Loading...QUESTION:
I was wondering how scholars look at situations like Galatians 2:6-10 , specially the part of the text that states “they added nothing to my message” or “all they asked is we should continue remembering the poor”. My primary question is do scholars like yourself believe that the early disciples & James/Jerusalem Church saw eye to eye with Paul on all matters? As a secondary, why does Paul go into disputes later in Galatians 2 if they agreed on everything as mentioned in Gal 2 earlier?
The passage of “adding nothing to my message” makes it seem like Paul had some gospel and read every single point to the disciples of which they agree with it all, large and small, and then lived happily ever after. What is the historical context?
RESPONSE:
We obviously have only Paul’s side of the story.
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I’d like to ask about the terms Deutero-Pauline and Pseudo-Pauline. I came across an argument that three of the non-Pauline letters are considered Deutero-Pauline, which I understand to mean that they come from Paul’s closer followers. These are the letters included in Marcion’s collection, and they are listed next to each other there. This is in contrast to the rest, which are considered Pseudo-Pauline — that is, later writings (or at least ones that Marcion didn’t know about or didn’t consider original).
Do you think these terms are valid and have solid scholarly support, or are they more speculative?
They are just terms, and they mean whatever the person who uses them want them to mean. All six books come from later admirors of Paul who want their readers to think they are expressing Paul’s own views. We don’t know if Marcion knew of the Pastorals or not. If you’re interested in these issues, I discuss them at some length in my book Forged.
So what do you think of the view described by Dale Martin in The Corinthian Body, that of the constituents of the soma, the sarx and the psyche wither away and only the pneuma is transformed into the Resurrection body? If this interpretation is correct would Paul have been overly concerned with the fate of Jesus’ fleshly body? Would there have been any impetus on Paul to even speculate about an empty grave of some sort since the real action was elsewhere?
Yes, I agree with him. But it’s not that the soma continues to rot away in the tomb; it gets transformed into pneuma. That was Dale’s view as well, that there was an empty tomb.
Then perhaps I misunderstand. I thought Paul is saying that the Pneuma is the only part of the Soma that is able to be transformed. If the fleshly component of the Soma cannot inherit the kingdom then it cannot be transformed. Wrong?
Thanks!
The pneuma is not part of the soma.
What do you think Paul meant when he said in Galatians that “It was before your eyes that Jesus Christ was publicly portrayed as crucified”?
Were they acting out the crucifixion? Painting images?
It’s a reference to “ekphrasis” the Greek term for a verbal description that is so graphic that it paints a picture in the mind of the hearer of what the author is desribing.
I recently found [ ἐφ᾽ ] can also mean “to” or to my surprise “against” ( in opposition) I it bothers me that cannot rap my head around how a word used to describe “on top of” can also be used to describe “against.” Seems as though their my be some back story as too how it be describing two very different things. Can if possible ( no offense, I know it is sometimes very difficult to understand what is going on) share any kind of explanation. Thanks
Greek prepositions are very frustrating sometimes because they can mean lots of different things depending on the context. If you look any of the main ones up in a Greek lexicon, you may be amazed how they can means such different things! That’s why translation of texts cannot be done (simply can NOT) without interpreting them first, in their context.
P.S. I am still throwing up from your Danny Jones interview. Not a good interview, but different and interesting, so a good interview.?. I never thought I would hear a line of a response like that come from your mouth. Ha! yuck! I really hope this is not a new era of focus when it comes to New Testament studies and theology.
In your book Jesus, interrupted (page 33 on my book), you write: “We know from a range of other historical sources, including the Roman historian Tacitus, the Jewish historian Josephus, and several ancient inscriptions, that Quirinius
did not become governor of Syria until 6 CE, ten years after the death of Herod.”
I’m curious, what exactly does Tacitus say about Quirinius becoming governor of Syria in 6 CE? Could you point me to the specific source or passage from Tacitus?
Sorry — I’m out of the country and don’t have any books to hand. You can probably look it up on the Internet though!
In the original Greek what form of the verb was used, as in “He rose from the dead” or “He was risen from the dead”? That is, as god did he raise himself from the dead or did he require the power of some other being — his father — to do so?
It is a perfect passive indicative 3rd singular: “he was raised.”
Dr. Ehrman,
Along these same lines…Scholars have pointed out that it’s important to note that the accurate way to read the following includes the passive visual indication in 1 Cor. 15:5-8 i.e. “was seen by,” because the implication then is NOT that his followers conjured him up in any way, but that it is Jesus himself who took the initiative to appear.
Do you agree with this?
I don’t think the words indicate whether what he saw was conjured or really there. He saw it. It was seen by him.
My brain shut down at “perfect passive”…how essential is Grammar 501 for biblical studies?
Depends on whether you want expertise of not!
Off-Topic Comment:
Dr. Bart, I just finished watching your conversation with Danny Jones.
You had the patience of JOB when being asked about all those non-scholarly opinions
that Danny pitched at you. Glad you could set the record straight.
Ciao.
Hello Professor Bart, may I ask how you evaluate Professor Sanders, Dunn, and Wright’s “New Perspectives on Paul”? By the way, if this subject is meaningful, what are the complete books that introduce it? I found some books published decades ago in the electronic library, and I don’t know if their conclusions have been overturned.
It’s pretty standard fare these days. Sanders is really the one who did it; he was one of the great scholars of the NT in the generation before me (we were colleagues for years)
I don’t know if my understanding of NPP’s concept of salvation is correct. Salvation is by grace and also through faith. Among them, grace is reciprocal and requires actions to give back to God. Salvation requires faith combined with God’s grace, not personal good deeds. The final judgment is based on one’s actions, and only through faith in Jesus can one be justified, and only righteous people can do righteousness. And righteous people do righteous deeds, so they can be saved. What confuses me is that according to this theory, the righteousness of those who do not believe in Jesus cannot be considered righteous?
The main emphasis of the New Perspective on Paul, which is no longer new, is that Paul is not talking about whether good behavior will bring salvation but about whether a person needs to follow the ways of Judaism (the works of the LAW), and that Paul has to be thought about in terms of his Jewish context, not in light of Lutheran ideas of being saved by faith not by good deeds (in contrast to what “Jews” thought and thnk, according to this mistaken Lutheran views).disabledupes{c93b60c3564a2914a1b6de21b4fcf12c}disabledupes
“Peter, in Paul’s stated view, continued to agree that gentiles did not have to become Jews to follow Jesus.”
Let’s read Paul’s own words in Galatians:
“I said to Cephas (Peter) before them all,
‘If you, though a Jew, live like a Gentile and not like a Jew, how can you force the Gentiles to live like Jews?’”
(Galatians 2:14)
According to Paul, Peter was forcing the Gentiles to live like Jews.
So what is the evidence that Peter “agreed that Gentiles did not have to become Jews to follow Jesus”?
The accusation of hypocrisy is not based on Peter forcing the Gentiles to live like Jews despite agreeing they didn’t have to.
On the contrary, Peter apparently believed that Gentiles did have to become Jews to follow Jesus—that’s why he was forcing them to do so.
But he himself, though a Jew, lived like a Gentile.
That is the reason Paul accused him of being a hypocrite.
As an objective historian of the early church, which modern baptismal tradition do you believe most closely reflects the practices and theology of the early Christians? In your view, would Paul and his congregations have supported the practice of infant baptism, despite the New Testament’s silence on the matter? Do you think Paul would have seen baptism primarily as a symbol of one’s identification with Christ, with saving faith being the essential element? Do you think people in the ancient world—including Paul—made the same kind of distinction between ritual actions and the symbolic realities they represent that modern thinkers tend to make?
I don’t think any of the current practices of baptism reflect Paul’s views, that a person “dies” to the “cosmic power” of sin when they “die with Christ” in baptism by being “united with him in his death” (Romans 6)
That’s fascinating!
Do you think what Paul meant by baptism was similar to what the historical John the Baptist was doing? Was Paul’s concept of baptism also comparable to the Jewish purification ritual of immersing in a mikvah? Can you recommend a historical-critical source that specifically explores Paul’s view of baptism?
No, it was quite different from Jewish purification rituals. You might check out commentaries on Romans 6 (e.g., the ones I give in my For Furether Reading post)
When you say that you “ think Paul assumed there was an empty tomb”, are you using the word “tomb” to mean any kind of grave, including the sort of mass graves for Roman criminals that some historians think Jesus may have ended up in?
I just mean wherever his remains were buried.
Dr. Ehrman,
I’ve often heard that, “adding nothing to my message” quoted as a piece of evidence that in the end Paul and the pillars agreed on the fundamentals of the faith. Is that how you interpret it as well, or do you think that while they didn’t “add” anything, maybe they took something away from Paul’s message, or is that just “splitting hairs?”
I think it means that teh pillars (according to Paul) did not urge him to change any of his missionary preaching to the gentiles. They didn’t insist on anything as signficant for salvation beyond what he did.
Dr. Ehrman,
Not that this is a topic that is debated often since it seems both sides at least say that the apostles were truthful as they themselves believed things to be. I think that there’s an additional reason not often mentioned that speaks against Paul playing fast and loose with the facts: and that is we see constantly over the course of his authentic letters that he certainly has his share of critics, so it seems reasonable to say that there was a viable degree of “checks and balances” in place that would have loved to pounce on Paul if he became too idiosyncratic, do you agree?
Interesting thesis. I’m not sure how we would go about checking/verifying it. A lot of people are wildly idiosyncratic and contradict themself and tell lies aobut what they earlier said — including public figures — even though today we can even *record* them! So I guess I don’t know if this is ever, a check, or was in Paul’s day when denial would have been far easier still…disabledupes{e69bcc048920953ea58d8b97bfd9d343}disabledupes
“and that he appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve”
blaming it on oral tradition.
in preciseness, it ought to read: and that he appeared to Cephas, then the other ten …