compassion? Some of these readers stressed that what really mattered was not his emotion but the fact that he did what he did; some others wanted me to know that it didn’t matter to them which emotion was ascribed to Jesus, because in their opinion the whole thing never actually happened at all. Both of these views (they’re obviously at the opposite ends of the spectrum) thought I was discussing historical realities. But that’s not what I was talking about. I too don’t believe the episode “actually” happened (i.e., that it’s a historical episode from the life of the man Jesus himself). It’s a story found in one of the Gospels. And I was studying it as a story.
I find that my students often have trouble differentiating between literature and history when studying the NT – that is, differentiating between the question of what an author (say, of a Gospel) was trying to communicate and what really took place in the past. But these are not the same thing. And so I stress with my students that some ways of studying the Gospels are concerned with knowing what the author wanted to communicate, and other ways are concerned with knowing what Jesus really said and did.
Some people aren’t interested in that distinction, because for them the ONLY thing that matters is what actually happened. If Jesus didn’t heal this guy at all, what’s the point of even talking about it?!? Other people (fewer, I think) aren’t interested in the distinction because for them the ONLY thing that matters is the text in front of us (for them: we don’t have the past, all we have are texts, and so we should focus on the text, not on some supposed history that lies behind it).
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Putting the importance of textual scholarship aside for a moment (and not denigrating the importance of such) I have two general thoughts:
1. It really doesn’t matter for me if the event did or did not happen in a moment of history. I look for the meaning behind the story and how that meaning might affect me and humanity at this time in history. Fiction can convey great meaning. I think of Joseph Campbell and his studies regarding the power of myth.
2. Why would it be so upsetting if Jesus did display anger? When I saw the Dalai Lama at a Buddhist training conference, he was asked if he ever got angry and he laughed boisterously and said “I get very angry. I am human. Just a simple monk and get angry like every human gets angry.” Jesus was human. He got angry. So what?
On “so what” — it affects how you understand the story. If the Dalai Lama laughed every time, instead of getting angry, it would change your understanding of him….
Bart…I am always amazed at how a simple question “So What?” produces such good responses 😀
There are many instances in the New Testament where Jesus is angry. Perhaps the most obvious is his rage in the temple. We could also say that he was angry when his disciples fell asleep when he was praying and when Peter cut off the ear of one of the guards who came to arrest Jesus.
For me, anger is not hate. Not being a scholar and knowing only rudimentary Greek it is often frustrating not being able to know the correct meaning of Greek words (I would like to find a Greek-English dictionary that is accurate and scholarly… for less than $200 !!!) and, then again, Jesus spoke Aramaic so who really knows if he was angry or compassionate.
It’s all very difficult to know for sure.
Regarding the Dalai Lama, whenever I see him he is never angry and laughs at almost everything, but gets very serious when discussing what is lost important to him as compassion, love, happiness, etc. Yet, he says he does become angry. I spent 3 days with him at a training conference. Delightful.
Bart. I appreciate you very much and I am happy that I know you. Keep up the good work you are doing with your students, and with us. Blessings, Todd
Bart, this post might naturally lead into a second post, which is your take on historians like Dale Allison and Chris Keith whose focus is on what we might call memory-history. I’d be particularly interested in what you have to say about Keith’s methodology, because you have nice things to say about his work (we agree!), and because Keith’s is (I think) the more radical method of writing history.
yes, I may do that down the line. I want to do some serious work in memory studies: but it will have to wait till I finish the current projects…
Good post. I was one of those who thought you were treating it as a historical event and that, hence, analysis of the event would tell us something about the historical Jesus and how he reacted to criticism. One of the other things that has struck me about this series of posts is how you are always open to changing your views if sufficient evidence can be presented, in this case by your own students. Being in science, I am very used to modifying my views as evidence accumulates. For example, we used to think peptic ulcer disease was a psychosomatic illness and then we had to change our view once it became clear that a strain of bacteria is the culprit. This kind of revision is constant in science, but is rare in religion where many hold to fixed views despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary.
Even if we see the story of the leper as being fictional, I would assume that the author of Mark thought that he was writing history. So, then, the question becomes why would people think that Jesus historically said this in anger and subsequently pass this view along via oral and written tradition? Since the event seems to reflect poorly on Jesus, it seems unlikely that an author would attribute this to Jesus if the author were knowingly writing fiction.
It’s not that he knows he’s writing fiction. he is writing his view of what happened. And it’s that *view* that matters, for this literary approach.
Dr Ehrman:
YOU WROTE:
Someone may object (many have!) that with the stories of Jesus it’s different, because there we are dealing with a historical figure, not a fictional creation, and so what matters in stories about historical figures is what really happened. That too is not true, I think.
MY COMMENT:
I think in Jesus case it is TRUE. What’s matters is what Jesus really did and said. Jesus was not just a man, but a man who Himself declared, according to John 2:19, “Destroy this temple and in three days I will raise it up. Of course He was referring to the literal resurrection of his body and spirit. This is no small matter! It speaks of our mortality, death’s power over us, God’s power over death and the reality of Eternal Life. Also There are many different and conflicting accounts of what Jesus said and did. This is a problem! Only one version of His deeds and words can be authentic and true. My approach is to focus on the accounts and witnesses of the eye-witnesses themselves. I believe that we do have their testimonies among the words of the many others who decided for many different reasons, Political, financial, theological, envy and strife, etc, to write about events they had not witnessed. By the help of God’s Holy Spirit I’ve found that the words and forgeries of the impostors stand out like a soar thumb when compared to the words originally from God’s mind.
YOU WROTE:
“And texts like the Gospels can provide us information, not only about what each Gospel writer (and his sources) wanted to say about Jesus – i.e., their own theologically-religiously construed understanding about Jesus – but also about the man himself as an actual person who lived in first century Palestine.
MY COMMENT:
I agree! However the eye-witnesses were not speaking their own mind or their own interpretation of the scriptures of the Old Testament. They were literally proclaiming the words of Christ Himself and what Christ, and later on The Holy Spirit spoke to them. They declared the resurrection of Jesus from the dead and Him as the Lord of Glory. This is what they were preaching. Whether we believe them or not is a different issue.
My point is: I’ve read all the canonical Gospels and also some of the Apocryphal ones. I’ve learned to distinguish between the words of those who saw nothing and the words of the eye-witnesses. This has solved the problem for me! My faith in the resurrection of Jesus from the dead is solid. Through Jesus and the teaching of His Apostles I’ve come to believe that God is Love. God, the God of Jesus, will at the end be acquitted of all charges against him. I still believe what I first believed almost 42 years ago.
I always got where you were coming from, but then I own all your ‘trade’ books and collecting your scholastic text books which I am OCD enough to enjoy.
How much do you think can be known about the historical Jesus? I’ve seen it argued by highly respected scholars that about all that can be known about Jesus is that he was a Jewish teacher who was crucified by the Romans. I’ve also seen it argued that every word of the gospels is both inspired and true. The Jesus Seminar has their controversial votes on authenticity. I guess if the early church councils could vote on the nature of Jesus’ divinity, the Jesus Seminar can have their votes also. Do the gospels give early traditions or early traditions as interpretated by the Jewish Hellenists and their gentile converts?
I thnk a good deal can be known; I explain it all in my book Jesus: Apocalyptic Prophet of the New Millennium.
The distinction between history and literature is clear enough. However, in the case of Jesus, almost all of our historical evidence comes in the form of a gospel account–Mark, Q, M, L, John, etc. I have often heard scholars say, for example, that none of the healing stories found in the canonical gospels is historically credible; yet, even so, those same scholars accept as “historical fact” that Jesus was viewed as a healer. Invariably, reference is made to the “oral tradition” presumed to underlie the gospel texts. Therefore, even though the individual stories are “fictional,” they are considered to have a “historical” basis.
Of course, though very widely accepted, that oral tradition remains a hypothesis scholars use to bridge the gap between what actually happened in the lifetime of Jesus and what is found in the gospels. Because particular healing stories bear a strong resemblance to stories in the Hebrew scriptures, some (Price & Brodie e.g.) have suggested that literary sources underlie such accounts (and may well be the basis for the oral traditions. If early Christians created stories about Jesus that are totally implausible (walking on water or feeding the 5,000), why couldn’t they create those healing stories in the same way?
To use a different example, consider the so-called cleansing of the temple. In JAP, you write, “It is almost certain that Jesus did something that caused a disturbance in the Temple” (212); yet you readily acknowledge that Mark’s account appears “exaggerated.” Later, in DJE, you describe Mark’s account as “completely implausible” (326). Since almost every detail of Mark’s account can be tied to a prophetic text (Mal 3:1; Zech 14:21; Isa 56:7; and Jer 7:11) what evidence is there to justify your claim of “almost certain”? The story does, of course, provide a rationale for Jesus’ arrest and execution, but why assume that Mark’s story has anything beyond its apparent literary basis? Why claim that “something” vaguely like Mark’ account is “almost certain”? After all, the Romans could have had Jesus arrested and executed for simply drawing a crowd anywhere (and not just in the temple).
In my college Shakespeare class (1977), I wrote a term paper showing how freely the bard used Plutarch in Antony and Cleopatra; the title was “From Good History to Damn Good Theater” (the latter phrase being one of my professor’s favorite descriptions of particular scenes in Shakespeare). Although Shakespeare drew on an earlier “historical” source, much of that particular source may well have been just as fictional as the rest of his play. So, even there the distinction between literature and history seems tenuous at best.
WELL SAID!!! 🙂
But do you think that Shakespeare felt the same way about Julius Caesar and Cleopatra that Mark’s author felt about Jesus? My guess is that they both had a literary point to make but the author who wrote Mark may have felt a need to be as “historically” accurate as he could be, regardless of how historically accurate he actually was.
As a writer of narrative fiction, I can relate to the storytelling aspect of the gospels. I can understand the literary choice of Luke to portray Jesus as compassionate during his ministry and composed during his death rather than overly sensitive about his ability to heal or wailing in despair during his crucifixion. The Jesus of Mark seems less appealing than the Jesus of Luke. If Jesus being angry was anything other than the author of Mark’s attempt to remain true to the oral traditions he had heard, I simply don’t see the literary purpose of an angry Jesus. Which makes me wonder if oral traditions varied greatly based on region. Perhaps Luke used Mark as a “historical” source for his story in addition to other oral traditions that may have shone Jesus in a more compassionate light.
Just a thought.
I don’t think Shakespeare did; but his source Plutarch may have.
Dear Dr. Ehrman, a fantastic post, it reminds me of what I’ve read (or at least understood) about the writings of David Strauss, who created a scandal in Europe by suggesting that many of the stories about Jesus in the Bible were not historical but were ‘myths’ used to illustrate theological or spiritual points of view. I suppose it is difficult for a modern reader to imagine just how blasphemous this would have sounded in 19th century Europe but would you say that it was a watershed for Christological studies? And do you and other Biblical scholars consider yourself continuing Strauss’ tradition? Or has the field move far beyond and far away from that?
yes, Strauss is supremely important, and even though the details of his expositoin are held by nobody (that I know of) his basic notion that the Gospel stories recount ideas the authors thought were “true” even though they were non-historical is still widely held.
But aren’t Joseph Atwill and other biblical scholars going to present “evidence” (for something very similar to what Strauss was saying) on Oct. 19th in London? I know that you think all these guys are quacks, but is there ANY validity to their claims? You have to admit one thing: if they were right, and if it was historically accurate somehow, it would make SO much sense, wouldn’t it?
http://uk.prweb.com/releases/2013/10/prweb11201273.htm
Of course they will *say* it’s evidence. But I can assure you, what he presents will either be something all of us (in the field) have known for many years, or is something he has simply made up. No, there’s not a stitch of credibility in his claims, and it would be very easy to prove. (But I’m done, for now, with the mythicists. As a whole, with a couple of exceptions, they are an exceedingly unpleasant bunch….)
First of all, kudos on the site working so much better! I haven’t asked a question in a while because it was so hard to trace back to your answer afterwards (if one wasn’t following the blog every single day). Now your response comes to me email inbox…great! (Yes, it’s been a while; I’m just catching up now).
I forgot about your unfortunate discussions with mythicists, so apologies for bringing it up. Their latest argument amounts to nothing more than a typical conspiracy theory, although we all wish they deep inside they were right. And it would be good for you to take up the “fight” again once you feel up to it…
Thank you for illustrating so clearly what readers value in or about a NT story. What they see in it, what they wish to take from it, it is fairly subjective. There are, of course, many levels in reading something making inferences is one of them on the author’s intentions and knowledge of his time.
Regardless whether the above story is true or made up, it sounds as part of the Jesus narrative and so it goes. What intrigues me though is the alternative use of the verbs οργισθεις instead of σπλαχνισθεις which allows for a variety of interpretations and arguments. For one I take that it the author would certainly wish to demonstrate Jesus’ compassion and willingness to produce another miracle which he did in the end. If he got angry, that would be quite unlikely for a teacher like Jesus. I am saying this because I have checked various readings on the Essenes’ strict ethics, and as some scholars agree that “anger” was to be a suppressed emotion and very much part of the culture emphasis was to be calm and charitable. I wonder whether Jesus was trained and nurtured from an early age inside the Essenes communal life centred on cleansing and healing, (Therapeutai was that another name known of the sect?) living on scarcity and working on apocalyptic visions for the future of humanity.
Another big question of mine is why the Essenes were never mentioned in the gospels along with John the Babtist, the Pharisees and Sadducees?
Did the apostles wish to distance themselves from that sect?
I’d be delighted to receive your response.
CDScott
I’ve discussed previously whether Jesus was connected with the Essenes (answer: probably not). Why not mentioned in the NT? It may be they weren’t significant to the early Christian communities.
Sorry, Bart, but Macbeth actually lived. In fact, that’s an important part of understanding the motivation of why Shakespeare wrote the play in the first place. Same goes for Hamlet, Richard III and many others. But when it comes to comparing the Gospel stories to other forms of fact-based fictional literature, you seem to be walking a tightrope, so to speak. It’s fun, it’s interesting, and a real challenge (god knows I’ve done lots of it myself), but the prospects of success are risky , especially when switching back and forth from a literary to a historical approach. Even when you compare unknown authors and their products to well known Greco-Roman writers and their biographies, you do a disservice to the task, I think.
In this respect, I’m reminded of the question in What’s My Line. “Will the real Bart Ehrman please stand up?” Man of scholarship? Man of literature?? or Man of history.??? 😉
This is a great post – thanks. But it is my understanding from my study of Shakespeare that Macbeth did in fact live – but the events and story of the play do not bear much if any resemblance to his actual life. I think a better example from Shakespeare is Richard III – whose bones are now about to start another war of roses. Shakespeare’s depiction of Richard in Henry VI part 3 and in the play Richard III are very removed from the historical events and personality of the real life Richard III. I could go on and on about this – but suffice it to say that even though the real Richard was a completely different person than the Richard of the play, we don’t want to throw out the play or not read it because of the historical problems. The play is a profound study of power and evil, in addition to being a brilliant work of theater.
My bad.