Loading...Here are some of the intriguing questions I’ve received recently: a number on how Jesus came into the world and the theology of the Gospel of John.
QUESTION:
In your opinion, why did Paul say Jesus was “born of a woman” (Galatians 4:4)? To my memory it seems unique in the entire Bible, and unnecessary. Why would anyone talking about anyone feel the need to say that person was born of a woman? Should it not be a given?
RESPONSE:
Yup, in isolation it seems a very odd thing to say. How
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> God sent his own son who was not just his son but the child of a woman
I very likely am misunderstanding this completely, but does that indicate Paul knew some variant of the nativity story that later turned up (in different forms) in Matthew and Luke?
I think the verse you are referring to is Galatians 4:4. All it says is that “God sent forth his son, born of a woman, born under the law.” He appears to be saying that Jesus became a human (a Jewish human) after coming from heaven above (as in Phil. 2:6-11). I don’t see anything here to suggest Paul knows a story about it; he appears simply to be saying Jesus came into the world as a human being.disabledupes{5c3dbfc3334d3912d79e61cbf0efd8e0}disabledupes
I appreciate your answer to my comment on multiple attestation, Bart. No doubt Goodacre would agree that there’s multiple attestation of lots of Jesus traditions, but the question is whether those attestations are really *independent*, and moreover, whether they are independent in a way that establishes anything about the historical Jesus.
The possibility that the non-Markan material in the other gospels is indeed the creation of the authors themselves, would seem to undercut any strong claims to independent attestation—especially given that students of Greek composition (like our gospel authors) were trained to take sources and imitate, expand, place familiar motifs in new contexts, etc. I could write a new gospel riffing on Mark and adding some new material of my own, and voila, we have a new “independent” source on Jesus!
I don’t doubt that it’s possible that Matthew, Luke, and John had other sources on Jesus, or that they were influenced by oral tradition, but it seems to me like the right answer here is that we don’t know, and if they did indeed have other sources, we’re not in a good position to evaluate whether those sources are independent of Paul an Mark, or just more “fan fiction.”
Yes, it’s a possibiliity that needs to be considered. The issue is what moves a possibility to a probability, and what kinds of evidence one can adduce apart from supposition. If we know the Synoptics used written sources where we can check, then I think we need to find evidence theyt also simply invented things themselves as well before assuming they probably did. If there is no evidence, then I’d say it’s still possible but I don’t know why it would be probable. (i.e. the bulk of Luke is either in Mark or Matthew; so we know he used sources — either those two or Mark and Q; how do we equally know he invented things himself? It’s possible, but what makes it probable, given what we do know, along with what he hiself says in 1:1-4)?
That’s a fair point, Bart. I wonder what we would count as evidence that the gospel authors invented things. Here’s a possibility. When we look at a synopsis, we see that when Matthew and Luke use Mark, they expand on his narrative in all kinds of ways, adding details, changing the setting of a story, sometimes even contradicting Mark (and each other). Even in the double-tradition material, we see parts where Matthew has material Luke doesn’t, and vice-versa, and it flows smoothly with their common material. In many cases, Matthew and Luke arguably improve on Mark.
Now it wouldn’t be hard for me to believe that in *some* of these cases, Matthew and Luke had other sources that just happened to dovetail perfectly with Mark’s material, but doesn’t it stretch credulity to suppose that they did in ALL cases? Their gospels look to me too smooth, too coherent, to imagine that the authors were just copy/paste artists. These look to me like master storytellers with a vision and a freshly minted artistic license.
Yes, that would show that they edited Mark in places. But it would not show that if they added new material to one of his stories it was coming straight out of their heads. It may just as easily have been part of the story that they had heard differently. Have you ever heard someone tell a joke or an anecdote that you’ve heard before but they word it differenlty and either leave out parts yiou think are important or add them? I experience this all the time (especially with my spouse) and always feel inclined to insert the bit/ the way I’ve heard it….
Sure, it’s possible that in every case where they changed Mark, they had a source; it just seems like a big ask, given how many of such changes there are.
Barring an archaeological discovery where the authors confess to making stuff up, is there anything else you’d count as evidence that they did?
Not sure why it seems like such a big ask? Luke says there were tons of oral and written sources, and it certainly seems reasonable.
My view is that if someone wants to say that a person who tells a story about a historical figure (e.g., about JFK, or Jimnmy Swagart) is the one who made the story up needs to back up their claim somehow. It’s not easy to prove that, in any particular case, but that doesn’t put the burden of proof on anyone else but the one who makes the claim. Sinnce nearly all stories we tell about historical figures are ones we’ve heard, that’s the default position. Especially if we have evidence that most of the stories the person tells have known sources. Luke says he has sources. If we don’t believe him, then we need to have some good reasons for thinking otherwise.
Dr Ehrman, I’m wondering if you’ve heard reactions, or have your own, to the new paper “Debunking ‘When Prophecy Fails'”. It uses newly available materials from the original study to conclude that the researchers were misleading in their work. Many thanks.
Article: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/jhbs.70043
Yes, I’ve read a bit about it but don’t have a strong opinion.
Could the inconsistencies in John’s Christology be due to the Gospel developing in stages over many decades with multiple sources / authors / editors?
Yup!
Professor Ehrman, Which of the following is the earliest fragment of the New Testament? Is it P52 or P64? Does the numbering have any significance, e.g., Is P52 the earliest because the number is lower? I thank you in advance.
P52, probably. Usually dated to the first half of the second century. The numbers do not have reference to dates but indicate the sequence in which the fragment was catalogued by the insitute (in Muenster Germany) who keeps track of all the discovered fragments.
“reports of Jesus’s connections with John the Baptist — different tales/sayings; Jesus’ controversies — different ones. Many of the accounts in the other Gospels are not found in Mark, so Mark couldn’t have been the source for these accounts.”
By the time Mark wrote his gospel (the earliest one), John the Baptist was probably a better-known figure than Jesus, so Mark could have invented the link (in Josephus’s Antiquities, John’s death occurs after, not before, that of Jesus), as, in many other classical works, John’s function would be that of the herald proclaiming the coming of “the one more powerful than I” (Mark 1:7).
Gospel writers after him may have felt uncomfortable with the scene of Jesus being baptized by John, but it was a tale widely spread among their communities, so they changed the story.
There is no need to apply “multiple independent attestation” in the case of the different tales/sayings about John the Baptist.
The question would not seem to be whether there is a “need” to “apply” multiple independent attestation, but rather on any given point to establish whether or not there seems to be multiple independent attestations.
And, indeed, the attestations are more than simply reworking the story in Mark, as in John, where following Jesus’s baptism, Jesus and John the Baptizer pursue their ministries in parallel, and where Jesus’s first disciples are directly or indirectly recruited from among John the Baptizer’s disciples.
Where the observation of independent attestations is of substantial interest is regarding the possibility that something like a link between Jesus and John the Baptizer is a literary invention of an author of a specific text. If the link originated in a text, that makes it less likely that there will be independent attestations that differ in details from the literary source of the link.
If the link originated in events on the ground, that makes it more likely that there will be multiple, partly contradictory, accounts of the link, which is what is found in the texts.
“The question would not seem to be whether there is a need to apply multiple independent attestation, but rather on any given point to establish whether or not there seems to be multiple independent attestations.”
Yes, I fully agree. In fact, that is what I wanted to express, but since I am not a native speaker trying to write directly in English, sometimes the result is not the best.
“If the link originated in a text, that makes it less likely that there will be independent attestations that differ in details from the literary source of the link.”
What leads you to think this? When we look at Matthew and Luke’s use of Mark, that’s clearly a literary link, but Matthew and Luke change Mark in all kinds of ways. Students of Greek composition in those days were trained to take familiar stories and embellish them, put them in new contexts, etc. John may have gotten his base material on John the Baptist from the synoptics and adapted it to his purposes.
For another example, we could look at a story from Genesis like the flood where the Priestly and Yahwist accounts have conflicting details, despite both being derived from Gilgamesh (and perhaps the Atrahasis).
The comparison to comic books intrigues me. They often change retroactive continuity (called a retcon) by expanding on a character’s unknown history. Superman’s lore has expanded enormously. After kryptonite was introduced, someone retconned that it was irradiated in Krypton’s explosion. After Lex Luthor started being drawn as bald, someone blamed it on Superboy, deepening their rivalry.
Similarly, Satan went from a divine adversary to a chief demon to the complex antihero of Milton. Mark saw Jesus empowered at his baptism, but subsequent gospels retconned a virgin birth, Davidic genealogy, and even Jesus predating the universe in John. Mary was retconned from giving birth as a virgin to being immaculately conceived. The Gospel of Judas retconned a hidden divine purpose for him.
Do Superman’s many authors equal multiple attestation? Does that complicate traditional claims of historicity? From a historical or theological perspective, should we be concerned about retcons? Do they make it harder to reconstruct the original story? Do they deepen the original story or pervert it? Can we learn anything from comparing the development of Superman’s story to that of Jesus? I think this is a fascinating line of inquiry, and I wonder if you have any thoughts about it.
I’d say multiple attestation in itself is never the criterion for deciding if a figure was historical. In the case of superman, there are plenty of other issues to consider….
Greetings, Bart. I was listening to your podcast today on The Infancy Gospel of James. Towards the end, you and our host, Megan, were talking about how Jesus’s message was aimed at all the nations and not just Jews. This surprised me a bit, as I thought you, along with other scholars, thought that Jesus was only interested in ministering to the “lost sheep of Israel.” I realize the Gospels are inconsistent on this topic. Early on in Matthew, Jesus tells his disciples to stay away from Gentiles. Then at the end of the same Gospel, Jesus says, “take my message to all the nations.” So, which is it? My understanding was that the tiebreaker came from Paul’s letters where we find the pugnacious missionary battling with James, Peter and other missionaries over their belief that one must first become a Jew before being allowed to follow Jesus, the thinking being why would Jesus Apostles and his own brother promote such a teaching if it had not been one of Jesus’s own beliefs? Can you clarify for me? Thanks and Happy Holidays.
I’m not sure exactly what we said, but I suspect it was a bit nuanced. I think Jesus himself preached to Jews and to very few if any gentiles. But I also think his message was meant to be relevant to gentiles as well as Jews (love those in need, no matter who they are). I don’t think Matthew is internally inconsistent though: his point, as I take it, is that during his ministry Jesus (and his disciples) focused on taking the message to Jews; but since Jews rejected him (“his blood be upon us and our children” 27:25 — cried out by “all the people”) then the message was to go to “all the nations.”
My own interest is limited to gleaning the authentic teachings of Jesus from the surviving record. That effort is IMHO unlikely to be advanced by studying John’s account — whatever his sources.
While I haven’t read Prof. Goodacre’s case for “John was familiar with all 3 synoptics,” I’m aware of, and perplexed by, the hypothesis.
In fact I recently challenged that assertion in another thread addressing John’s variation on Jesus’s trial (eliminating the Sanhedrin altogether, and recasting his confrontation with a different High Priest.)
Still, with so few surviving sources, I’d certainly like to reconsider the worthiness of John, if a couple of obstacles can be overcome.
First, although I’m not hamstrung by the (idolatrous) “Bible Inerrancy” doctrine, the inconsistencies and contradictions between the last gospel and its canonical siblings are too pervasive and overt to ignore. The apposite detail is a good example.
How do you reconcile Jesus’s assertion to Annas that “I have said nothing in secret” with his explicit and unambiguous statement to his inner circle — found in all *three* synoptics! — that “To you it has been given to know the secrets of the kingdom of God, but for those outside everything comes in parables”? [Mk 4:11//Mt 13:11//Lk 8:10]
And second…
Probably can’t be reconciled.
My (amateur) inference is that the reason the Jesus of the last gospel so sharply contrasts with the one portrayed by the synoptics is because the Christian movement had in the interim become dominated by erstwhile pagans.
The teachings of Jesus were too esoteric and philosophically top-heavy to continue standing on their Jewish roots — starting with the fact that the very idea of a “demigod,” though venerable in pagan mythology, was absolutely anathema to Judaism. Thus, Jesus was repeatedly and justifiably accused of blasphemy (indeed, the very charge that would prove his undoing.)
Thus, it’s unsurprising that the teaching style of John’s less Jewish, more pagan-friendly Jesus adopted the Platonic/Socratic dialogue form.
But if John was familiar with the synoptics, he could hardly have missed that they portrayed a Jesus inclined to pithy aphorisms — and *especially* parables!
Further, the latter pedagogical device would have been just as familiar to graduates of the Greek Academy since it was also the preferred style of Aesop, who was propounding two centuries *before* the popularizers of the discourse/dialogue form.
So If John was familiar with the synoptics, why did he abandon *all* use of parables, a teaching technique that would also have been entirely familiar to pagans?
Good questoin for Mark Goodacre!
Or A.J. Levine who expressed this view when you conducted your NINT ’25 interview with her (specifically WRT to her lectures *on* the parables!)
Since no gospel mentions any sympathetic witnesses to report the exchange(s) Jesus had with the High Priest(s), the dialog — in every account — was necessarily an authorial invention.
So if John was familiar with the work of *any* of his predecessors, why would he ascribe to Jesus the “I have said nothing in secret” statement [Jn 18:20] when that claim is explicitly contradicted in *all* of them [Mk 4:11//Mt 13:11//Lk 8:10]? 😳
Of course, this detail is mostly problematic for scholars who have pinned their tenure to a Bible Inerrancy pledge.
OTOH surely every NT scholar recognizes that illustrating spiritual truths in anecdotes based on everyday, temporal life was the signature teaching style of Jesus — in *all* of the other gospels. Indeed, miracle reports aside, it’s the very thing that brought his renown!
Does Prof. Levine or Prof. Goodacre (or any other scholar hypothesizing John’s familiarity with the synoptics) even speculate on why the odd-man-out author might, notwithstanding, portray a Jesus who never told so much as a single parable? 🤔
No, not necessarily an authorial invention, if you mean a literary author. It could just as well have been a story being told that a later author heard.
Whatever quotes Matthew, Mark, Luke and John attribute to Jesus that don’t actually trace back to the Man from Galilee were necessarily part of post hoc legend.
Taking the most charitable (and hopeful) view of gospel evolution, I’m happy to consider the evangelists mere editors rather than authors — because the operative word in my observation was not “authorial,” but “invention.”
Since there were no sympathetic witnesses to the alleged exchange Jesus had with either High Priest that could become a gospel source, his rejoinder — whether to Annas [Jn 18:20] or Caiaphas [Mk 14:62//Mt 26:64//Lk 22:67-70] — must have been invented by *someone* else.
Assume that John (or, for that matter, Mark→Matthew/Luke) didn’t quill the words of Jesus, but merely reiterated what had been anonymously added sometime during the preceding telephone game. Why would any editor put the “I have said nothing in secret” line on Jesus’s lips *knowing* that such a claim would give the lie to a (very noteworthy) statement he made in the other gospels? 😳
Can Goodacre, et al., make a plausible case for John being familiar with any (much less all) of the synoptics while blithely ignoring the contradiction this creates?
If you ask Mark G., the answer will be … yes!
Undoubtedly. Prof. Goodacre made his academic bones making “The Case Against Q.”
Although his alternative solution to the ‘Synoptic Problem’ is far from original, he has since doubled down on it by pronouncing John “The Fourth Synoptic Gospel” — being either tongue-in-cheek, or oblivious of the irony that he would render the very label, itself, superfluous (i.e., *literally* academic! 😏)
I haven’t actually read Prof. Goodacre’s book because, frankly, what arguments I have heard in support of this thesis (and not only from him) are so strained that the supposition doesn’t really pique my interest. The hypothetical dots between the last gospel and *any* of its predecessors are too far apart for me to connect.
In fact I’m mostly puzzled by how this “Synoptical John” hypothesis has managed to gain currency in your scholarly collegiate.
Would I be correct in presuming that fundamentalist-evangelical types comprise at least a plurality of the world’s NT scholars — and probably a majority of SBL members?
That contingent has long sought harmonization as the easy road that leads to the wide gate of Bible Inerrancy. Indeed, harmonization is arguably the unavoidable chokepoint en route.
Is this what is animating the rearview mirror scholarship?
Yes, I’d say evangelicals are a large portion of biblical scholars. But I don’t think the source issue questions are being driven by an opposition to evangelical views. At least I’ve never detected that. (When I wa an evangelical it was perfectly fine to believe in Q)