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How Do Scholars Make the Apocalyptic Jesus Non-Apocalyptic?
In my previous posts I’ve given some of the evidence that is generally seen among most New Testament scholars today as a clear indication that Jesus delivered an apocalyptic message: the end of the age was coming soon, God was to intervene in the horrible state of affairs here on earth, destroy (through a figure called the Son of Man) the powers of evil aligned against him, and bring in a good kingdom, a utopian world ruled by his own chosen one. This was to happen very soon. This evidence that Jesus was an apocalypticist is old hat to historians of the New Testament. But how then can some scholars contend that Jesus was not an apocalypticist? There are several strategies that have been used, some of them marvels of ingenuity. Two of these strategies are widely enough known among the reading public that I should say something about them. Both involve ways of reconceptualizing our sources so that, strikingly, it is the earlier ones that are non-apocalyptic.Here’s how I describe them in my book, Jesus: […]
February 6, 2024
A Less-Expected Argument that Jesus Preached the End of All Things
In my previous posts I’ve given some of the arguments for thinking Jesus delivered an apocalyptic message that the end was coming soon with a divine intervention in which all the forces of evil would be destroyed and all people judged. I’ve actually saved what I consider to be the strongest argument for last, a final coup d’grâce. The argument is both simple and compelling. I wish I had thought of it myself. In a nutshell, the argument is that we know beyond any reasonable doubt what happened at the very beginning of Jesus’ public ministry and we know what happened in its aftermath. The continuity between the two is Jesus’ public ministry itself. This ministry began on a decidedly apocalyptic note; its aftermath continued apocalyptically. Since Jesus is the link between the two, his message and mission, his words and deeds, must also have been apocalyptic. That is to say, the beginning and end are the keys to the middle. Here is how I explain it
February 4, 2024
Blog Dinner, Waynesville NC, Feb 7. Anyone Interested?
I’m going to be off to Waynesville next week for some time away from the hustle and bustle of my normal routine (actually, now that I think about it, what *is* bustle?), to work on the next book. And I’ve decided, HEY, time for a Blog Dinner! Anyone want to come? It’s a chance to shoot the breeze with others about whatever strikes your fancy. Wednesday, February 7, 6:30 pm, place TBD (in Waynesville). The table will be limited to 8 (so we can actually all talk), so that means me and 7 others. The only requirements for attendance to the dinner would be that (a) you are a blog member; (b) you pay your own way – both getting to the event and your meal itself. Otherwise: no expense, no requirement, and no expectations, apart from having a scintillating evening together. If you want to come and know for sure you can, zap me a note ([email protected]). Do so right away: if past experience is any guide, the table will fill rather quickly. I […]
February 1, 2024
Plagiarism! Was It Condemned in the Ancient World? (Is Matthew Guilty of It?)
Just over a week ago I did an eight-lecture on-line course on the Gospel of Matthew, not connected with the blog but with BECO (Bart Ehrman Courses Online); you can find out more about that here: The Genius of Matthew. Someone who came to the course asked me an intriguing question: if it’s true that Matthew used Mark for a number of his stories, actually copying his account word for word in many places, wouldn’t he be guilty of plagiarism? Ah – right! That’s certainly something we would be thinking about today! Did people in the ancient world think about plagiarism? There weren’t copyright laws or, in fact, any laws about the theft of intellectual property. So was plagiarism even a THING? As it turns out, this is a topic that, I venture to say (with good reason), the vast majority of New Testament scholars don’t know about. My (good) reason for saying so is that you can hear many such-a-scholar say oh-so-wrong things about it, either based on what they assume or what they […]
February 11, 2024
Were Matthew and Luke Plagiarists?
Were Matthew and Luke plagiarists? They copied word-for-word passages from Mark, without any indication that they were using someone else’s work. Today that will get you fired (or, say, removed from the presidency of an Ivy League school). But what about in the ancient world? Here I continue here with my discussion of plagiarism in the antiquity, citing some sources that talk about the phenomenon only to condemn it, before considering whether Matthew and Luke can be considered culpable. You may be surprised by my answer. First, I give some more ancient writings, starting with where I left off, with Vitruvius (a famous Roman architect; not a famous volcano) ****************** Elsewhere Vitruvius himself delivers a stringent judgment on those who engaged in the practice of plagiarism: “While, then, these men [viz. Those who left a written record of past events and philosophies] deserve our gratitude, on the other hand we must censure those who plunder their works and appropriate them to themselves” (Book 7, Preface 3). This attitude coincides with other ancient discourse about the […]
February 13, 2024
Do People in Oral Cultures Have Better Memories?
Do people in oral cultures “remember” things better, and work hard to memorize what they learn? The other night I was hanging out with a friend and she started talking (in a context unrelated to the New Testament) about how oral (non-literate) cultures always worked so hard to preserve their communal memories of the past, by passing along traditions that would not change since, of course, they had no way to preserve them in writing. I simply nodded my head and let her get on with it. I was tempted to tell her that I had written a book about memory, how it works and sometimes doesn’t, how oral cultures preserve traditions, and sometimes not so well, etc.. I decided not to mention it to her; didn’t matter in the context. My book Jesus Before the Gospels (HarperOne, 2013) is, in my personal opinion,
February 14, 2024
How Do We Know About Oral Cultures? By Starting Where You’d Never Suspect!
How do oral cultures “work”? How do they pass along their traditions? How accurately? And why did scholars first get interested in the question. Not at ALL in the way that you might think! Here’s how I discuss the matter in my book Jesus Before the Gospels (HarperOne, 2017).
February 15, 2024
When is “The Same” Memory/Tradition/Story Not Actually “The Same”?
Do we mean the same thing by “the same” that people in oral cultures do? Here I pick up on my discussion of oral cultures; in the previous post I talked about how Milman Parry began to study one such culture, and his discoveries were starting. Professional memorizers/reciters would claim that various performances of the “same” tradition/account/story/song was in fact the “same” as earlier performances. But, well, apparently not. At least by our standards.
February 17, 2024
Proof That Historical Narratives (not just myths) Constantly Change in Oral Cultures
I have been discussing some of the many problems with assuming that oral traditions are passed along intact, without significant change, in oral cultures. In graduate school we all learned that they are and did, so that, for example, the fact that we might have a saying of Jesus or story about him in a source 50 years removed from his life isn’t really a problem. It would have been kept intact from the beginning without being changed. That’s how oral cultures work and always have worked. Nope. Not true. At least based on the hard-core research that actually examines the question. My previous two posts have marshaled some of the evidence. Here I continue on the theme, again in an excerpt from my 2017 book, Jesus Before the Gospels (HarperOne). *************************** Given these realities (that oral traditions are constantly changed when told and retold in oral cultures), as attested by numerous anthropological studies, why is it that people in literate cultures so often claim that people in past oral cultures had phenomenal memories and […]
February 18, 2024
Changing the Past in Light of the Present
Did people in oral cultures even care if stories were changed? We do! We have an interest not just in story but in establishing with some kind of accuracy what actually happened in the past, whether it is about the Civil War, the assassination of JFK, or the last election. Did people in oral cultures have a way to know the past with historical accuracy? Did they care? Here I end this thread on what we know about how oral cultures passed along their traditions – not just their myths and customs but also the past events that affected their communities, in what Jan Vansina calls “testimonies” about the past, as shared by word of mouth in non-literate cultures. Were they concerned to repeat the past “accurately”? Again this comes from my 2017 book Jesus Before the Gospels (HarperOne). ****************************** Traditions that are passed along by word of mouth in oral cultures experience massive changes not simply because people have bad memories. That may be true as well, but even more important, as Vansina […]
February 20, 2024
Blog Dinner Wichita Kansas, Feb. 22. Interested??
I’m will be in Wichita Kansas to give some talks at the Plymouth Congregational Church (plymouth-church.net) on February 23-25, and have decided to come a day early in case anyone wants to do dinner with me on Thursday Feb. 22. Anyone want to come? It’s a chance to shoot the breeze with others about whatever strikes your fancy. Thursday, February 22, 7:00 pm, place TBD (in Wichita). The table will be limited to 8 (so we can actually all talk), so that means me and 7 others. The only requirements would be that (a) it is for blog members only; (b) each one pays her/his your own way – both getting to the event and your meal itself. Otherwise: no expense, no requirement, and no expectations, apart from having a scintillating evening together. If you want to come and know for sure you can, zap me a note ([email protected]). Do so right away: if past experience is any guide, the table will fill rather quickly. If it doesn’t more fun for the rest of […]
February 13, 2024
Some Random Reflections on Our Significance
I think a lot about significance these days, about why we, or rather, why I, matter. I mean really, this universe is 13.8 billion years old and I’ve been around for, well, 68 of those years and certainly won’t be around for another 68. So, for how much of time to this point? Do the math. Then there’s the space factor. I’m a small dot in my house; my house is a small dot in my neighborhood; my neighborhood is a small dot in my city; my city is a small dot in my state; my state is a not-large dot in the country; the country is a not-large dot on the planet; our planet is a tiny dot in the solar system; the solar system is an infinitesimal dot in the galaxy of some 100 billion stars; our galaxy is an an even more infinitesimal dot in a universe of maybe 2 trillion galaxies. And the universe itself? Who knows if there is a multiverse? Where
February 21, 2024
Was Mary Magdalene a Prostitute?
It is “common knowledge” that Mary Magdalene is portrayed as a prostitute in the New Testament, but like so much “common knowledge” this view, while common, is not “knowledge.” In fact it’s not true. I get asked about this on occasion, and so I thought I should devote a couple of posts on it. I discuss most of what I think we can know in the final section of my book Peter, Paul, and Mary Magdalene (Oxford University Press, 2006) (A book I remember fondly, in part because I wrote it in a coffee shop in Wimbledon!). In that book I devote six chapters to each of these important Christian figures, in each case explaining what we can know about them historically and then what we can know about the later legends that sprang up about them. In my introductory comments
February 22, 2024
When Did Mary Magdalene Become a Prostitute?
Mary Magdalene has become one of the most talked about figures from the life of Jesus, even though she hardly ever shows up in the Gospel accounts about him (during his public ministry, just in one verse, total!, Luke 8:2). (She shows up only at the crucifixion and, most important, the empty tomb). In my last post I began to explore the tradition — not found in the New Testament — that Mary Magdalene was a prostitute. Here I pick up the thread where I left it off. I had mentioned a number of passages that people read *AS IF* they were talking about Mary Magdalene, even though her name does not occur in them. Here I’ll show that none of these passages is about her. And then I’ll explain why everyone today thinks she is a prostitute and where that idea came from. Spoiler alert: a sixth-century Pope! Once again, this comes from my book on Peter, Paul, and Mary Magdalene (Oxford University Press, 2006) ****************************** None of these New Testament stories, however, deals […]
February 24, 2024
Jesus and Mary Magdalene Seen Kissing??
While I’m on the “Jesus and Mary Magdalene” question (see my earlier posts), what about the claims that some (lots) of people have heard, that there is a story in a later Gospel that talk about them kissing? The later Gospel in question is the Gospel of Philip, one of the “Gnostic Gospels” discovered in 1945 near Nag Hammadi Egypt. Does it actually talk about this moment (or repeated moments) of intimacy? I have a reasonably full discussion of the relevant issues in my book Peter, Paul, and Mary Magdalene (Oxford University Press 2006). In the book I put the discussion in the context of that one-time-source-for-all-things-bibical, Dan Brown’s Da Vinci Code. Back 20 years ago, (nearly) everyone had read it and (most of them) thought the fictional account was, as Brown himself claimed at the outset, based on historically factual information. Sigh…. In any event,
- Christian Apocrypha
- Early Christian Writings (100-400 CE)
- Historical Jesus
- Women in Early Christianity
February 25, 2024
Still Spots Open: Blog Dinner in Wichita KS, this Thursday Feb. 22
In case you happen to be in striking distance of Wichita KS this week, and missed my announcement: there are still a couple of spots open for the blog dinner this coming Thursday (Feb. 22). Here’s my original announcement. If you can come, let me know! *********************** I’m will be in Wichita Kansas to give some talks at the Plymouth Congregational Church (plymouth-church.net) on February 23-25, and have decided to come a day early in case anyone wants to do dinner with me on Thursday Feb. 22. Anyone want to come? It’s a chance to shoot the breeze with others about whatever strikes your fancy. Thursday, February 22, 7:00 pm, place TBD (in Wichita). The table will be limited to 8 (so we can actually all talk), so that means me and 7 others. The only requirements would be that (a) it is for blog members only; (b) each one pays her/his your own way – both getting to the event and your meal itself. Otherwise: no expense, no requirement, and no expectations, apart […]
February 19, 2024
The Disciple Peter in History and Legend
Probably my best-named book is Peter, Paul, and Mary Magdalene. This is a book I wrote so I could use the title. (A) In fact a publisher wanted to give me a contract for the book, but I turned it down because they wanted me to do other apostles too. NO! I said. It’s gotta be these three. It’s perfect! They disagreed. Some people just don’t have a sense of humor. So I went with a different publisher. (!) The short thread I just did on Mary Magdalene gave me an occasion to look back at the book. I recall writing it with some fondness, in part because it is such a great topic: three of the most important figures in the early years of Christianity: Jesus’ closest disciple, his most important convert/missionary, and the one who is said to have found his empty tomb. All three have great stories told about them in the New Testament, and from there the stories get, if anything, even more interesting. Highly legendary, but just as highly intriguing. […]
February 27, 2024
How Much Fact, How Much Fiction? The Life of Peter
History or Legend? Fact or Fiction? A bit of both? It’s hard to know how to understand stories about the apostle Peter found both inside and outside the New Testament. I began with some examples yesterday, involving his allegedly raising people from the dead. OK, probably fiction, but still – presented as fact! I pick up there with this post, taken from my book Peter, Paul, and Mary Magdalene (Oxford University, 2006). ***************************
February 28, 2024
Facts Hidden Among the Legends of the Apostle Paul?
There are so many legends, and only so many facts, we know about Paul from our surviving sources. Is there a way to tell which is which? How much of what we read — in the New Testament letters of Paul, the book of Acts, the Acts of Paul, the letters of Paul from outside the New Testament, such as the Letter of 3 Corinthians, the Letter to the Laodiceans, and the exchange of letters between Paul and Seneca — how much of all that can be seen has historically reliable information and how much intriguing but unhistorical fiction? That’s what I started to ask in my previous post, and I continue here, once again, in an excerpt from my book Peter, Paul, and Mary Magdalene (Oxford University Press, 2006). ****************************** Separating History from Legend How do we know the difference between what really happened in the life of Paul and what has come down to us as pious legend? An early account indicates that on one of his missionary journeys Paul arrived on the […]
March 2, 2024
Our Controversial Sources About the Controversial Paul
Peter and Mary Magdalene are not the only early followers of Jesus whose lives are shrouded in mystery. What about Paul? As it turns out, of all of Jesus’ female disciples after his life, we have the most information about Mary Magdalene, and of all his male disciples, Peter and Paul. All are mentioned (Mary just briefly) in the New Testament, and all have lots of stories floated about them after the New Testament, and there are writings allegedly by Peter and Paul in the New Testament, and more outside. That’s a lot to go on. But, we have seen in previous posts that information about Peter and Mary is scanty, and much of it unreliable. With Paul we are in better shape, since we really do have letters he wrote available to us (at least 7 of the 13 in the New Testament really do appear to be his). But we also have lots of other material that is … iffy at best. In some ways separating out the fact from the fiction about […]
February 29, 2024