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I’ve received some terrific questions about the Gospels recently; here is a good sample and my responses.
QUESTION:
I have a question on the Gospel of John. This gospel describes Jesus as a pre-existing divine being (the Word) who became flesh. But it does not mention any virgin birth of a divinely sired baby. Without the virgin birth, how did John imagine the incarnation to have happened? Did Jesus simply materialize in the world as a baby? Or as a full-grown man? What can we know about this?
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RESPONSE:
Ah, good question. Actually John’s view of incarnation is at odds with the idea of Virgin Birth, even though Christians have long conflated the two by saying the line in the Creed: “He became incarnate through the Virgin Mary.”
When you read the Virgin Birth narratives of Luke, it indicates that Jesus became the son of God at and because of his conception: “The Holy Spirit will come upon you SO THAT the one born of you will be called holy, the Son of God.” He’s God’s son because of his conception, and it is how he came into being.
In John on the other hand, Jesus is not Son of God by conception but from eternity past, In the Beginning.
It’s only when both views are accepted as authoritative that the idea of an incarnation via Virgin birth comes into being.
So, how did Jesus come into the world in John’s view? He doesn’t tell us explicitly. But since his biological mother and brothers are mentioned, I would suspect he thought that Jesus was conceived and born as all humans are (through sexual intercourse), but that it was even so not a normal birth: it was the way the Son of God chose to enter into the world. (That may seem strange, that the pre-existent son of God was physically born; but there’s no non-strange way to think about it. And there are plenty of strange accounts of Jesus’ coming into the world in Christian writings, as in the Proto-Gospel of James.”
QUESTION:
If the “signs” in the Fourth Gospel are there to prove something, why does John’s Jesus say blessed are those who believe without seeing? Isn’t this a contradiction?
RESPONSE:
Ah! The author is affirming that up till then (in his narrative), faith came only from seeing Jesus’ miracles (including Thomas); now Jesus will no longer be around, and so people will have to believe without seeing them. But they CAN hear about them/read them in this account – as he indicates in 20:30-31 — the signs are written “so that you might believe.” Here still it is the miracles that produce faith, but only as heard/read about.
QUESTION:
If apocalyptic preachers were expected to pronounce judgment on the temple, why do critical scholars still treat this prediction as a key factor in dating the Gospels? I’ve often heard it argued that, even if Jesus genuinely made such a prediction, the Gospel writers included it to highlight his prophetic foresight. But if condemning the temple was a standard feature of apocalyptic preaching, wouldn’t that alone explain its inclusion without having to assume it was written after the event?
RESPONSE:
Ah, right, good question. Mark Goodacre made an argument once that struck me as convincing, that later authors who want to show that someone made prophetic predictions that eventually came true (as they living later knew), it is those predictions they bring it up repeatedly (as you get in the predictions of the destruction). This one prediction is one they knew came true, and so they emphasized it. They don’t record *other* predictions of Jesus that did not come true, only ones that did — e.g., also ones about his own coming death and resurrection, the denials of Peter, the betrayal of Judas, etc.). That suggests they repeat Jesus’ prediction of the destruction of the temple precisely because they knew it happened and it verified Jesus’ insights.
QUESTION:
Twice in John’s gospel the author has someone identify Jesus as the “son of Joseph”, once by a sympathizer and again by enemies. In neither case does the author take the opportunity to hedge or qualify the claim. Why create a problem for himself by even bringing it up unless the author accepted that Joseph was Jesus’ father? Should take this as a hint that perhaps the author saw the incarnation of a pre-existent divine being as compatible with a normal biological birth?
RESPONSE:
Yes, it was a point noted by later scribes who copied John’s text and sometimes changed it didn’t mention Joseph as his “father”!
But “father” could mean lots of things and there are lots of ways to interpret the text. Joseph could be his step-father (I called my step-uncle my uncle all the time). Or is adopted father. Or, more likely in my view, is what you suggest: he author may have thought that Joseph was indeed his earthly father, that the Word of God became incarnate the way every human being becomes incarnate, through the sex act.
The only reason we are averse to this idea is that we think Mary had to be a virgin. But this author didn’t think so. Or at least he never said so. And these verses seem to indicate he did not.
QUESTION:
Off topic. Mark 9:1, Jesus says …”until they see that the kingdom of God has come with power.” Mark writes 40 or so years after Jesus dies and still says that this kingdom is coming with power. It’s been 40 years, not much has happened and Nero as persecuted some Christians – not much power. Why does Mark use that word power? Did the destruction of the temple signal the coming of the kingdom? Did Mark really think Jesus said those words and wanted to be faithful? Or does Mark just think it is still coming and soon?
RESPONSE:
It is usually understood to mean that the kingdom would not ease into the world, but would come with a mighty act of God that destroys all his enemies. My sense is that Jesus actually said something like this, and Mark is recording it because he still does think it’s coming soon. (Just as many people today still think Jesus means “soon” in their own lifetimes!).
It’s interesting, though, that Luke, writing later, drops the words “in power” — probably because Luke (unlike Mark) thinks the kingdom is already being manifest here on earth in the work of Jesus and his followers (e.g., Luke 17:20-21).
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Are you familiar with John W. Campbell’s book, Why Christians are Wrong About Jesus (a 2023 sequel to his earlier book, Cross Examined; Putting Christianity on Trial.)
Campbell’s thesis is that Christianity became a religion based on what Paul believed rather than on what Jesus actually taught, and he cites (numerous) passages in both the OT and NT to support his claims. (The religion OF Jesus that became a religion ABOUT Jesus)
Paul gives virtually no details about his vision of Jesus and his claim that Jesus died to save humanity from sin – essentially a human sacrifice that has no basis in the OT. Where did Paul get his theology of a dying/rising messiah and where did the theology of an afterlife in heaven or hell, based on a person’s belief (or acceptance) of Jesus’ death (sacrifice), come from?
Yes, I think that is demonstrably wrong. (It’s a very old theory) Paul himself indicates he wsa persecuting Christians for their claims about Christ long before he had a Christian theology at all.
Regarding Jesus predicting the destruction of the temple:
I agree from seeing how prophecies go in history that most likely it was cherry picked. But even if he did predict it, was it that significant? I have noticed many so called prophecies in history that were actually ‘DUH!” moments at the time but not noticed now. For example, foreign troops massed on the border and a ‘prophet” says “xxx will invade and cause destruction”. In isolation seems fantastic, but just current events. So in Jesus’ time with rising rebellious Jewish groups, didn’t Rome have a practice of destroying temples of the religions of rebellious groups? If so, wouldn’t Rome destroying the temple be an obvious likely outcome of ongoing events?
Yes, I’m certainly not arguing that Jesus had supernatural knowledge, just that he thought the Romans would destroy the temple.
Many scholars argue that Jesus should be understood primarily as an apocalyptic prophet proclaiming the imminent kingdom of God. But when I look at Josephus, he seems extremely hostile toward apocalyptic or eschatological prophets.. He downplays texts like 1 Enoch, shows little interest in resurrection theology, and criticizes charismatic sign-prophets. He criticizes leaders who led crowds into the wilderness, promised miraculous divine intervention against Rome, and provoked the Roman government.
Yet Josephus speaks relatively positively about Jesus, his brother James, and John the Baptist.. figures who, at least in modern scholarly reconstructions, could be seen as part of that same apocalyptic stream. How do we account for Josephus’ favorable treatment of these men if they belonged to the very movement he claims contributed to the chaos leading up to the war? What explains this disconnect between Josephus’ hostility to apocalypticism and his respectful portrayal of Jesus and his circle?
That’s actually the point. He talks about Jesus without referring to his apocalyptic views. He’s de-apocalpyticized him, as he did with so many other apocalyupticists at the time.
That makes sense- so would it be accurate to say he de-apocalypticized non violent apocalypticists and criticized the militant ones?
I’m not sure if that’s true across the board. (It’s a very long board)
Dr Ehrman, I have a question about Josephus’s mention of Jesus in Antiquities XVIII (and yes I’m aware there’s a controversy about that).
That passage says (among other things) that Jesus “drew over to him both many of the Jews and many of the Gentiles.” But there’s no hint, in the gospels, that Jesus had any Gentile followers. He does have dealings with some Gentiles such as the centurion whose servant he healed (in Mt 8, Mk 15, and Lk 7) but aside from those encounters, which are limited, there’s nothing in the gospels that suggests he “drew” any Gentile followers. All the apostles were Jews like him.
I ask because other parts of this passage have been analyzed to death and honestly, I don’t know what to make of most of those points. But this difference (Josephus saying he had Gentile followers while the gospels say nothing of the sort) seems pretty stark. I’d love to know your take on it.
I suppose Josephus got his informatoin from followers of Jesus, who may have assumed that he had large followings including gentiles. (There’s no reason to suppose his informants in the 70s or 80s wuld have read any of our Gospels or knew any of the eyewitnesses)
Prof. Ehrman, I wanted to ask you about the Samaritan Woman at the Well.
Is this passage original? Perhaps misappropriated? And later misapplied?
Looking at verse 25 (NRSV), one,I have to believe the “who is called Christ” is a later addition even if this is an original passage. But more importantly, my understanding is that the Jewish Messiah is not the same as the Samaritan Messiah, the Taheb. My understanding is the Taheb was supposed to be another prophet of the standing of Moses and a great teacher. The Samaritans had no other prophet other than Moses so the Taheb would be the second prophet. That’s rather significant I think. He was not to be a great king or redeemer. That seems to me to be a major disconnect in this story. And if “John” was a highly educated and literate Jew I would suspect he would know about that difference.
Further more, Christianits seem to us this as “see even the Samaritans, the hated enemy of the Jews, recognized Jesus as the Messiah.” But that would not be the case if the Samaritan Taheb was not the same as the Messiah. That seems like a forced interpretation to fulfill Christian ideals.
It is original to the Gospel of John, but it almost certainly is not something that happened, in part for reasons you mention.
I thought the standard interpretation was that this village had been previously evangelized by John the Baptist and his disciples, and John had preached about the coming Messiah – so Jesus could say “I am he”. That is why He also said “One sows and another reaps”. “Others (John & co) have done the hard work, and you (Jesus’ disciples) have reaped the benefits of their labor.” A full account can be found in the Urantia book (135:5 – https://cutt.ly/VtdUezup) which dates from the 1930s – but decide for yourself if such a source is useful!
Dr Ehrman, regarding choosing to report only Jesus’ “prophecies” that came true, you were asked about Mk 9:1 which along with Lk 9:27 & Mt 16:28 all say that “there are some standing here who will not taste death until they see” either “the kingdom of God” or the arrival of the Son of Man. Is it possible the three evangelists thought there might still be some people who’d been “standing here” in front of Jesus when he said that still alive when they wrote their gospels, so that there was still a chance, even decades later, the prediction still might come true as stated? If not what reason do you suppose they had for including a prediction that ended up never coming true? For that matter, what reason might later copyists have had for including those predictions?
Yes, it’s possible. Some people reading the passages still today think that it means *modern Christians” won’t taste death until they see…. (!)
Here’s something that has puzzled me for a good long while!
Mark has his Jesus explaining and predicting that he will be betrayed, handed over to his enemies, greatly suffer and be killed. And he tells his disciples several times that all these things must come to pass.
But then when Jesus *is* handed over, suffers and is rejected Mark has him cry out “Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani!” Whether this is a reference to Daniel or not, Mark clearly seems to be portraying Jesus as having genuinely felt forsaken and abandoned. But how can he when he knew this was all going to happen and that it was necessary to fulfil God’s will?
Was Mark just hoping we’d forget about an earlier part of his story? Was he making a point other than Jesus psychological state? Was the climax of his story more important to him than continuity?
Never been able to make sense of that one.
It’s a reference to Psalm 22:1; and yes, that’s rigth — it’s Mark’s point. Jesus knew it was going to happen but when it came to the moment, he was agonized, trying to figure out why. But the READ knows why — simply be reading the next verses. The curtain in the temple rips giving *everyone* access to God, and the pagan centurion is the first to recognize that Jesus is the Son of God who had to die. In part Mark is telling his readers that if they too have to die for the faith, they may not understand why (like Jesus), but God is working behind the scenes to make it all work together for the salvatoin of others.
Oh right, Psalms, not Daniel. Sorry. I’m a newbie. 🤣
I seemed to me that the apostles of Jesus would have produced the blood atonement theory for the execution of Jesus to explain why Jesus was crucified — in order to defend the proposition that he was/is the Davidic messiah. But as you point out, this isn’t Luke’s view of the death of Jesus. And that got me thinking that maybe the apostles in the Jerusalem church didn’t have a blood atonement view or maybe only some of them did. Now I don’t know what to think about it. I’m curious what you think. Did some/all of Jesus’ apostles think the execution of Jesus was a blood atonement sacrifice? Since Luke corrects Mark on this very basic issue, perhaps Luke had some inside information on what the Jerusalem church was actually teaching, that the execution of Jesus wasn’t a sacrifice for sins.
I doubt if Luke had any inside information on what hte Jerusalem disciples thought decades before he was writing (and probably long before he was born). But it is interesting that he gets Jesus’ message of forgiveness more “right” than the earlier authors do….
Do you think ‘Markan Sandwich Theory’ explains why the author Matthew incorporated a great deal of Mark’s gospel?
I don’t think he decided to copy Mark BECAUSE of Mark’s literary technique of sandwiching, if that’s what you mean.
Do you think it’s possible some of the predictions attributed to the destruction of Jer. by Jesus were later added to his lips, or do you think most everything he predicted was actually his prediction?
I’m not sure that we can establish that each and every prediction goes back to him.
First time question asker but multi year enjoyer of your work!
I have a sort of tangentially related question (in the sense of related to the types of things claimed by the gospels that Jesus said).
In the past I’ve seen you say in YouTube videos and blog posts that Jesus thought of himself as the likely king of the coming kingdom of God, and I was wondering; was his belief about his coming rulership/dominion meant in a similar sense to what other self proclaimed Jewish messiah’s like Bar Kohkba would have thought about their bids for kingship?
In other words, would Jesus thinking he would be the king of the coming divine kingdom have been a relatively normal belief by the very abnormal (but not totally unique) standards of apocalyptic Jewish messiah figures of the Roman period struggling against the Roman’s and corrupt temple aristocracies and other forms of sin?
Or was Jesus quite radical even by the standards of Jewish messiah figures of the last 200 or so years before Jerusalem was destroyed in 135?
I’d say it’s hard to know what was within the range of “normal,” but we do know of a variety of both messianic and apocalyptic beliefs. Some apocalypticists appear to have thought either that humans would be empowered by God to bring in the kingdom or that at least they would be used by God in the final battle (e.g., in the War Scroll at Qumran); some of those probably expected direct divine intervention in the midest of a human struggle; others thought God would do it all himself. That seems to be the view of Jesus. I’d say this is one thing that makes Jesus stand out from other messianic figures (bar Kochba etc.), but I’m ont sure it would have been seen as outlandish.
Let’s be pernicious.
Luke 17 20-21 does not state that the Kingdom is manifest here on earth in him .
It says in YOU. (Yes, we have argued this briefly, and the reasons for it) .
And it is not necessarily a woo-woo God perception; but, more likely a pointing to the fact that the Garden of Eden/Kingdom is this creation, and our possible re-entry to it now available to us – and, yes, even to the Pharisees if they would cleanse their vision.
Further annoyance: Luke 1 may not contain the English word among. En translated directly is in. The
things accomplished in us.
And please don’t bring up Homer again. Except where there is a specific reason (e.g. in Emily Wilson’s iambic version), the translation of inside for entos is common.
And, I still wonder if both those verses and others in our reception of Luke point to an earlier version of him (it?) that is buried in the received copy.
I believe the correct translation is that the kingdom is “among you.” EN can mean both things. I believe I’ve mentioned this. And yes, you are … persistent! But maybe we should move on to other issues.
In case it is of interest, I found this article quite convincing: http://www.bible-researcher.com/luke17.21.html
Regarding apocalyptic preachers pronouncing judgement on the temple…
I want to be careful presenting this context. According to all the scholars I’ve read, the temple in Jerusalem was integral to worshiping Yahweh and re-establishing Israel following exile. Yahweh needed a ‘home base’, as did most gods. Jerusalem was the central Jewish location for the temple. Don’t need to rationalize these features. These are expressly stated in the OT. Pronouncing judgement on the temple is analogous to Jesus’ saying “…you have heard it said…but I say to you…” That is, “my way is replacing the old traditional Jewish teachings.”
Thoughts, Bart?
That seems plausible to me, yes. (He was not alone in thinking the focus on the temple had gone awry and was not what God had in mind; you see it in the Dead Sea Scrolls and, e.g., in the speech of Stephen in Acts 7)
Hi Bart,
I’m a Christian who asks you a lot of (sometimes stupid) questions. I’m hoping this one isn’t.
As an expert on the Gospels, do you believe Jesus cared more about what people did or what they believed?
It seems to me like the latter is very Pauline, i.e. salvation through faith in Jesus’s death and resurrection, whereas the former is very synoptic. The Sermon on the Mount, the summation of the law, the sheep and the goats, etc, all seem to call us to action, while the Pauline approach is more passive.
Do you believe Jesus emphasized action/behavior or belief when it came to righteousness and “salvation”?
I’m of course talking about the words of Jesus that are probably authentic. This is all very confusing as a Christian, especially when you become aware of dramatic differences in NT perspectives.
Thanks!
Not a dumb question at all. A completely pivotal one. I don’t think Jesus talked about believing the right things for salvation; it was all about how you lived your life.
At some point, someone had the original manuscript of each of the books of the New Testament. There’s the author. Then there is quite possibly a few people connected to the author who also saw and were connected in some way to the original.
Is there any indication that these people thought they had “the words of God”?
Today, people put great store in having the original manuscript by a given famous author and/or a given famous document. If people thought they had the “words of God”, wouldn’t they have gone to town in trying to preserve the original?
Is there any indication by the early church fathers that they had the original or that they put great store in having the original documents?
No, early on the writings of, say, Paul may have been seen as important and even at times authoritative, but not on a par with Scripture (Hebrew Bible). So too all the authors. Later fathers who talk about the originals indicate they don’t have them..
Epicurus is credited with the first documented version of the Problem of Evil, where he seems to claim that God must be malevolent or impotent. Orthodox Christianity had several hundred years to counter this claim, and yet, the Orthodox Canon makes no attempt to do so – correct me if I’m wrong! The fact that Revelation eventually became canonized suggests even more so, to me, that Orthodox Christians did not seem to be threatened by the suggestion that God might be, at least, partially malevolent or impotent. Who is the first Jewish or Orthodox Christian author we have on record as arguing “God, in fact, is 0% malevolent”? I understand that the problem of evil was very important to some heterodox Christians (Marcion, Gnostics). But how to explain the silence from the Orthodox Canon? Why was Revelation allowed to have the final word?
It was a standard view among Jews and then Christians that God was completely good. The earliest Christians (and Jesus himself) would almost certainly never have heard of Epicurus or known anything about Epicurean views. Revelatin and actually the rest of the NT embrace apocalyptic views precisely because they thought they DID answer the question of why there was suffering.
I just realized I called you by your first name. My apologies!
Dr. Ehrman******
First name is fine!
How could Jesus go missing? Luke 2:44 tells how Joseph and Mary returning from Jerusalem towards Nazareth, travelled for a whole day on foot without noticing that 12 year old Jesus was not with them. This seems an unlikely mistake to be made by a couple with only one child to look after! Do you suppose this actually happened, or was more likely invented so that Jesus could impress temple scholars at an early age?
Hey, haven’t you seen Home Alone?
No comparison I think. They didn’t leave ALL their children behind and not notice they were missing for a FULL DAY while travelling ON FOOT!
That’s right. They left one. I think that’s what happens in the movie. Isn’t while they’re already on the plane? Got to admit, it’s not a hill I’m willing to die on. The point of the Gospel passage is that Jesus disappears for “three days.” And when he comes back, he demonstrates his superiority to Jewish religious authorities….
My point was that since Jesus was the only child the couple took to Jerusalem, it would only be comparable to Home Alone if that couple left ALL their children behind and didn’t notice – which seems infinitely improbable.
But a good explanation seems to be offered in the Urantia book (125:3:2 https://cutt.ly/VtdUezup) which suggests that it was cusomary for the men to travel in a separate group from the women and children. So Jesus travelled with the women on the way to Jerusalem. But having become a young man of consecration, was expected to travel back with his father and the men. So each thought Jesus was in the other group – an easy mistake to make. I wonder if you would assign any level of “truth” to the UB’s retelling of the tale?
Not really.
Surely, Jewish Apocalypticism would have been foreign to Gentile pagan converts though, no? Presumably many of these, who made up the vast majority of Christians by the end of the 3rd century, would have been familiar with Epicurean views, and felt compelled to respond. I can’t imagine anyone who would find Jewish Apocalypticism *more* compelling, having first been exposed to these alternate views?
It’s often surprising what people find more compelling than what they grew up on. But I’m not sure Epicurean philosophy was a dominant persepctive shared throughout the empire in the third century. (In fact, I think we can say it wasn’t) What convinced pagans to become Christian, though, was not Jewish apocalytpicism, but the claims of Christians about Jesus and his followers.