(24 votes, average: 4.88 out of 5)
Loading...Professors who have taught the same subject for decades often get tired with covering the same material time after time and, as a result, answering the same questions time after time. I’ve had friends who teach New Testament tell me: “If I have to teach the Synoptic Problem ONE MORE TIME I am going to SCREAM….”
I’ve never felt that way. It’s probably just a matter of personality and brain chemistry. For me, teaching someone who doesn’t know something that I’ve taught for many years just means they haven’t had the chance to learn it.
It’s the same outside the classroom with questions/comments I get – the same questions all the time. I’ll admit that often in the first nano-second I sometimes think: Why don’t they just GET IT? But then I remember: Wait a second. This person hasn’t heard the answer….
Here is a question that comes to me all the time. I got it again a few days ago.
QUESTION:
I have a brief question. I was a biblical studies major in college and my professors loved to point out the fact that we have so many copies of the New Testament. Their argument would be that due to the amount we have we can prove a good degree of reliability. Furthermore, they would say that to doubt the Bible as a historical text would mean that we should also throw out other historical documents which we have fewer copies of. To be fair my quotes are a summarization of what they taught, but I was curious what your thoughts were. I am also curious as to why we do have so many copies of the NT in comparison to other documents.
RESPONSE:
If I had a nickel for every time I’ve heard someone claim that the New Testament must be reliable because we have so many copies of it, I could buy Twitter.
I never have a problem with a layperson who wonders about it – since they’ve heard “experts” say it all the time — but I have a very serious problem with the professors who have drilled it into their head. What were his professors thinking? Were they thinking? Surely not. It is an argument that literally makes no sense. Either these instructors simply don’t know what they’re talking about, or they’ve never thought about the logic of the claim, or they don’t understand logic in general, or they are being duplicitous. I think those are the choices.
Let me put it like this. Do you gauge the reliability of a book on
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I remember this argument was kind of a big deal at a debate you did in Texas. I was surprised when it seemed like most of the audience bought it!
There are many millions of copies of Dickens “A Christmas Carol” around, it’s still fiction.
Ah, but it’s TRUE! 🙂 (A true story that didn’t happen!) disabledupes{30478913bc648bab3c63caf17183d1dd}disabledupes
As you point out, the number of copies and accuracy of copies tells us something about the devotion of its adherents but nothing about it’s truthfulness or value. Does it matter how many and how accurate are the copies of the Book of Mormon, the Koran, or Dianetics?
Hello Professor Bart, I wrote this as part of a discussion we had in one of my online classes, and everyone disagreed with me, including the professor:
“…The Bible is not always clear, and often you can get the sense that some books have different perspectives on the same matter. This is not a problem for someone like me since I do not see the Bible as some divine revelation from God. In fact, having an expectation of perfect coherence when we are talking about a book that has the contributions of many different authors spawning a lengthy period is unlikely. So, my point is that such diverse perspectives on issues like the relationship between the Mosaic covenant and the new covenant could be partly due to the diversity of views in Scripture. Which, in my view, makes the Bible far more interesting and a fantastic read.”
Do you think that different authors in the Bible disagree on certain matters?
All over the map. The class is almost certainly being taught by a conservative Christian evangelical or Catholic, I should imagine. What you’re saying is teh standard historical view among critical scholars.
Yes. I actually attend a Christian university which is, for the most part, evangelical. I am a wolf in a den of lambs.
You might try sheeps’ clothing!
Hi Dr Ehrman!
I was wondering if you have ever come across Idan Dershowitz’s analysis of Leviticus with regard to gay rights? What do you think of it?
Thank you!
I’m afraid I haven’t.
Dershowitz’s ideas on Leviticus exist in two forms, at least to my knowledge – a proper scholarly treatment / article, and an article in the NYT from 2018, which caused a bit of a kerfuffle at the time. As someone with no training at all in textual analysis / criticism, it sounds like a plausible argument to me. But I think the reality is that the text in the Bible is what really matters, not whatever changes / redactions / additions occurred before the final version in Leviticus. There are other, good reasons why we can argue against the idea that the Bible condemns gay people.
There’s a video on YT that goes into it a little i :
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3hWiW8eooF0
I know your question was addressed to Bart. Sorry for butting in.
Here’s a question I assume many have asked, but after a few years of theology/biblical studies in college and grad school, I don’t think I ever heard the answer:
Why is the Q hypothesis preferable to just hypothesizing that Matthew edited/added to Mark; and then Luke edited/added to Matthew? Wouldn’t that be simpler and therefore preferable?
I’ve dealt with the issue a number of times on the blog (look up Synoptic Problem). There are compelling reasons for thinking that Luke didn’t copy/edit Matthew. The most compelling takes a while to explain, but whenever Matthew and Luke have the sequence for their stories, they are the stories in Mark; when they have material NOT in Mark, their ordering is different. That suggests they had another source that did not have a narrative sequence — mainly a list of Jesus’ sayings — and put them into their narrative (taken from Mark) wherever each thought was appropriate. *Otherwise* it would have to mean that Luke had both Matthew and Mark on his lap (they didn’t use desks back then) and whenever Matthew had a saying not in Mark (that I guess Luke would have to know by having memorized both of them?) he decided to change where *that* one was located in his account (but not the materials that *are* in Mark). That seems like an editorial nightmare to me, almost impossible to explain, and very difficult to imagine (in terms of how Luke actually pulled it off) (let alone why he woudl wnat to)
But this observation on the narrative ordering is equally compatible with Mark writing last while knowing both Matthew and Luke.
If there are otherwise compelling reasons for believing the Luke did in fact know Matthew shouldn’t we therefore place Matthew/Luke first and see Mark as switching between their ordering when copying from both?
I don’t know of any scholars who think so…
But there are scholars that argue that Luke knew Matthew, and you would agree that given the ordering of pericopes in the synoptics those scholars should be arguing for something like Griesbach rather than Markan priority?
Farrer is the main option now, not Griesbach. I think almost everyone subscribes to Markan priority (with a few holdouts). So that leaves Mark used by Matthew and Mark and Matthew both used by Luke. Q seems far more likely to me.
Yes but given the argument of ordering musn’t Farrer be wrong? Aren’t the only two options Mark with Q and something like Griesbach?
Not according to a growing group of Synoptics scholars, headed mainly by Mark Goodacre at Duke, blog member and guest poster!
Here’s a hypothetical for you. If Mark had not survived and all we had was Matthew and Luke could you determine by textual analysis alone that both were relying on a previously existing work or would the assumption just be that one of the two was relying on the other?
Thanks
The interesting issue would be what textual scholars, in that hypothetical situation, would make of the fact that the material found jointly between the two was typically in the same order (sequence) but the other material that one or the other has is almost always in a different order (sequence). My hunch is that this would lead them to assume the material in the same sequence came from a common source and the other material from somewhere else, injected into the common source.
The more handwritten copies there are, the more differences there are going to be in the copies.
True!
I would call this fallacy the “argument from popularity” – being popular proves only that it is popular, not that it is true.
A similar fallacy is the “argument from numbers” – because Christianity has had so many believers throughout the years, it must be true.
A corollary fallacy might be called the “argument from stubbornness” which one sees in Jewish circles. Jews have stubbornly clung to their beliefs through centuries of persecution, and they wouldn’t have done that if it wasn’t true.
This story reminds me of an episode of “Shark Tank”, the popular would-be entrepreneur show, I watched a couple of years ago. A young woman,late twenties or early thirties,who in my eyes was attractive, created a mirror called,” The Skinny Mirror”. When women try on a dress or pants or something, in a department store, and stand in front of this mirror it makes them look slimmer then they are. The sharks all agreed she was deceiving women because they truly did not look like they appeared on the mirror. She responded by saying, she was not deceiving women but rather making them feel good about themselves. Oddly,some stores had purchased these mirrors and were being used to promote sales. Suffice to say,none of the sharks supported her business model, but ironically, she invented this mirror on the basis that she never felt good about herself. She thought of herself as overweight, and clearly she was not,to me anyways(and sharks as well). The gist,this woman truly believed this was an ingenius creation that helps women (specious?) feel good about themselves, and never saw/understood it as a deceit. Very little surprises me anymore!!!
Another point is that it really doesn’t matter if our copies of Homer are the same as the original. As long as the story holds together, whether or not it is exactly what Homer wrote is only of interest to scholars.
But the Gospels claim to be telling us the story and words of the Son of God. Millions of people base their lives on what the Gospels say (or at least claim to). If there is a major error one of the Gospels, Christians could be doing the wrong thing.
Mr.Ehrman, I’ve seen many laymen online say that the 12 disciples belief in the resurrection was a delusion due to it being a fixed false belief.
You’ve done some research into phycology and cognitive dissonance, but a faith belief shouldn’t be categorized as a delusion. A delusion is a thing that in reality is clearly false but how they came to believe in the resurrection cannot be ruled as delusion, right?
Well, they may have been deluded in thinking they saw something they didn’t. But that’s different from saying they accepted a “fixed false belief.”
1. Wouldn’t hallucinating someone dead have been seen as normal during that time? Also saying they came back to life due to that hallucination. So perhaps “deluded” may have been normal back then.
2. We can’t also say that for billions of people who believe in the resurrection just like the disciples, right? Perhaps there is a difference between a faith belief and a delusion.
It’s fairly normal now. 1/8 of us will have a vision of a deceased loved one. As to people believing what others have told them they saw, I don’t think that’s delusional. I’d say all of us believe things that we’ve heard that are just flat out wrong or beyond the realm of any real possibility. Think our national politics.
Hi Bart,
Unrelated to this post, I want to run the following outline by you:
1. The historical Jesus publicly spoke about his special relationship with the Lord and his prediction of the Jewish Temple’s destruction.
2. The historical Jesus disrupted some of the money changers in the Jewish Temple.
3. Jesus knew that his actions would most likely instigate the Sanhedrin to arrest him and then deliver him to Pilate for trial on the grounds of sedition.
4. Jesus previously predicted to his disciples that he would be put to death while claiming it related to some prophecy in Hebrew Scripture.
5. Points 1–4 correspond to traditions recorded in the Synoptic Gospels in the context of Markan priority.
Do points 1–5 sound reasonable to you? or did I lose you on points 4 and 5?
I don’t agree with 3 and 4, but 1, 2, and 5 are OK by me.
Bart,
2 questions about Matt 5:22
The KVJ contains a qualifier – without a cause – which most other translations including the NRSV do not
My KJV has an asterisk there and says: NU-text omits without a cause
First I assume they meant *just* cause since there is always a cause – But if its just or not could quickly become very subjective…eg: Did Jesus himself have just cause for each of his several outbursts of anger in the NT
1. Do we know which of the two translations is our best and likely more authentic?
2. Is it possible the qualifier was added to shield Jesus from any claims of hypocrisy?
TY !
Later scribes added the phrase “without cause” — it was not original. They were probably motivated by the harshness of how Jesus put it — you can’t get angry with your brother no matter what. By adding “without cause” (which ,you’re right mean “good cause”) they made it more plausible. So the oldest form of the text (the “original”) did not have “without cause.” THe KJV is following later and less reliable manuscripts here. (The earlier mss were discovered after the KJV was completed)
You claim “and we often cannot know for sure” and since there is really a period in which we have very little evidence one way or another I tend to agree. Many of these works also have complicated compositional histories and the same author could put out multiple versions of his own work. But I see a lot of scholars reconstructing 1st-century Christianity and the HJ, yourself included, using these texts. If they are so uncertain, is this enterprise built on blind beliefs that our NT texts (e.g. Gospels) look somewhat like they did in the late first century?
Are you just arguing against overzealous claims that the text of these works is extremely well preserved and truly saying we have no idea really what many of these texts looked like in the late first century. Or is the reconstruction of these documents good enough to make them usable for first-century reconstruction?
I mean, I’ve seen scholars reconstruct hypothetical documents and its stages based on the double tradition material in Matthew and Luke, which are we saying are two textually suspect works?
The kinds of changes we find in the manuscripts — thousands of them! — are all taken into account by serious scholars to determine what the texts probably said originally. The places in doubt are many, but in the Gospels they probably number in the low hundreds?, not in the many thousands. And most of them have very little effect on our determination of whatactually happened in the life of Jesus. Just as we do with the life of Julius Caesar, we base our historical judgments on the reconstruction of the sources based on the surviving manuscript evidence.
Question:
Matthew 1:21 Says
She will give birth to a son, and you are to give him the name Jesus, because he will save his people from their sins.
When translated to Hebrew, it says
And she will bring forth a Son, and you shall call His name Yeshua, for yoshia His people from their sins.
Where it use Yeshua and yoshia, a Wordplay in Hebrew and can this indicate Matthew could originally be written in Hebrew?
No, I don’t think so. The association of Jesus with “salvation” happened long before the Gospels were written and came to be reflected in Christian traditions as they were translated into Greek.
How do Christian apologists argue for Immanuel referring to Jesus?
The same way I do, actually. Immanuel is simply a statement about the person’s full identity: in him “God is with us.” It doesn’t mean that it had be his actual given name.
Oh okay! Interesting you have the same view as Christian apologists on this issue (the name ‘Immanuel’).
I’d say it’s the other way around. 🙂 They simply are stating the widely held view that just about everyone has had for 2000 years!
Hey Burt,
Joseph Atwill in his book Ceaser’s Messiah alleges the New Testament and The War of the Jews by Josephus could both have been a conspiracy by Titus Flavius and co. to create a friendly, false religion to rival and replace the Jewish religion which was increasingly hostile to the Roman empire.
Do you draw similar conclusions?
No. I don’t know any scholar who thinks this is remotely possible — whether scholars of the New Testament, the Gospels in particular, early Judaism, Jospehus in particular, ancient Roman imperial history, or the Flavians in particular. Atwill doesn’t know much about ancient history, I’m afraid to say.
Thanks for your response.
Well, Dr. Ehrman, do you suppose then that the “Byzantine Majority Textform” of the Greek New Testament is less reliable to the Nestle Aland 28th edition of the Greek New Testament because of the more copies of the latter? The Greek Orthodox Church STILL USES the Byzantine Majority Textform in their liturgy. Just curious….
Far less reliable. That was demonstrated convincingly by Brooke Fosse Westcott and Fenton John Anthony Hort (two of my idols in graduate school!) already in 1881, and is by far the consensus view today among scholars (outside of Greek orthodox and some veyr fundamentalist Protestant circles)
The Orthodox Church will definitely not admit that! Ha!
I understand the fallacy of the more texts = authenticity argument, but I’m at a loss for understanding the other side of the token: why even one sentence of the gospels can be said to have any historical legitimacy. If we apply the acid of reductionism to these ancient texts we’re ineluctably left with storytellers talking about a Jesus they never met. And yet there’s a presumption that certain sayings of Jesus can be held to be historically reliable, while others can’t. I’m still not clear how these judgments are arrived at and presented with categorical confidence.
This is the topic of my book Jesus: Apocalyptic Prophet of the New Millennium. There are the same historical grounds for thinking that the Gospels do indeed contain historical material as there are for thinking that of other ancient texts’ discussions of other historical figures.
Herodotus wrote about people and events he never met. So did Gregory of Tours, so did Josephus. There’s no real reason to treat the gospels differently than other ancient texts. We can analyze them critically and carefully as Ehrman and other scholars do.
Ehrman can give much more detail as to how which events/sayings in the gospels are determined to be more likely to be historical than others. But I wanted to stress its no different than any other area of history. Herodotus never met Miltiades of Athens or Leonidas of Sparta. Josephus never met Simon of Perea, Athronges, Judas the Galilean, or Theudas. Gregory of Tours never met Clovis I. So on and so forth. That’s kind of the norm in ancient history. Sallust never met Gaius Marius and he’s also our oldest source on the man. I can probably name hundreds of ancient figures for whom our only writings about them are people that never personally met them. That’s not a very remarkable thing in ancient history.
When classicists discuss, for example, whether Plutarch or Suetonius exaggerate the crimes of Nero, for example, they never argue about how many copies we’ve got.
Right!
Great post. And I’ve always thought it didn’t make sense too (although I’ve read all your books, hehe).
Is there an example that comes to your mind of a claim made by an ancient non-biblical author that scholars widely agree is false while also holding that the author is the best/most accurate source for the events they describe? Such as, “Herodotus is our best source for understanding how the Greco-Persian wars were fought, but all scholars widely hold that he embellished Persian numbers on the battle field”. It seems a good example here might help show apologist that critcal
biblical scholars aren’t picking on them, and if one were to believe an ancient author missed the mark badly in some cases, it doesn’t nessarily mean their writings provide absolutely no value to history.
Absolutely. Most scholars would say such things about Livy, Suetonius, Plutarch, and so on. That’s pretty much the point historical scholarship is making, against the apologists: we’re not treating the biblical authors *differently* from all the other writers of the time, but just *like* them. Apologists typically want to argue that they are somehow different. It might make theological sense in their religious worlds, but it simply doesn’t make sense out of it, in the historical world.
Mr Ehrman, would you be willing to go where the evidence best pointed, even if that meant endorsing a view unknown by your academic peers?
Yup, I’ve done that a number of times.
What if there was evidence from the bible text that showed that its New Testament redemptive narrative was only relevant to the twelve tribes of Israel in their last days? Would you be willing to go there if the evidence pointed to it?
And do you believe that a bible text’s audience relevance accurately demonstrates who it’s intended audience was for?
I’m willing to go anywhere that the evidence leads. But as you probably know, I’m intimately familiar with all the relevant passages and have studied them in Greek for 45 years, so any interpretation like this would be different from mine, but would not be something brand new to me based on on texts I had never considered.
Nope.
Dr Ehrman, you answered yes that you’re willing to go where the evidence best points. However, you answered ‘nope’ to my question pertaining to audience relevance. So, just to make sure I understand you…even though James 1:1 is clearly addressed to the twelve tribes of Israel, and Peter 1:1 is clearly addressed to the elect of the diaspora (which were people from the twelve tribes of Israel who were dispersed among the nations)….you don’t believe that those texts accurately demonstrate who those texts were meant for? What from the text indicates that those texts are meant for anyone other than who they are addressed to?
Yes, I do think the authors are indicating who the books were being addressed to. But there are huge problems. One is that there hadn’t been twelve tribes of Israel for over 800 years (since the Assyrians wiped out the northern kingdom in 721 BCE). So it can’t be meant Literally. And as to 1 Peter, early Christians often claimed *they* were the “true Israel.” So these texts are much debated among interpreters trying to figure out whom is being addressed. The matter is further complicated by the fact that they are both almost certainly pseudonymous writings. Problems within problems.
I’m always surprised that, in the “don’t you also have to question other books of antiquity” topic, no one ever seems to mention that there’s a huge difference between questioning the reliability of the NT and the reliability of Aristotle or Homer. Millions of people’s view of the world and their faith in eternity rest on the reliability of the NT, but what really are the stakes involved in whether our copies of Homer actually contain the words of the original author? If our copies of Aristotle have been corrupted, it doesn’t mean that all his philosophy or science need to be discarded because those things have all been born out and further developed by others in the interim, and it really doesn’t matter who specifically came up with the ideas. They just don’t have the same implications as something like whether or not the author of Mark wrote about a resurrection.
It’s similar with authors like Livy and Plutarch, etc. It’d be nice to know if their words were historically accurate, but nothing’s faith depends on it.
How consistent do you think the Bible is on philosophical and metaphysical matters? I know some people think it is so inconsistent that there is no better reason to take the passages about God creating matter literally than there is to take the passages about God having a body literally. The Bible also teaches henotheism in earlier books and monotheism in later books, but that may be more of a theological matter than a philosophical one. You’ve also said that some books of the Bible deny the existence of an afterlife while others affirm it.
I don’t think it’s consistent at all. Even Genesis 1 and Genesis 2 don’t line up — and that’s just the first two chapters of the book!
Isn’t it also true that the manuscripts we do have are overwhelming from the middle ages, so hundreds to thousands of years after Jesus lived and the original authors wrote? We have very few from even the first hundred years of their writing correct? I also believe you’ve mentioned that even if we do have a lot of manuscripts, there are still many differences between them and have been demonstrably changed over time in some cases.
So it is not like we have 5,000 copies of Matthew with no differences between them and all from and within a few years of the original writing – which is what I think many apologists want you to infer from this statement, and what many uninformed Christians tend to think.
Yup, that’s right. 94% of our surviving manuscripts are from the 9th century or later. Still, we’re *pretty* sure that we (think we) know what hte authors wrote, but even so, that doesn’t mean that what they wrote is true.
Do you think that Jesus was actually born a human being and was later made into a god – a Roman God – by the Romans and early Christians?
You’re asking my personal opinion? Yes, I think the historical Jesus had parents who had sex adn that he was the offspring; I think also that after his death his followers came to believe he had been made divine. (But only his followers; not “Romans” per se)
Thanks for the above Response:
No, the Romans would not have thought of him as divine – at least, not as early as his followers – but the Roman emperors who realized that the empire was falling apart with the conflict of Christianity and the Roman pagan religions, decided to make Jesus more “Roman” by giving him a virgin birth, 12 disciples, a pagan birthdate of Dec. 25th, and a resurrection, just like many of the other Roman/Egyptian/Greek Gods had had before. This made it easier for the Romans to eventually accept him as their new “God”, and unite the factions under one religion – Christianity. Possible?
Nope. I know that people say that kid of thing all the time, but we don’t know of pagan gods that were ever born of a virgin, or who had 12 disciples, or were born on December 25, or who were brought back to life on earth after being dead. I discuss all this in my book Did Jesus Exist. I’m afraid all that is bogus.
How about writing a book entitled “Jesus, the Human Being”, in which you show that Jesus was born of two human parents and was made into a god after his death by his followers and later into a Roman god by the Romans?
I guess it’d be hard to prove! And if it’s simply assumed (as I do assume) then there’s not much more to say about it! (I woldn’t say he became a “Roman” god, though, since that would imply that he was added to the Roman pantheon of gods.)
If there are no pagan gods whose births were celebrated on Dec. 25th, where does the date come from in Christian evolution?
Ken W.
Jersey City
It’s debated. Two of the leading options are that it was put close to the Winter solstice and/or that it was connected with the Roman festival of Saturnalia.
Bart,
I know that I am coming into this conversation pretty late but I wanted to ask something. This thread actually seems like an excellent place to discuss it. I want to ask-have you considered writing a book in response to Lee Strobel’s book “The Case for Christ”? I think it’s one of the lamest books defending conservative Christianity that I ever read despite all the praise it has gotten from some Evangelical Christians. I think it’s nonsense on stilts but I have never critiqued it being that I am not a New Testament scholar, myself.
No, I actually don’t see much point in going there. It would just be preaching to the choir. People who find him compelling would certainly not be willing to giv me the time of day.
After some online research, it looks to me that the Christmas date was a conflation of the Saturnalia celebration which was stretched to Dec. 23rd and then conflated with the already established Roman celebration of Sol Invictus, the annual “rebirth” of the Sun God. There also seems to be some speculation that the date was also attributed to Jesus to make Christianity more acceptable to Romans.
“[There is] … a claim that, in the fourth century AD, Pope Julius I formalized that the nativity of Christ should be celebrated on 25 December…because he was trying to create a Christian alternative to Saturnalia. Another reason for the decision may have been because, in 274 AD, the Roman emperor Aurelian had declared 25 December the birthdate of Sol Invictus, and Julius I may have thought that he could attract more converts to Christianity by allowing them to continue to celebrate on the same day.”
So, is it safe to say that while Jesus did not become a “Roman God”, he was either given or took on some Romanesque traits for religious and/or political reasons?
I guess the question would always be “By whom?”
Not sure of your response. Do you mean specifically which Roman emperor, Pope or maybe early Christian trying to Romanize Jesus to fend off persecutions and gain popularity with Romans? Not sure if that’s what you mean. I did, however, notice in one of your posts claiming that while Constantine did NOT make Christianity the state religion he did begin to “shower favor on the Christians and the Christian church: providing vast sums for the construction of church buildings, for example, promoting the interest of the Christians, honoring Christian leaders, urging his fellow Romans [e.g., soldiers] to adopt Christianity.”
So, wouldn’t making Jesus’s birthday celebration on the same exact day as the Sol Invictus celebration be an obvious effort to make Jesus more Roman and easier to accept as God by the Romans, no matter who specifically sanctioned it, Constantine or another emperor, Pope, etc.?
Sorry, I’m not sure what you’re asking i your first question. I don’t think we know that Dec. 25 was the exact day of the celebration of Sol Invictus. I haven’t looked into it veyr deeply, but I believe the first reference to that date doesn’t come until the 350s CE.
“Since prehistory, the winter solstice has been …marked by festivals and rituals…the symbolic death and rebirth of the Sun..” [Wikipedia]
It is not clear if the Romans celebrated “Dies Natalis Soli Invictus”, the birth of the Sun God on Dec. 25th or around that date. But “on Dec. 25th, 274 CE, the Roman Emperor Aurelian “made the Sun God an official religion alongside the traditional Roman cults.” [reddit.com] and thus, Dec. 25th became the day of celebration.
“It was a custom of the pagans to celebrate on the same 25 December the birthday of the Sun… when the doctors of the Church perceived that Christians had a leaning to this festival, they …resolved that the true Nativity should be solemnized on that day.” And later, “around 350 AD” in the fourth century, Pope Julian I fixed it as the Birthday of Jesus Christ in order to “attract more converts to Christianity by allowing them to continue to celebrate on the same day” [Wikipedia].
So, if Jesus’s birthday was syncretized into Roman paganization to gain more acceptance by Romans and attract converts, could there be other attributes of Jesus which were syncretized as well for the same reason?
Yes, it is widely claimed that the idea that December 25 was chosen to replace the celebration of the natalis Sol Invictus; I’ve never looked deeply into the matter, other than to know that others have disputed it. Do you happen to know what ancient sources are cited in support of this view? In any event, yes indeed, stories about Jesus were very often told in light of other pagan gods and divine men (we have accounts of supernatural births of people whose parent was a god, who could do miracles, heal the sick, cast out the dead, and at the end of life ascend to heaven)
Ancient sources:
“The earliest mention of December 25th as Jesus’s birthday comes from a mid-fourth-century Roman almanac that lists the death dates of various Christian bishops and martyrs.” [Wikipedia]
“The church in Rome began formally celebrating Christmas on December 25 in 336, during the reign of the emperor Constantine. As Constantine had made Christianity the effective religion of the empire some have speculated that choosing this date had the political motive of weakening the established pagan celebrations.” [Wikipedia]
“The first official mention of December 25 as a holiday honoring Jesus’s birthday appears in an early Roman calendar from AD 336. The celebration of Christmas spread throughout the Western world over the next several centuries…” [Wikipedia]
“Some have claimed that, around 350 AD, Pope Julius 1, declared December 25th as the official date of the birth of Jesus, but this is based on a letter quoted only in a 9th-century source, and this letter is spurious.”
“…in 274 AD, the Roman emperor Aurelian had allegedly declared 25 December the birthdate of Sol Invictus and that Julius 1 allegedly may have thought that he could attract more converts to Christianity by allowing them to continue to celebrate on the same day.” [Wikipedia]
Thanks for the reference of the play “The Unbelieving”. Saw it in New York. Interesting topical subject. Excellent acting, etc.
Kenneth Wachtell
Jersey City, NJ
I am stuck on the Annunciation. I know that the source of the Gospels were stories that were in the community for years after Jesus’s crucifixion and that’s how the writers got their information. But if Mary could not tell anyone about her pregnancy for fear of being accused and stoned for adultery and Joseph could not reveal to anyone the genesis of Mary’s pregnancy for the same reason, then how did it get into “the community”?
I think the problem is that we have to think of the story as a story, not as history. Historically it would have been problematic. But MOST of the Gospels are hard to make sense of historically. Stories, however, circulate and are popular, even ones that are difficult to credit, because people focus on the meaning of the story rather than the historical difficulties they would create. (Later Gsopels go to some length to show that Mary and Joseph were publicly vindicated by the Jewish authorities who became convinced that God really did get her pregnant! That too is a bit hard to swallow, but it was a very popular view throughout the history of Xty.)
Interesting. What “later Gospels” are you referring to? I would like to read them. It would seem that historically neither Mary nor Joseph would ever reveal the circumstances of her pregnancy for fear of stoning for adultery, even after Jesus was born. I have no problem accepting accounts of Jesus teaching and sermonizing in the temples because witnesses who were there could have testified about Him for years afterward. But the Annunciation and Virgin birth are as you say “problematic.”
Ah, check out the Proto Gospel of James and the Gospel of Pseudo-Matthew!
Thank you, I will. In the meantime, what do you make of the Nativity Scene depicted on Luxor Temple
(1500 B.C.E.)? :
“Inscribed about 3,500 years ago on the walls of the Temple at Luxor were images of the Annunciation, Immaculate Conception, Birth and Adoration of Horus, with Thoth announcing to the Virgin Isis that she will conceive Horus; with Kneph, the “Holy Ghost,” impregnating the virgin; and with the infant being attended by three kings, or magi, bearing gifts.” [Unison Antiquity Journal].
I’d say the author of the article for the Unison Antiquity Journal may want to do some homework instead of repeating schlock he’s read someplace!
If the account of the Annunciation and Virgin Birth was part of the stories circulating in the community from which the writers of the Gospels got their information, then why wasn’t it part of all four Gospels? Surely an event so important as that could not be left out of any Gospel account of Jesus’s life. Or was the conception and virgin birth of Jesus never revealed to the community by either Joseph or Mary and never, historically speaking, became known by any of the four Gospel writers? And, therefore, the only way the conception and virgin birth could have gotten into the two Gospels it appears in, would have been if the early Roman Christians had added it on to make Jesus more Roman. Is this a plausible theory?
It’s because they were all living in different communities where different stories and documents were in circulation. And yes, I do not think the story started with Joseph and Mary — it doesn’t appear to show up for decades. I wouldn’t say the stories make Jesus more Roman, but more divine.
Interesting points and timeline. I think that you have to make a distinction between early Jewish Christians and early Roman Christians, who came some decades later. The early Jewish Christians obviously came from a Judaic background and the early Roman Christians came from a Greco-Roman background. As the virgin birth narrative would not come from Joseph and Mary, the Jewish writers of the Gospels would not have known about it, which means it must have been added later on, after Christianity had spread to Rome. As there was no supernatural birth construct in Judaic culture, the virgin birth narrative must have come from the early Roman Christians, who DID have a long history of supernatural births in their Greco-Roman culture, because Gods could not be born the same way as humans. But, as Mary and Joseph were already in the Gospels as Jesus’s natural parents, the most believable way the early Roman Christians had of making Jesus more divine – which was the purpose, as you pointed out, of the virgin birth narrative – would be to recast Mary into a virgin mother, thereby transforming Jesus’s human birth into a supernatural one. Plausible?
There are plenty of supernatural births in the Hebrew Bible. And Romans did not have the concept of a virgin birth. So I’d say that as a whole it’s not a simple matter of differentiating Roman from Jewish views, especially since some Romans were Jews (and therefore some Jews were Romans). And Jews who grew up in the diaspora, and even many in Israel, were just as hellenized as Romans.
What I meant by “Supernatural births”, were births where the baby, himself, was divine. Yes, there were plenty of births in the Hebrew Bible where God intervened to grant fertility to women who were deemed too old to conceive, etc., etc., but I don’t think there were any births of babies who were divine in and of themselves in Hebrew scriptures. I would be interested in reading any of those accounts if you can refer me.
Thank you.
There are numerous accounts in Greek and Roman mythology (and in other mythologies that do not any relation to the Christian teadition) of gods who make a woman pregnant so that the child is divine. For one among many, think Hercules.
Yes, I’m familiar with several gods from a union of a God and a mortal woman….Hercules, Perseus, Romulus, etc. out of Greco-Roman mythology. But I’m confused about your previous comment: “There are plenty of supernatural births in the Hebrew Bible.” — whether you are alluding to mortal babies born after God intervened or babies/adults who were gods born in the Greco-Roman model of a God-mortal union? I don’t know of any in the Hebrew Bible, but would be interested in reading those accounts, if there are.
By supernatural births in the context of the OT I’m referring to women who could not conceive and should not be able to conceive (Sarah!) that God miraculously allows to conceive (Hannah, e.g.)
By supernatural births in the context of the OT I’m referring to women who could not conceive and should not be able to conceive (Sarah!) that God miraculously allows to conceive (Hannah, e.g.)
Historically speaking, then, is it possible that the virgin birth of Jesus never happened and was never part of the original 4 Gospels written by four early Jewish Christians with an OT background, but was added on decades later by early Roman Christians with a Greco-Roman background, as Christianity took hold in Rome, in order to make Jesus more divine?
It’s possible. I myself think (and have argued on the blog) that Luke originally started with what is now ch. 3, without the birth narrative. But I think Matthew’s ch. 1-2 are certainly part of this original. Mark and John of course don’t have anything about a virgin birth. Also: Luke was not Jewish and I doubt if Mark was either.
I’m not sure if it makes a difference what background either Luke or Matthew came from in regard to the Virgin Birth narrative. It’s pretty remote that either one knew about the Virgin Birth at all, given that the only ones who knew about it were Joseph and Mary, neither of whom could reveal it to anyone on grounds of Mary being stoned to death for adultery —- even after Jesus was born. And since Mary died in 48 C.E. and Joseph died in 20 C.E. and the Gospels of Matthew and Luke were written in 85 C.E. (give or take 5 years) how possible is it, historically speaking, that either one of the authors knew about the Virgin Birth? Not very, I would think.
“The narrative appears only in Matthew 1:18–25 and Luke 1:26–38,[2] and the modern scholarly consensus is that it rests on very slender historical foundations.” [Wikipedia]
Which points all the more to the narratives’ being added later on — maybe 2nd, 3rd century — by early Roman Christians trying to establish Jesus’s divinity or, at least, expand it through a familiar Greco-Roman construct of miraculous conception between God and a mortal woman.