Loading...There are two happy events affecting my life today. The first is that I just now have received an author’s copy of my new book, co-edited with my colleague, Zlatko Plese, The Other Gospels: Accounts of Jesus from Outside the New Testament (Oxford University Press). As I’ve earlier indicated, this book is an English-only edition of our Apocryphal Gospels: Texts and Translations, which included the original Greek, Latin, and Coptic along with the English translations. For this new lay-reader edition, we have simplified the introductions, making them more accessible to the non-scholar, and gotten rid of the ancient languages.
The other happy event is that I am off, now, to my annual meeting of the Society of Biblical Literature meeting. This is the professional meeting for all scholars and professors of Biblical literature. It is a highlight of my year. Papers are read by scholars on topics of everything you can imagine by scholars who are presenting the results of their research to other scholars. Papers are short – usually 20-25 minutes in length – and often have Q&A following, and sometimes official respondents. For many scholars it’s an opportunity to float an idea and get feedback before submitting an article to a peer-reviewed journal. The schedule has maybe 20-30 sections meeting simultaneously, with papers going in all of them, so there is certainly enough to choose from to attend.
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Hello Bart, is there any way that we could get a video/audio clip of your presentations of the SBL proceedings?
I don’t think so. There are hundreds of papers being given….
Sounds like you’ll be having a wonderful time. I’m sure we’ll all be eager for whatever info you want to share with us!
Bart,
Go to the Scholar”s Choice booth at SBL’s book section and you can see a copy of my book, “The Bible says ‘Saviors’ — Obadiah 1:21”. Maybe you can read it and then start the thread I have been asking you for. 🙂
Bart Erhman:
this book is an English-only edition of our Apocryphal Gospels: Texts and Translations, which included the original Greek, Latin, and Coptic along with the English translations.
Steefen:
In one of the gospels, Jesus is known for being popular in Syria. The Syrians knew him or knew of him, so much so that the Church of Antioch was pretty strong.
Why wouldn’t Syriac texts be included in your book?
What is the earliest archaeological evidence of the first followers of Jesus in Antioch?
Dr. Ehrman:
Serapion indicates that it was used by the DOKETAI, probably meaning a group of docetists – Christians who thought Jesus was not a real flesh and blood human, but only “appeared” to be (the word DOKEO means “to seem” or “to appear”).
Steefen:
“If we can call him a man,” Josephus says about Jesus. Josephus also says Jesus had a brother. So, what is going on here? Is it not true that Josephus is both aware that Jesus was a man and that he questions whether or not he was just as man precisely because in his lifetime, between 71 C.E. and 90 C.E., he too was aware of the “Christians”–at least the Christians in Rome. I wouldn’t be surprised if Josephus, a writer of first century Judea and the Jewish revolt, knew of Q, the Gospel of Mark, Marcion, and the Paul’s letter to the Romans.
I’ve read that both Josephus and Paul had an audience with Nero, both were shipwrecked, both were Roman citizens, both did not like circumcision for Gentile men, both were rabbis, both have a man surviving crucifixion as personally significant in their lives.
While Josephus did have his historical writings, he was still a Jew and a teacher (rabbi). Josephus had religious ideas. He must have, in retirement, sat back and ordered the matters of his spirit: Post-Temple Judaism, the meaning of death, hope in a Jewish God and a Jewish global theocracy ruled by a Jewish messiah (or not), the legacy of the Revolt, what it means to call a Flavian messiah.
In conclusion: Jesus exaggerated beyond being a man? The writer of the Gospel of Peter gives us this with a Giant Jesus leaving the tomb. Josephus, still surveying the people of his homeland, was aware of the exaggerations and the turning from the physical to the spiritual/cosmic.
I leave you with this question: what’s so heretical about admitting Jesus was a man, but in religious writings he became greater than one man’s life. He became a composite of freedom fighters. He then transcended the facts to the level of truth and became a personification of truth and hope (so much lacking after the defeat of the Revolt)?
We didn’t include Syriac because we had to draw the line *somewhere* and we drew it where our linguistic expertise stopped. I once learned Syriac, but without doing some serious work, it’s not good enough to publish translations…
http://www.robertmprice.mindvendor.com/reviews/trobisch_first.htm
what do you think?
You get alot of airtime in History’s “Bible Secrets Revealed” http://www.history.com/shows/bible-secrets-revealed
I know you don’t like watching the documentaries you’re in, but would be interested in your general thoughts on it
Haven’t seen it! So, well, I don’t know!
You have an interesting life indeed. Your upcoming meeting reminds me that I, in a similar way, used to enjoy the scholarship presented at the annual meeting of the American Psychiatric Association until the contents of the meeting were taken over by drug companies promoting their drugs. Congratulations on the new book.
I already have your book “Lost Scriptures: Books that Did Not Make It into the New Testament”, which I find an invaluable resource. How will this new one be different?
Lost Scriptures contained 17 Gospel texts along with lots of other things — epistles, apocalypses, canon lists, and so on. This one is just Gospels and contains 40 of them and nothing else.
I’ll be there, but not till tomorrow morning sometime.
Dr. Ehrman, when scholars say there are authentic letters of Paul and non-authentic letters of Paul:
http://bibleandjive.blogspot.com/2008/09/october-synopsis-seven-authentic.html
Have you found
1) the non-authentic letters are older
a. the manuscripts recovered
b. the content (Colossians supposedly contains a Christology too developed to have been authentic to the 50 – 70 AD time frame.
2) the historical accounts have mistakes or otherwise less reliable in determining the biography of Paul and the history of the early Church?
Why wouldn’t there be a St. Paul’s Letter to the Church of Antioch?
The seven undisputed are the oldest we have. We do have manuscripts, of course, for all of them. And yes, there are mistakes in Paul’s “biography” as presented in Acts. Paul may well have written a letter or more to Antioch. Where it/they went is a mystery.
I meant, do the non-authentic letters have mistakes or are otherwise less reliable in determining the biography of Paul and the history of the early Church than do the authentic letters of Paul.
I’ve drawn a line in pencil on the table of contents of one of my Bible’s through the non-authentic letters of Paul because I want to remember to de-prioritize them.
However, if there are no major historical mistakes in the non-authentic letters, I should not hold that against them.
Thank you so much for your time.
Yes, the way one makes a biography of Paul depends, e.g., on what one thinks of the Pastorals, with their autobiographical references. But no need to cross them out! Whether forged or authentic, they have a lot to say!
Why stop there, since he is the DSS “Spouter of Lying”?
Judas Was James,
Why do you say Judas was really James?
Dr. Ehrman and Blog Posters and Blog Readers
What do you think of this? Dr. Ehrman, this does not sit well with you speaking more highly of the Letters of Paul over Luke’s Acts of the Apostles.
Plutarch wrote Pyrrhus, The Fool of Hope after the early churches had begun using Paul’s epistles as their “gospel.” Luke wrote about this Fool of Hope to alert “Theophilus” to the truth about Paul, knowing that some would eventually see the parallel he had drawn between Pyrrhus and Paul.
Who was Pyrrhus to the Greeks? Pyrrhus, The Fool of Hope, was a story Plutarch wrote and titled at about the same time Luke’s gospel was being penned. It includes the following:
“Pyrrhus also sent some agents, who pretended to be Macedonians. These spies spread the suggestion that now the time had come to be liberated from the harsh rule of Demetrius by joining Pyrrhus, who was a gracious friend of soldiers.”
“And so without fighting, Pyrrhus became King of Macedonia…”
Another piece of information about Pyrrhus is of great importance, and it’s probably the reason his name was expunged from early biblical texts: According to the Legend of Troy as told by Homer, Pyrrhus was one of the soldiers who participated in the Trojan horse saga. And that is the best-known legacy from the legend of Troy
Paul also refers to himself as “a fool” at 2 Corinthians 11:16-29: “I repeat, let no one think that I am a fool; but if you do, then accept me as a fool…
Luke has Paul say, Acts 23:6: “. . . I am on trial concerning the HOPE of the resurrection of the dead.”
Luke put quite a lot of effort into connecting Paul to Pyrrhus, the “fool of hope” who was in fact an infiltrator.
More than any other of the coded messages, it seems that Luke wanted to convey the message that learning about Pyrrhus will reveal the truth about Paul.
Luke couldn’t write a story called Paul: The Spy Who Pretended to be Jesus’ Apostle Who Infiltrated the Movement and Destroyed It from Within. That story would have been censored by the Orthodox Church leaders supporting Paul. So he did the next best thing. He associated Paul with Pyrrhus in such a way that the connection could not be missed. No wonder the name Pyrrhus was removed from some of the translations of the Bible. Any fool could pick up on the message because virtually everyone knew that Pyrrhus hid inside the Trojan Horse! It was fortunate that some earlier texts were salvaged, saved, and passed on through time.
The name Pyrrhus appears in just one place in the Bible: Acts 20:4. However, as already stated, those who trust in the King James Version would not know the name was ever used in scripture:
King James Version: “And there accompanied him into Asia Sopater of Berea…” (The name Pyrrhus was removed.)
Darby Translation: “And there accompanied him as far as Asia, Sopater [son] of Pyrrhus, a Berean…”
New Revised Standard Version: “He was accompanied by Sopater son of Pyrrhus from Beroea…”
Latin Vulgate: “comitatus est autem eum Sopater Pyrii Beroensis…” (Filius is the Latin word for son. It is missing from the Latin Vulgate’s version of Acts 20:4; therefore, Jerome’s translation from the original Greek did not identify Sopater as “son of” Pyrii; that designation is an assumption.)
The original Latin Vulgate was commissioned in 382 by Pope Damasus I. The modern version is not the original version created by Jerome; it is the result of combining a variety of sources that include Jerome. It is, however, one of the earliest sources for the original texts. Therefore, it seems safe to conclude that Luke’s original story included the name, Sopater Pyrrhus Beroea.
Luke’s use of the key words from Plutarch’s story of Pyrrhus suggests a purpose. Luke’s primary purpose in his work was to use allegory to tell a story that was being suppressed. To place Pyrrhus with Beroea, Macedonia, Troas (aka Troy) and Demetrius leads directly to Plutarch’s Pyrrhus, men from Beroea, Macedonia, and Troy. The key words in Plutarch’s works, however, are omitted from Acts: “Agents,” “pretenders,” “spies,” and “disguise.” Philo’s Rule for Allegory #19 applies: The important allegorical information is to be found in the “noteworthy omissions.”
What Luke transmitted via allegory was: “And so, without fighting, Paul became the leader of the new religion.”
(Philo’s Rules can be found at http://www.thenazareneway.com/Philo‘s%20Rules%20for%20Allegory.htm.)
By infiltrating, claiming conversion, and assigning himself the title, Apostle, Paul (who never revealed his birth name was Saul) changed the doctrine and set out to destroy all evidence of the Nazarene sect that produced Jesus the Nazarene.
http://www.thenazareneway.com/The%20Gospel%20of%20Paul.htm
“Meanwhile, Saul was still breathing out murderous threats against the Lord’s disciples. He went to the high priest and asked him for letters to the synagogues in Damascus [in Syria], so that if he found any there who belonged to the Way, whether men or women, he might take them as prisoners to Jerusalem.”
Interesting. Jesus’ fame went throughout all Syria and Paul goes to the high priest to bring the fans of Jesus to Jerusalem as prisoners.
Steffen,
The material about Pyrrhus and Troy is interesting, for sure. Why would Luke have mentioned him at all? He is in my RSV, like the NRSV. If you like this and the CIA site (Christian site, not the spy network!) you would have to love Eisenman. He drills Paul. But he does so with admirable reserve. “James the Brother of Jesus” (no comma)