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More on Jews, Christians, and the Battle for Scripture


In yesterday’s post I indicated that my next trade book, to be written in a couple of years, would deal with the question of Jews and Christians, centered on the question of why Christians kept the Old Testament and how doing so led to controversies with Jews. The following is how I set up the issue that I will be addressing. The second-century Christian theologian Marcion maintained that the Old Testament was the Scripture of the Jews. Christians, however, were not Jews; they were followers of Jesus. Moreover, the loving God of Jesus was not the wrathful God of the Jews. For Marcion, Jews and Christians had nothing in common except in a negative sense: the Jews represented everything the Christians rejected, including the inferior, legalistic God who chose the Jewish people and gave them their Scriptures. Christians have their own beneficent and salvation-bringing God, and their own Scriptures. For Marcion, the Old Testament is not part of the Christian Bible. FOR THE REST OF THIS POST, log in as a Member. Click here for […]

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May 27, 2013

Exciting Discovery of a Hebrew Bible Scroll


An exciting discovery has been made of the oldest scroll containing the Pentateuch (it is not as old as the Leningrad *codex* from around the year 1000; but it is the oldest *scroll* with the entire text – 12th century or 13th).   My thanks to my colleage Evyatar Marienburg, knowledgeable about all scholarship Jewish, for informing me about this.  For the fuller account, see https://www.facebook.com/groups/375003239611/permalink/10151699916354612/ PRESS RELEASE THE MOST ANCIENT EXISTING SCROLL OF THE HEBREW PENTATEUCH, DISCOVERED AT THE UNIVERSITY LIBRARY OF BOLOGNA The document, located and identified by a professor of the University of Bologna contains the entire text of the Torah, dates back to a period between the second half of the 12th century and the beginning of 13th (1155-1225) and is kept at the Biblioteca Universitaria di Bologna (BUB). Bologna, 28 May 2013. The University Library of Bologna has kept from times immemorial, and without knowing, the world’s oldest scroll of the Hebrew Pentateuch. The document, labeled as “Roll 2”, is of soft sheep leather (36 meters long and 64 cm high), […]

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May 28, 2013

Historical Jesus Scholarship and Christians


QUESTION: If historical Jesus scholars believes that Jesus’ main message was the imminent apocalypse, and that didn’t happen, how can anyone who believe that remain a Christian, given that Jesus was wrong on the main focus of his life? RESPONSE: It’s a great question.   Let me say several things briefly in response.    First, there are a number of historical Jesus scholars who do not see Jesus in this way (most prominently, members of the Jesus Seminar, such as Marcus Borg and John Dominic Crossan).   Their views are not in the majority among critical scholars, but it is worth noting that they see Jesus as thoroughly *non*-apocalyptic.   My sense is that the majority of scholars, however, continue to see Jesus as apocalyptic in his preaching – including such noteworthies as E. P. Sanders, Dale Allison, Paula Fredriksen, Geza Vermes, and – well, it’s a long list. Most New Testament scholars – and, of course, that subset: Historical Jesus scholars – are Christian.  For obvious reasons.   The people most likely to be interested in early Christianity and […]

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May 29, 2013

Agnostic or Atheist?


I apparently threw a few people for a loop yesterday when I referred to myself as an atheist. Several readers responded, wanting to know if I had changed my views, since I have publicly stated that I am an agnostic. I posted on this issue a while back – possibly a long while back – but since I don’t expect everyone to read everything I’ve ever written on this blog (!), I thought maybe I should explain my views again. So – apologies to those of you who have heard this before. When I became an agnostic – 17 or 18 years ago? I’m not even sure any more – I thought that “agnosticism” and “atheism” were two *degrees* of basically the same thing. My sense is that this is what most people think. According to this idea, an agnostic is someone who says that s/he does not *know* whether God exists, and an atheist is someone who makes a definitive statement that God does *not* exist. Agnostics don’t know and atheists are sure.   […]

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May 30, 2013

Future Books


QUESTION: I’m curious to know of future projects you have in mind after you complete your commentary on 2nd century gospels. RESPONSE: As I’ve indicated on this blog before, I try to alternate the kinds of books I write.  Most scholars don’t do it that way.  I have friends – my closest friends in the field, in fact – who want only to do scholarship and nothing else, and so they write scholarly monograph after scholarly monograph.  This is an enormous service to the academic community, as it is only through work like that that we are able to advance knowledge. I know of other people who want only to write for popular audiences.   And it is easy to see how someone can get “bit by the bug” and want to do nothing else.   Some popular authors make a lot of money from their books, they get asked to give lectures in front of large audiences, they get their names in the media, and it’s all very seductive.   FOR THE REST OF THIS POST, […]

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May 31, 2013

Mark as Peter’s Scribe


QUESTION: Why are scholars almost certain that Peter did not give the general details of Jesus’ life and ministry to his companion Mark, who faithfully recorded the details in Greek, in the style found in his gospel? I know you’ve said that someone such as Peter, aside from not knowing Greek, almost certainly wouldn’t have had the ability to build the relatively sophisticated structure of Mark’s gospel, but why couldn’t Mark have “put form” on Peter’s prosaic verbal account ? RESPONSE:                 This is a very good question, and as it turns out it is a bit complicated.   The first thing to say is that one has to look for *evidence* if one wants to think, for example, that Mark is recording the traditions given to the author by Peter.  The idea that he does so ultimately goes back to Papias. To begin answering the question, in this post I thought I’d talk about Papias and the tradition of the Gospels.  And rather than write it all out from scratch, I’ve decided simply to reproduce […]

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June 1, 2013

More on Mark and Peter


In answering the question about why it appears that Mark did not serve as the scribe/secretary for Peter, writing down Peter’s (Aramaic) recollections of his time with Jesus and putting them in narrative form in Greek, I already discussed the slender record of that being the origin of Mark’s Gospel, based on the discussion in Papias. Now in this post I want to discuss the direct evidence that suggests that this is not how Mark’s Gospel came into being. Here I will make three points. First – this will not seem overly convincing to some readers, but then again it’s not really my main point – there is in fact nothing in Mark’s Gospel to make anyone think that it is Peter’s version, any more, than, say the Gospel of Matthew or the Gospel of John. There is no first-person narrative, no recollection about what “Jesus said to me” and so on. Peter is one of the main figures – yes indeed. But the Gospel is not told from his perspective.   FOR THE REST […]

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June 3, 2013

Mark and the Resurrection


QUESTION: I heard a scholar (I think it was JD Crossan) saying that the absence of a resurrected Jesus in Mark’s original gospel reflects the confusion and anxiety that forlorn Jews would have felt after the destruction of the Temple? Do you think this is the case? If so, how does it fit in with the belief (widespread among scholars, I believe)  that the accounts of a visibly resurrected Jesus were in circulation long before 70 AD and probably came from Peter, Paul , and Mary M? RESPONSE: I don’t recall ever hearing this view before – so I’m not sure where you may have read it.   I would have to read a fuller exposition of the view to make better sense of it, but off hand, I don’t think it’s plausible, for several reasons. First, a lot hinges on what is meant by “the absence of the resurrected Jesus” in Mark.   People often get Mark’s account wrong by saying that there is no resurrection in Mark.  That’s absolutely not true.  In Mark, Jesus is […]

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June 4, 2013

Jesus’ Inflammatory Words


QUESTION: Were the claims Jesus made about himself, or the comments he made about other sects or leaders within Judaism, likely to have produced an angry or violent response from devout Jews in Jerusalem during Passover? Were his comments any more “out of the ordinary” than others would have been making about, say, the Temple authorities or whomever? RESPONSE: A full answer to this very good question would take a full book.  In fact, scholars *have* written entire books on it!  So here let me just lay out my views on the matter – none of which is particularly controversial among critical scholars.  (i.e., this is fairly standard stuff). First: I don’t think Jesus made any comments about his identity that would have aroused opposition among Jewish leaders or regular Jews when he arrived in Jerusalem for the Passover feast, a week before his death (or any time during that week).  In no small measure that’s because I do not think Jesus’ proclamation – either during that week or at any time during his ministry […]

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June 6, 2013

Problems with the Hebrew Bible Manuscripts


QUESTION: Bart, these issues you’ve found in the New Testament, have you studied and found similar issues in the Old Testament?” RESPONSE: Yes indeed!   Hebrew Bible (the Christian Old Testament) was my secondary field in my PhD program, and I taught Introduction to Hebrew Bible at both Rutgers and UNC.   A few years ago when I decided to write my Introduction to the Bible I decided that to do it right I had to re-tool in Hebrew Bible.  I’m by no means an expert, but I have caught up on a good deal of scholarship and re-learned Hebrew (I hadn’t read it in years).  I try to read some Hebrew Bible every morning; I’m not great at it, but I can slog through with a dictionary….. So, I think it’s fair to say that the problems that I have talked about in my publications about the New Testament are even more pronounced for the Hebrew Bible.   I think I will take three of the big issues (I’m happy to address others if there are any […]

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June 7, 2013

Inconsistencies in the Hebrew Bible


Yesterday I started answering a question about whether the problems in the Hebrew Bible were as significant as those in the New Testament, and my response was: Yes! Even more so! In yesterday’s post I talked about the problem with the manuscripts. In this post I’ll talk about internal discrepancies and contradictions. Rather than write the whole thing out, though, I’ve decided just to include a chunk that deals with the issue from my Introduction to the Bible, which is due out in the Fall. Here I am talking about what 19th and 20th century critical scholars discovered with respect to discrepancies within the Pentateuch, leading to the theory that the first five books of the Hebrew Scripture actually derived from four major sources, written at different times, that have been spliced together, creating internal problems. ****************************************************************************************************************** The internal tensions came to be seen as particularly significant. Nowhere were these tensions more evident than in the opening accounts of the very first book of the Pentateuch, in the creation stories of Genesis chapters 1 and […]

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June 8, 2013

Historical Problems with the Hebrew Bible: The Exodus Narrative


In response to a question about the problems posed to critical scholars by the Hebrew Bible I have so far provided two posts, one involving the surviving manuscripts (do we know what the authors originally said?) and the other with apparent discrepancies (where accounts appear to be at odds with one another).   I will now provide a couple of posts dealing with the equally big problem that the Hebrew Bible narrates events that probably did not take place, at least as described.   Today I will provide a chunk from my forthcoming book on the Bible about the exodus event under Moses, in which Moses led the children of Israel out from their slavery in Egypt and a great miracle transpired at the parting of the Sea of Reeds (traditionally called the Red Sea), where the children of Israel were allowed to cross on dry land before the waters rushed back destroying Pharaoh’s entire army (as narrated in Exodus 14).  It’s an absolutely amazing, terrific story.  But it does not appear to be historical. […]

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June 9, 2013

Where Did Israel Come From?


Yesterday I indicated that my post on the Conquest narratives would be my last for a while on the Hebrew Bible. I lied. Several people pointed out that I finished the post with a cliff-hanger: Where then did Israel come from? In other words, if the Israelites did not conquer the Promised Land as narrated in Joshua, but Israel did at some point appear in the land of Canaan – where did they come from? The following is my very brief summation of the options ******************************************************************************************************************** Explanations for the Beginnings of Israel in the Land Modern scholars have come up with a number of explanations for how the nation of Israel emerged within the land known as Canaan. The following are the four most popular. FOR THE REST OF THIS POST, log in as a Member. Click here for membership options. If you don’t belong yet, JOIN!!

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June 11, 2013

Spong’s New Book on John


John Shelby Spong, former Episcopal bishop of New Jersey and highly controversial author (because of his skeptical views about the New Testament and traditional Christian doctrine) has just published a new book on the Gospel of John, called The Fourth Gospel: Tales of a Jewish Mystic. I have not read the book, but Spong has written an interesting article on it that appeared in the Huffington Post yesterday, at this address: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/john-shelby-spong/gospel-of-john-what-everyone-knows-about-the-fourth-gospel_b_3422026.html?ref=topbar In the article Spong summarizes the conclusions he advances in the book, based on an “intensive five-year long study.” He acknowledges that many of his findings are those that scholars have held for a long time. Spong himself is not trained as a biblical scholar but has made a very successful, and useful, career out of making scholarship known to a wider audience. So too, his goal in the book, in large measure, is to bring major scholarship to a general reader, a goal I obviously sympathize with deeply. The following are the points that he stresses in his HuPo article. I will […]

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June 13, 2013

More Criticisms of the Historical Criticisms of John (by John! Spong)


Yesterday I wrote a post in which I began to discuss the recent Huffington Post article from 2103 by John Shelby Spong in which he discusses his then new book on John; the book is called The Fourth Gospel: Tales of a Jewish Mystic and the article can be found this address: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/john-shelby-spong/gospel-of-john-what-everyone-knows-about-the-fourth-gospel_b_3422026.html?ref=topbar Today I will finish out what I started to say yesterday. Let me say again that I long appreciated Spong’s work and was sympathetic to his mission. He was trying to do from inside the church something very similar to what I’ ve long tried to do outside of it: help educated lay people outside the field of biblical scholarship see what scholars – believers and non-believers alike – are saying about the New Testament. Since Spong was operating within the church, however, and saw himself as a Christian, some of his perspectives and goals were different from mine.   At the end of the day, he was interested in reforming Christianity in order to make it sensible for the twenty-first century.  That […]

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June 14, 2013

On the Cutting Room Floor: Part 1


I have now finished with my final edits for my book How Jesus Became God.   IN the process of doing these final edits, I have cut out large sections of my Preface and the Introductions of four of my chapters and replaced them with other, hopefully better, sections.    But I really like the old ones as well.  So, since they won’t appear in print, I decided to post them here as a record of what almost was.   The all involve anecdotes about my past.  In most instances (the Introductions to the four chapters), these were narratives related to my “deconversion” from Christianity.  My editor and I agreed that the reading public has heard enough about all that, and there’s only so much more that could still be interesting to them.  And so I have replaced those anecdotes with other things.   But I will present them here, anyway, for your reading pleasure or displeasure. The following is from what was originally going to be my Preface; it is the opening gambit. ************************************************************************* The issue that lies […]

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June 15, 2013

On the Cutting Room Floor: Part 2


This first paragraph is repeated from yesterday’s post:   I have now finished with my final edits for my book How Jesus Became God.   In the process of doing these final edits, I have cut out large sections of my Preface and the Introductions of four of my chapters and replaced them with other, hopefully better, sections.    But I really like the old ones as well.  So, since they won’t appear in print, I decided to post them here as a record of what almost was.   The all involve anecdotes about my past.  In most instances (the Introductions to the four chapters), these were narratives related to my “deconversion” from Christianity.  My editor and I agreed that the reading public has heard enough about all that, and there’s only so much more that could still be interesting to them.  And so I have replaced those anecdotes with other things.   But I will present them here, anyway, for your reading pleasure or displeasure. The following is drawn from my old chapter 4. ***************************************************************************** I was raised in […]

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June 16, 2013

Was Matthew a Jew?


QUESTION: I’m currently reading your book “Forged”…not sure whether I read this there or in the blog, but it puzzled me. You said the authors of Mark and Luke were not Jews? I’d somehow assumed the authors of all the Canonical Gospels were Jews – among the educated elite, of course, since they could write in Greek…. I’m sure the author of Matthew was a Jew, though very dissatisfied with some of his fellow Jews!   RESPONSE: This comment is part of a larger question the reader had about Mark and Luke specifically – were they Jews? (I haven’t included the entire question here) I have dealt with Mark already on the blog recently, arguing that he probably was not a Jew. I’ll deal with Luke in a later post. Here let me say something very briefly about Matthew. I too tend to think that he was probably a Jew by birth and upbringing, who had converted to be a follower of Jesus. But not everyone agrees. FOR THE REST OF THIS POST, log in […]

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June 17, 2013

Outta Here


FYI:  I am heading out of town for a few days and will not be able to interact with comments on the blog during that time.  I’m taking my 86-year old mom trout fishing in the Ozarks, and will not have internet access.   I saved up a couple of posts and handed them over to my trusty computer person and internet tech, who keeps this blog running, Steven Ray — so posts should appear a while I’m incommunicado.  But I won’t be able to reply or post any comments that come in during that time.   I should be back on board by Friday.