Here are three questions I’ve received recently on Paul’s views of Christ, Jesus’s view of himself, and the marital status of his mother.
QUESTION:
What is your opinion on Paul’s Greek, translated as “Faith in Jesus” vs “faith of Jesus” (the faithfulness of Jesus in God’s plan?) There are a few verses this comes up in, including gospel material.
(I don’t know Greek, and I’m not a linguist or scholar, and I have basically no idea what I’m talking about. However, I’m told through literature and scholarship that the Greek seems to be able to go either way.)
Do you think it changes the meaning?
Having faith [IN] Jesus seems to make it more about us, and less about the free gift of God.
Whereas, if salvation is through the faith [OF] Jesus, it is less about us.
Although, if I understand him correctly, Paul does say that we can accept or reject this gift.
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Thanks
Another possibility about Mary’s pregnancy: erotomania. This is typically a delusion that another person, often a celebrity, is infatuated with you, but can include the belief that that person got you pregnant. There have been cases in which women thought they were impregnated by God or Jesus. (I personally know a case in which a woman thought she was pregnant with twins by Jesus, although she wasn’t pregnant at all.) This is speculation, but it is conceivable that Mary was the victim of rape, incest or simple pre-marital sex, and then rationalized her pregnancy as the will of God, which later morphed into being made pregnant by God. Perhaps she instilled in Jesus the idea that his birth was special, initiated by God, which is what inspired Jesus to become a spiritual leader later in life.
Dr Ehrman
From the gospels it appears as if Jesus was not a fan of families, including his own. This might have been because he thought (like Paul) that the end was coming soon, but that still doesn’t explain some of the vitreol he’s credited with spewing … specifically Luke 14:26 “Whoever comes to me and does not hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, yes, and even life itself, cannot be my disciple.” How was this extreme passage explained by the early church?
I think some of the interpreters who commented on it softened it by saying he meant “hate” in the sense of “not put them ahead of me in your affections” and “do what I say, not what they say,” or some such thing; or more forefully, your new family of faith is your real family where all your love is not to be directed” disabledupes{0cc2dc13c7b3cdb33c9642148942d031}disabledupes
I’ve read that if Jesus’s father were dead/passed on, people may well have referred to him as the son of Mary, because his father was no longer with them. What do you think the chances are that this could be why Jesus could have been referred to in this way?
Yup, that’s a common view. It’s related to the idea that Joseph was an old man when Jesus was born, an idea that goes back to the Proto-Gospel of James, but which influenced Christian views over the centuries (as you’ll notice when you look at pictures of the nativity). The NT says nothing about that, of course. But it’s possible…
RE: Jesus’s view of himself
If I’m reading your work usefully you think that it’s likely that the historical Jesus had some sort of Messianic self-understanding. This naturally raises the question of how the son of an itinerant day laborer, raised in Nazareth, could come to such an understanding.
Of course short of the invention of a time machine we’ll never know for sure but it seems to me we can ask questions based on what we do know about what was actually possible. Sooo…
A person with a Messianic self-understanding must have developed a concept of what that meant somehow. Apocalypticists must learn their apocalypticism somehow. From what we know about Nazareth and the Galilee, could Jesus have learned these things locally?
It’s interesting that in the traditions Jesus’ first association is with John the Baptist. But even if he learned it all from John, something motivated Jesus to seek him out. Doesn’t that imply that he could not find what he wanted at home?
There are no definitive answers here but some questions are more useful than others. Prof Ehrman, can you share what you think are the most important questions to ask about Jesus’ self-understanding?
Thanks!
I’d say we can only intuit/infer what he may have actually thought about himself based on what we can establish he probably did say about himself, and that is the work of the historican, determining which sayings go back to him. Also to be considered, though, are what appear to be historical “facts” — for example that he was almost certainly executed for calling himself the king of the Jews. If he did call himself that, it necessarily things he was calling himself the messiah. I myself don’t think it’s too weird for someone from more or less nowhere could believe that God had called them to be a great leader. It doesn’t happen every minute, but it does happen and many famous people have come from “lowly” roots.
On your ‘Son of God’ discussion, by coincidence I see the Catholic mass reading for September 28 is JOB 1:6‐22
One day the Sons of God came to attend on the Lord, and among them was Satan. So the Lord said to Satan, ‘Where have you been?’ ‘Round the earth,’ he answered ‘roaming about.’
Could it be that the supposed low christology in Mark is due to the deliberate pattern of revelation/concealment?
This secrecy aligns closely with Jewish apocalyptic tradition, specifically the apocalyptic motif of subversion where God reverses the world’s structures, exalting the lowly/bringing down the mighty. Jesus embodies this paradox: outwardly a poor Galilean teacher bound for suffering, yet cryptically claiming the role of the glorious, heavenly Son of Man.
His intentional ambiguity (ie.frequently speaking of Son of Man in third person) invites discernment rather than forcing a conclusion.
Also, by invoking Isaiah 6 in Mark 4, Jesus signals his teaching is meant to reveal truth while hiding it from those unprepared to receive it. The Messianic Secret functions as an apocalyptic test: do you have “eyes to see” divine reality beneath his earthly humiliation before it becomes undeniable?
Rather than asking why Mark omits direct claims of divinity, the historical question is whether Jesus intentionally linked himself to Daniel’s heavenly Son of Man while veiling that identity until the appointed time. Viewed this way, the distinction between the Synoptics and John isnt a fundamental disagreement about who Jesus was, but a different theological approach to expressing the same extraordinary self-understanding.
I don’t think it’s an either / or, that we should either questoin whether Jesus called himself God or whether he called himself the coming Son of Man. (I myself think the answer to both questions is no, but there is different evidence in the two cases)
The historical question ‘Did Jesus identify himself with the coming Son of Man?’ and the historical question ‘Did Jesus identify himself as God?’ are indeed distinguishable questions. But *if* the answer to the first is yes, we shouldn’t assume that this gives us a Christologically modest Jesus. The particular Son of Man Jesus would have been identifying with is already a figure whose authority, glory, judgment, and participation in God’s kingdom radically blur the conceptual boundary between merely human messiah and divine/heavenly ruler. So wouldn’t you agree then that If Jesus understood himself to be the coming Son of Man of Daniel 7/Simultudes, then the implications for his self-understanding would be much closer to the Christology we see explicitly articulated in John?
Yes I do. But I don’t think he did identify himself as the Son of Man. That’s pretty much my point.
In Mark 2, Jesus connects his healing of the paralytic with the authority of the Son of Man to forgive sins.
I understand you don’t think this particular scene goes back to the historical Jesus. That’s fine, because that isn’t the point I’m making. Even if we bracket the question of historicity, Mark nevertheless places this claim on Jesus’ lips: Jesus is presented as the Son of Man who claims heavenly authority to forgive sins.
That seems significant given your acknowledgment that *if* Jesus had understood himself as the heavenly Son of Man, then his self-understanding would look like the exalted Christology of John.
If that’s the case, then Mark’s Jesus seems to be considerably closer to John’s Jesus than is sometimes acknowledged. Mark may portray that heavenly identity more implicitly and narratively, whereas John makes it much more explicit, but the basic conceptual trajectory isn’t as far apart as it first appears.
I’m not arguing, “Mark 2 proves the historical Jesus said these words.” I’m making the more modest point that Mark portrays Jesus as identifying with the heavenly Son of Man, thus the contrast between “Mark’s Jesus” and “John’s Jesus” is less stark than is often assumed.
OK, I get it. I definitely agree that Mark sees Jesus as the (eventually) returning Son of Man — the exalted Jesus. But unlike John he gives no indication that the exalted Jesus was a pre-existent being who created the universe in eternity past, and that seems a big difference to me. I’ve long said that Mark portrays Jesus as a divine being, but he appears to have *become* divine via exaltation (at the baptism for Mark?), not to be an “incarnate” divine being.
If Mark identifies Jesus with the heavenly “Son of Man,” it is difficult to explain Mark’s Christology as Jesus becoming divine for the first time during his earthly ministry. First-century Jewish and early Christian sources preserve diverse conceptions of heavenly figures, but whatever the precise identity or ontology assigned to the Son of Man, the figure is fundamentally portrayed as a heavenly, eschatological figure whose status precedes the earthly events of Jesus’ life.
This creates a problem for an adoptionist reading of Mark. If Jesus simply became the Son of Man at his baptism, Mark would be transforming a previously ordinary human into a figure whose heavenly identity and eschatological authority already existed independently of his earthly ministry. But Mark gives no indication that the baptism is when Jesus became the Son of Man. Rather, the baptism functions as a revelation and commissioning of an identity that is subsequently disclosed throughout the Gospel.
Thus, even if Mark’s Christology is less explicit about preexistence than John’s, identifying Jesus with the heavenly Son of Man makes it difficult to characterize Mark as teaching that Jesus only became divine during his ministry.
Also, Mark 2 doesn’t present Jesus as someone who will eventually become the Son of Man. It presents the Son of Man as a figure whose authority is already present and operative on earth, while his climactic heavenly manifestation remains future.
I strongly suggest that readers of this blog read “My Hopelessly Bipolar Relationship with Institutional Religion” by Martin Thielen. He summarizes his article by quoting Ehrman.
Dear Dr Ehrman- Firstly, on the topic of Jesus self conception, I have found that the Johannine Farewell Discourses provide a fascinating mine of information. It does seem that some form of divine gradation is present in John, with the Father sending/ordaining the Son into the world bearing his word, and the Son sending/ordaining the Spirit-Paraclete bearing his word in order to guide the disciples.
Secondly, if I may ask a textual question, in your opinion as one of the leading modern textual critics of the New Testament and as a disciple of the late Dr Bruce Metzger, would you conclude that John 16:15 is likely original to the Gospel and is not a textual variant ? (I apologize, as I realize that I have asked this before. Any illumination at all would be immensely welcome and appreciated)
John 16:15 is missing from only two of our Greek manuscripts, so far as I know (and some Coptic), but they are two of the oldest and most important, P66 and Sinaiticus. It’s worth pointing out that P66 is somewhat notorious for having a lot of scribal errors, and the text of Sinaiticus was corrected after the first hand (off hand I don’t know if the original scribe made the correction himself or if it was corrected later). I think there is a virtual consensus among textual specialists that the verse was original and was accidentally omitted in both cases because of homoioteleuton. The last three words immediately before what is now v. 15 are KAIANAGGELEIYUMIN (= “and he will declare it to you”); v. 15 also ends with the three words KAIANAGGELEIYUMIN. I have written the three words without separating them with spaces to help make my point. They are exactly alike. If a scribe copied the end of v. 14 and then looked back at his manuscript to copy the next verse, his eyes may well have fallen on the *second* occurrence of the words rather than the first, and continued from there. That is, his eye skipped to the wrong spot because of the verses ending in the same way, an error known as “periblepsis occasoined by homoioteleuton” (an eye-skip because of same-endings). It happened sometimes. That would explain the omission and given the massive manuscript support for v. 15, it’s difficult to explain why soneone would have added it. So it appears to be original.
Dear Dr Ehrman
Thank you very much fir this splendid answer, I am am truly in your debt. If I may trouble you for two last clarifications:
1-Is the manuscript evidence attesting to this verse really very large?
2-In your view, does this verse fit seamlessly into the wider theological message of John chapter 16?
1. We probably have around 2000 manuscripts of the Gospel of John (I don’t have the exact number on the top of my head), and none of them (that is, except for manuscript fragments that have only portions of this or that chapter), again, to my knowledge, lacks John 16:15.
2. Yes. Among other things, see 17:10.
The Quran has a different take on Mary, and a lot more information. She is a single girl and after she has given birth on her own, returns to her village and is accused of bringing shame with her. The baby speaks in the cradle and says ‘”Indeed, I am the servant of Allah. He has given me the Scripture and made me a prophet… And made me blessed wherever I may be,’ and this convinces everyone that Mary is pure. When Gabriel visits her it is in the form of a man, and of course, it is the Angel Gabriel that dictates the Quran to Mohammed. I am not a Muslim but I really enjoy this appreciation of Mary, and wonder what tradition the story came from.
I’m not sure about these specific traditions. The Quran does use traditions behind the Christian Infancy Gospel of Thomas for some of its stories about Jesus . But this one, I don’t know offhand.