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A Peculiar Story of Peter’s Martyrdom
Now, in response to the question I started answering a few days ago, I discuss the earliest account we have of the martyrdom of Peter. It is an odd account, and not widely known. Here is what I say about it in my book Peter, Paul, and Mary Magdalene. ************************************************************************************* Peter as Martyr The death of Peter by execution is already alluded to in the Gospel of John – which evidently, then, had been written after the event occurred. As Jesus tells Peter after the resurrection: When you were younger, you girded yourself and walked wherever your wanted; but when you grow old, you will reach out your hands and another will bind you, and lead you where you do not want to g. (21:18) The author concludes this quotation by noting “He said this to signify the kind of death he would experience to glorify God.” It is clear that Peter is being told that he will be executed (he won’t die of natural causes), and that this will be the death of a […]
September 19, 2018
Writing a Historical-Critical Textbook that Isn’t *Critical*
Now that I’ve finished the draft of my book on the afterlife, and am waiting for readers’ comments, I am turning to a revision of my textbook: The New Testament: A Historical Introduction to the Early Christian Writings. It was first published in 1997 and this will be the seventh edition. It’s hard writing a decent textbook (and not so hard to write a lousy one). A constant struggle. In breezing through blog posts of years gone by, I’ve seen that I was having the struggle precisely six years ago, when writing (the first edition of) my textbook on the entire Bible, Genesis to Revelation. Now *that* was a chore. And I was confronted by one problem in particular. Here is how I described it at the time. ******************************************************* Writing any kind of book whatsoever is really difficult. But each *kind* of book is difficult in its own way. I tend to write three kinds of books: scholarly works for scholars (not for general consumption!); popular trade books for broader audiences of intelligent adults; and […]
September 20, 2018
How Do We Know When the Gospels Were Written?
Here is an important question that I have recently received. It’s a tricky one! But completely fundamental to the study of the New Testament. QUESTION: I now have your book “The New Testament: A Historical Introduction to the Early Christian Writings”. Great book/text! Something I haven’t figured out is how do scholars know when the original Gospels (not copies) were written since apparently none survived? RESPONSE: This is a great question, and one that I get asked a lot. How do we actually know when the Gospels were written? It is actually a difficult question to answer, but I’ll start at the beginning, with some basics that I think everyone can agree on. (Well, OK, there is *nothing* that absolutely everyone agrees on, as I’ve learned with some chagrin over the years…) First, Jesus died around the year 30, so the Gospels were written after that. The first really convincing quotations of the Gospels (there are probable allusions earlier than this, but these are the most certain ones) come in the writings of […]
September 21, 2018
How I Take Notes on What I Read for a Trade Book
Now that I have finished writing the draft of my book on the afterlife – which I’m tentatively titling “Heaven, Hell, and the Invention of the Afterlife (that will be the title until my publisher changes it!!) – I have received several questions from blog members about aspects of the writing itself. One reader wanted to know how I keep track of all the things that I read in preparation for writing a book like this (or like anything else). Here is how: When I decide what the next book is going to be, I start in on research by reading some of the most basic, thorough, and relatively recent discussions of the topic by competent scholars. I typically know already what those books are because, well, I’m a scholar in the field and one gets to know these things. Plus, if you want to write a book about something, you already know a good deal about it, including who has written what about it. From there I start compiling bibliography of everything of importance […]
September 23, 2018
Studying the Bible as Theology and/or History
Here is an old question that I received that continues to be pressing — something I think and talk about all the time! QUESTION: Would you please explain more on the differences between Biblical history and theology? Is it difficult as an historian to keep these separate in your personal beliefs? RESPONSE: I deal with this question in each of my three textbooks for undergraduates, since, for them, it is a confusing issue. How can you study the Bible as a historian without religious perspectives guiding your reading. Here is how I explain the issue in the Excursus to the first chapter of my Bible Intro. _________________________________________________________________________ EXCURSUS Most of the people who are deeply interested in the Bible in modern American culture are committed Jews or Christians who have been taught that this is a book of sacred texts, Scripture, unlike other books. For many of these – especially many Christian believers – the Bible is the inspired word of God. In communities of faith that hold such views, the Bible is usually […]
September 24, 2018
Overview of the Book of Revelation
I’d like to devote a few more posts to my book on the Afterlife. I don’t want to steal my own thunder and give away *everything* I will be talking about in the book here on the blog. But I am interested to getting reactions to some of my more important and controversial claims about the Bible. One thing I’ll be arguing is that the idea of hell-fire, taken chiefly from the book of Revelation, is frequently misunderstood. In my view, the book of Revelation does teach the eternal joy that is to come for believers in Jesus; but it does not teach that sinners (and unbelievers) will experience eternal torment in hell. Even though they are thrown into “the lake of fire.” To explain my views will take at least three posts. To begin I need to explain some things about the book itself and the symbolism found throughout the book. To do that I need to sketch what actually happens in the book. Here is a kind of quick and ready summary of […]
September 25, 2018
Symbolism in Revelation: The Whore of Babylon
The point of this mini-thread is to argue that the author of the book of Revelation does not describe a “hell” that people will be sent to in order to be tortured for all eternity – even though he is often read that way. My argument is that page after page of the book is filled with highly symbolic visions, and realizing this is a fairly obvious key to interpreting the book. For the next couple of posts I’ll try to show how the interpretation actually works. Then I’ll move to explore his comments about the “lake of fire,” the image widely used to develop the notion that those who are wicked and/or who do not believe in Jesus (that is most of the many billions of people who have ever lived) will be tormented eternally in flames In my previous post I summarized, rather tersely, the narrative flow of what happens in the book of Revelation (if you haven’t read it recently, I’d advise it! It’s a terrifically gripping account). None of this breathtaking […]
September 26, 2018
More Symbolism in Revelation: 666, The Number of “The Beast”
In order to explain my views of the “Lake of Fire” in the book of Revelation – the destination for everyone who is not a believer in Jesus – I have started to point out that much of the book is to be taken symbolically, not literally (as the author himself suggests). My eventual point is that the author is not giving a literal description of how most people who have ever lived will spend eternity swimming in a lake of fire. In my last post I began my discussion of symbolism by focusing on the image of the “whore of Babylon” who sits on a horrible “beast” as described in chapter 17, The careful reader of Revelation will recognize that this beast in chapter 17 has already appeared in chapter 13. There we are told of a beast “rising out of the sea,” again with ten horns and seven heads. Moreover, “the whole earth followed the beast,” worshiping it. The beast in this earlier chapter is said to be haughty and blasphemous, and to […]
September 28, 2018
More on the Symbolism of Revelation
Two questions I often get asked about the book of Revelation (including from readers of the blog) are whether the symbolism is meant to keep Roman authorities from understanding what was in the book in order to protect the author from persecution and whether the events that it describes may be coded references to what will happen in our own future. Here is what I say about each subject in my textbook discussion on the book. ********************************************* Apocalypses as Underground Literature? Some readers of the book of Revelation have taken its mysterious symbols to suggest that it was “underground” literature. The symbolic language of the book, according to this interpretation, was used to keep the governing authorities from realizing that they themselves were under attack. There may be an element of truth in this view, but one might wonder whether a Roman administrator was likely to sit down over the weekend to read a good Christian book. It seems more plausible that the principal function of the symbolism — whether in Revelation or in other […]
September 30, 2018
The Afterlife in Revelation
The first reference to the afterlife in Revelation occurs in ch. 6, with the breaking of the fifth seal (6:9-11). Nothing happens on earth, but the prophet sees the souls of those who had been “slaughtered for the word of God” and the “witness they gave” under an altar in heaven, as they cry out to God: “How long before you judge and avenge our blood on those who dwell on earth?” An altar, of course, is the point of contact between God and humans, so these martyrs for Christ have a special access to the divine presence. They want to be vindicated for their faithfulness. But they are deferred in their wishes: each is given a white robe and told they need to “rest a little while longer,” until all their fellow Christians also destined for martyrdom have met their fates. These other martyrs are described in chapter seven, after the breaking of the sixth seal. There are two groups: 144,000 Jews, twelve thousand from each of the twelve tribes, and “an enormous […]
October 1, 2018
The Lake of Fire in Revelation
OK, you’ve waited a while for me finally to get to the Lake of Fire in the book of Revelation. But just think of it as the Final Judgment: you know it’s coming soon, but you don’t know when. Here is what I think about it (both the final judgment and the lake of fire) (clarification: this is not what *I* think of these things; this is what I think *Revelation* is saying about these things). As previously indicated, I do not think Revelation teaches that sinners will be tormented forever. They will be annihilated out of existence. The horrifying “lake of fire” makes its first appearance in Revelation 19. Christ, along with his heavenly armies, appears from heaven for the “Last Battle.” In a flash their arch-enemies on earth are soundly defeated and punished. The supernatural opponents of Christ – the Beast and his prophet – are thrown, living, into the “lake of fire that burns with sulfur.” Their human allies, on the other hand, are “slain with a sword,” and all the birds […]
October 2, 2018
Mapping the Diversity of Earliest Christianity
Here is a question I received recently. QUESTION: One of my favourite pieces on the blog is your post from 13 July 2015 titled ‘Earliest Christian Diversity’ on the work of Destro and Pesce. I find it fascinating and thought-provoking whenever I re-read it. It’s like new information hidden in plain sight.. Did you ever do any follow-up research or expansion on this topic? (Sorry if you did and I missed it.) RESPONSE: I have to admit, I had forgotten all about this post, and had to look it up. I agree! It’s unusually interesting. Not because of anything I say, but because of an intriguing theory proposed by others. Really fascinating. And no, I haven’t followed it up (having even forgotten about it.) But it’s definitely worth posting again. Here it is! *********************************************************************** In keeping with the current topic of the diversity of early Christianity, I thought I could say something about a book that I just read that I found to be unusually interesting and enlightening. It is by two […]
October 12, 2018
If Jesus Wasn’t Really Raised from the Dead, What Happened?
I’m celebrating my birthday today, a sparkling young 63. No cards or happy wishes necessary. Just send cash. But it occurred to me to look through old posts done on my birthday, and there was this interesting one from six years ago, on a very hot topic indeed! Very provocative. So here you are — be provoked on my happy day! ******************************************************************* One of the first books that I have re-read in thinking about how it is the man Jesus came to be thought of as God is Gerd Lüdemann’s, The Resurrection of Christ: A Historical Inquiry (2004). Lüdemann is an important and interesting scholar. He was professor of New Testament at Göttingen in Germany, and for a number of years split his time between there and Vanderbilt Divinity School in Nashville. He is a major figure in scholarship, and is noteworthy for not being a Christian. He does not believe Jesus was literally, physically, raised from the dead, and he thinks that apart from belief in Jesus’ physical resurrection, it is not possible for […]
October 5, 2018
Who Wrote the Book of Revelation?
I’ve been asked about who wrote the book of Revelation. Here are some musings on it, the first part taken from my textbook on the New Testament. Even though the book of Revelation was finally included in the New Testament canon because Christian leaders came to think it had been written by Jesus’ disciple, John the son of Zebedee, there were outspoken dissenters against its inclusion. Perhaps the most famous was Dionysius, a bishop of the city of Alexandria (Egypt) in the mid-third century, whose remarks about the book have a surprisingly modern feel to them. Dionysius used the author’s self-presentation and his Greek writing style to show that he was not the writer of the Fourth Gospel (whom Dionysius assumed was the disciple John). His conclusion? There must have been two different early Christian leaders named John, both of whom were active in Asia Minor, whence both the Gospel and Revelation derived. The following quotations are drawn from Dionysius’s writings, as quoted by the fourth-century church historian Eusebius (Ecclesiastical History 7.25). The one who […]
October 4, 2018
A Bit of Fun with 666!
As I hope you know, I try to keep my personal politics out of the blog. I also hope I succeed, but some of you may think not… But I do try. It’s not that I do not have strong political convictions. On the contrary, I am passionately political and will go to the mat for my views. BUT, I want the blog to be open and welcoming to all people, whatever their political views (or religious views or any other kinds of views). We can all be interested in early Christianity, and our politics don’t need to enter into it. And unlike most of the people I know who have strong political views, I really do try to see “the other side,” and to realize that there are very, very good people with views different from mine. Also unlike most people, I often appreciate and get a very good laugh out of jokes poked at views that I actually take very seriously. But it’s always good to laugh, even at ourselves. I say that […]
October 7, 2018
Heaven, Hell, and the Parable of Lazarus and the Rich Man
In my new book I will be arguing that the Gospel of Luke is distinctive in the New Testament for promoting the idea that a person is given postmortem rewards and punishments (that is, immediately after death), and that this is unlike anything found in the words of the historical Jesus himself. Luke’s view is most emphatically and intriguingly conveyed in one of his most famous passages, and possibly the best known account of the afterlife in the entire New Testament, his story of “Lazarus and the Rich Man.” I will be arguing that this is not a story that Jesus himself told. A later storyteller (or Luke himself?) placed it on Jesus lips. The story appears in Luke 16:19-31 in the context of a number of parables and other sayings of Jesus. In it, Jesus contrasts two lives. There is an unnamed rich man dressed in fine clothes who enjoys sumptuous meals every day; at the gate of his home lies a beggar named Lazarus, starving, desperate even to get the scraps off the […]
October 8, 2018
The Fate of the Rich and the Poor: Another Story
In trying to unpack the understanding of the afterlife found in the story of Lazarus and the Rich Man, it is important to realize that Luke presents the story as a parable – a simple, imaginative story meant to illustrate a deeper spiritual lesson. It is not a literal description of reality. It is true that Luke does not actually call it a parable, but that’s true of most of the parables Jesus tells in this Gospel. This section of Luke’s narrative is chock-full of parables – twenty two of them, in close proximity. A number of them begin with the words “a certain man” did such and such. That is the case of two immediately preceding passages: the parable of the prodigal son in 15:11 and of the parable of the dishonest steward in 16:1. And it is true of this very story in 16:19. Since the account is a parable, an imaginative tale meant to emphasize a point, it would be wrong to press its details for literal descriptions of what awaits people […]
October 9, 2018
What’s the Story of Lazarus and the Rich Man All About?
In my previous post I summarized an Egyptian story about a rich man and a poor man who both die, with the poor man having a fantastic afterlife and the rich man suffering horrible torture. The poor man was righteous and so was rewarded, the rich man was a sinner and so was punished. Is that what the story of Lazarus and the rich man in Luke 16 is also all about – rewards for the righteous and punishment for the wicked? So that it’s a story that tries to stress that you need to live a good life or you’ll pay the consequences later? It is indeed possible that this biblical story also contains an implicit teaching about righteous living. But since, unlike the Egyptian tale, this parable says nothing about sin and righteousness, some interpreters have suggested different ways of understanding it. Maybe the problem with the rich man in Luke’s parable is not that he is generally wicked, but that, more specifically, he hasn’t used his wealth in order to help those […]
October 11, 2018
Did Paul Believe that the Fleshly Body Would be Resurrected
Browsing through posts I made (exactly) six years ago, I came across this one (which deals with a subject I’ll be addressing in my new book) about Paul’s view of the future resurrection. What I thought I thought about that issue *before* I started doing the hardcore research for my book on the afterlife is very similar to how I still think now. I hope that doesn’t just mean I’m stubborn! Here is the perceptive question and my response: ****************************** QUESTION: What is a BODILY resurrection without the flesh? Don’t the early Christians (and Paul) think the flesh (the corpse) didn’t matter anymore and could be left behind, rotting and decomposing? Isn’t it all about the spirit finally getting this new, better, perfect, divine ‘body’? Addendum: The Greek for ‘spiritual’ (like in spiritual body) is pneumatikos, right? According to Strong’s that means: pertaining to wind or breath, windy, exposed to the wind, blowing. Now those wouldn’t be obvious words to describe something physical or made out of matter, would it? They seems to rather define […]
October 14, 2018
What Is the Apocrypha (of the Old Testament)?
Here is a recent question I have received about the “Old Testament Apocrypha.” QUESTION Bart, I hope you won’t mind me asking a totally unrelated question: At the beginning of the Christian Era – how many books of the Hebrew Old Testament did the Greek Septuagint translation contain? RESPONSE: This is indeed an important topic, one usually overlooked completely by Protestant readers of the Bible. Here is what I say about the apocrypha in my textbook on the Bible: ************************************************************* In addition to the canonical books we have examined so far, there was other literature written by Jewish authors that cannot be found in the Hebrew Bible but that is of great importance for anyone interested in it. Of these other Jewish books, none is of greater historical significance than a collection of writings that can be found in some Christian versions of the Old Testament. These are the deuterocanonical writings, as they are called in the Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox traditions; Protestants typically designate them as the Apocrypha. The term […]
October 15, 2018