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The oldest view of Christ is found in one Greek Manuscript of Luke. I’d like to address the issue of early Christology from a slightly different angle in this post. So far I have talked about how an “exaltation” Christology, in which Jesus, the man, is made the Son of God.
At some point of his existence he can be found in various parts of the New Testament (Rom 1:3-4; speeches in Acts), and how different early Christians located that exaltation to different moments in Jesus’ existence (resurrection, baptism, birth, pre-existence). As it turns out, this view of Christology relates to an important textual variant in the Gospel of Luke.
Only One Greek Manuscript of Luke
So, by way of background for anyone new to this kind of discussion. We don’t have the original copy of Luke’s Gospel (or of any other NT book or, actually, of any book at all from the ancient world!). What we have are copies made from copies made from copies that were made from copies. We have thousands of copies of the NT from the centuries before the invention of printing. And these thousands of copies have hundreds of thousands of differences among themselves in how they word this, that, or the other passage.
MOST of these differences – the vast majority – are insignificant, immaterial, and matter for nothing more than to show that ancient scribes could spell no better than people can today. But some of the differences actually matter, changing the meaning of a passage in a significant way.
Differences in the Greek Manuscript of Luke
One of those important differences is in the account of Jesus’ baptism in the Gospel of Luke. Here, as in Mark, Jesus gets baptized, and as he comes out of the water the Spirit descends upon him and a voice comes from heaven. In most of our surviving manuscripts of Luke, the voice says “You are my son, in you I am well-pleased” (Luke 3:22) – exactly the same words that the voice says in Mark’s Gospel, Luke’s source for the story.
BUT, in one ancient and important manuscript, the voice actually says something different (in Luke); in this fifth century manuscript the voice INSTEAD says “You are my son, today I have begotten you” (quoting Psalm 2:7).
This is obviously a very important difference. If the voice says “today” I have begotten you , then that would indicate that it was at the baptism that Jesus came to be adopted as the son of God – i.e., this would support an exaltation Christology that locates the moment of Jesus’ exaltation at the baptism.
My Thoughts
I have devoted a long discussion to the textual variant in my book The Orthodox Corruption of Scripture, where I argue on numerous grounds that even though this alternate version of the voice is found in only one Greek manuscript of Luke, it is probably the reading originally found in Luke’s account. I’ll mention just a couple of reasons for thinking so here
First, even though this reading is found in only one surviving manuscript of the fifth century (our oldest manuscripts of the passages are two Greek copies that come from the middle of the fourth), the passage is quoted by church fathers of the second through fourth centuries. These church fathers lived everywhere from Rome, to Alexandria Egypt, to North Africa, to Palestine, to Gaul and to Spain. And in every single instance the church fathers quotes the verse in this alternative version: “today I have begotten you” (from Psalm 2:7).
That’s pretty important: this is the form of the text they were familiar with from the manuscripts available to them (manuscripts that no longer survive, obviously) in their time and place. The earliest form of the text is the one that later made it into only one manuscript.
The Scribe’s Role
Why does it appear in only one Greek manuscript of Luke? Because later scribes didn’t like this reading. When deciding which reading is older, one has to ask the following question: if a scribe changed the passage (and obviously one or more scribes did, since we have the passage in two forms) which direction was he more likely to change it? Was he more likely to change “You are my son, today I have begotten you” to say “You are my beloved son in whom I am well pleased” or the other way around?
There are compelling reasons to think it was the first option. First, scribes invariably tried to harmonize the Gospels when they copied them, so that they all sounded alike. The version of the saying in most Greek manuscripts is just like the Gospel of Mark – and so it could be seen as a harmonistic alteration of the text.
The “Adoptionistic” View of Christology was Considered Heresy for Most Christians
Second, and even more interesting: we know that in the second century when this passage got changed (whichever way the change went), there were Christians who had what we now call an “adoptionistic” Christology, which said that God “adopted” Jesus to be his son at his baptism (that is, this was the old exaltation Christology that was still hanging around in some circles).
Most Christians thought this view was a heresy. And Christian scribes in the period were sometimes influenced by the “orthodox” views that saw the adoptionistic Christology as a heresy. So the question is: would a scribe be more likely to change the text in such a way as to make it amenable to a heretical Christology (by quoting Psalm 2:7 at the baptism), or would he be more likely to change it in order to keep it from being used to support a heretical Christology? The answer is: almost certainly the latter.
But that too indicates that the text originally said “You are my son, today I have begotten you.” In other words, the passage supported the older exaltation Christology.
Conclusion Regarding this One Greek Manuscript of Luke
If that’s our conclusion, though, we run into a problem. Luke’s Gospel indicates that Jesus was *born* the son of God, as we saw yesterday (see Luke 1:35). And in one of the speeches of the book of Acts, as we also have seen, we are told that God made Jesus his son at the resurrection in fulfillment of … Psalm 2:7 (“You are my Son, today I have begotten you”): Acts 13:33.
How could look have it all three ways? That Jesus became the Son of God at his birth. Then at his Baptism (“today”). And then at his resurrection (“today”)?
I’ll deal with that question next.
Interesting. The Swedish Bibel 2000 has (translated from Swedish) “You are my beloved son, you are my chosen one.” (which is the same as in Mark but *not* in Psalm 2:7). Is this an alternative translation or is the Swedish Bible quoting some other manuscript?
It’s a loose translation, but it’s hard to tell of which form of the text!
You don’t think “begotten” was in the earliest text of Mark, though?
Yes, literally, “gave you birth”
Off topic Bart. We know you were born in Kansas, are you a Chiefs original fan or have you converted to the Panthers in North Carolina? Go Chiefssssssssssss!!
Chiefs, all the way. I’ve watched every Superbowl, staring with Lenny Dawson against Bart Starr (first one!). I actually have not been a Chiefs fan since college BUT, Patrick Mahomes and Andy Reid — irresistable.
Not sure why being born in Kansas matters; Kansas City Chiefs are based in Kansas City, Missouri.
Arrowhead Stadium was an hour away from my driveway.
Given that both versions are available elsewhere (one in Mark, one in Psalms),
is it farfetched to imagine that the change could happen by lack of attention pure and simple?
I mean, the scribe is copying, he is tired, he comes upon “that well known quote”
and changes it to the wrong well known quote, never thinking about theology.
That certainly would be my guess if I saw such a change in a student paper. Or a newspaper.
Or almost any text, unless I felt very confident that the final writer or reviewer had been *very* careful.
Yup, it’s possible. Usually tired scribes accidently substitute the most familiar for the less, and my sense is that scribes in the third or fourth century were far more familiar with the accounts of Jesus’ baptism in the other Synoptics than with Psalm 2:7; so that’s part of the argument too.
There’s a mathematical difficulty with this argument.
The scenario you outline is roughly this:
1) The first copy of Luke had the adoptionist Christology.
2) In the first generation of several copies, most were changed to the orthodox Christology, but at least one copy remained adoptionist, and probably not more than one.
3) In the second generation of copies, the first-generation adoptionist copy was again copied some number of times, but at least one remained adoptionist, and probably not more than one.
4) This continued for a number of generations, and in each generation, at least one remained adoptionist, and probably not more than one.
5) Many of these copies eventually got destroyed, and when all the dust settled, exactly one copy of the adoptionist version remained, which is the one we have. All others are orthodox.
Suppose the probability of an adoptionist version being copied intact is p, where p is between 0 and 1. In order to observe only one adoptionist version surviving to modern times, p must be carefully tuned. Not too small, (or the adoptionist versions will completely die out). Not too large, or we’d see more than one. This would need careful mathematical modeling to test. It’s not trivial.
I’m not arguing it that way exactly. We don’t know how many manuscripts of Luke were circulating around, say, the year 400. In terms of manuscripts that have this verse, we know of only two. So we don’t know of the many other circulating ones which reading they had. Around that time, 400, codex Bezae was made. It has the adoptionist reading. So far as we know, it was not copied again in later Greek manuscripts lof Luke. It may have been copied a few times, or a lot. But we have very few manuscripts from 400-500 as well. So it’s hard to know. Short story: we have only one ms with this reading, but it’s one of our earliest. And ALL the quotations of the passage from teh period before our manuscripts begin to appear have the reading..
Bart, apologies for asking an off topic question: would you consider doing a post on the status of the Septuagint in the Christian and Jewish communities throughout the empire in the first century? Thank you.
Ah, good idea. It’s a difficult area and not one of my major expertises. But it might be useful to give at least some information. I’ll add it to the list!
Thank you Bart, I look forward to that.
Hi Bart, I am a member of a discussion group of which most members identify as Catholic. The question relates to Matthew 16:18 and the issue of apostolic succession. I recently read a commentary on this verse which asserted that in the original Greek, the wording of the verse included two distinct references to “rock”, one for Peter and another for that upon which the “assembly” would be built. The commentary asserted that the reference to Peter in Greek was “petros” which more closely meant “small rock” or “pebble”, while the other reference was to “petra” a larger, more substantial term. And, that this difference was important in the final understanding. He asserted that the “petra” that Jesus referred to was the larger truth that he was indeed the “anointed” of God and that upon this truth his “assembly” would be built – – not that a new “church” would be built upon the shoulders of Peter.
Can you share your thoughts on this? Are there indeed two different Greek words used in this passage? Do they really mean two different things? David Hart Bentley doesn’t distinguish them in his translation.
Ah, it’s a good question and maybe I should write an entire post on it. The issue is this. Peter’s nickname “Peter” — Greek Petros — was not a Greek name. It just meant rock. It meant a small rock, like a stone. There is an obviously related Greek word Petra which means something like a “rock shelf.” In this passage Jesus says the Simon is Petros (a stone) and on this Petra (rock shelf) he will build his church. Obviously a stone woouldn’t make much of a foundation for a building. It was alwways understood that this means Peter would be the foundation of the church (as in the first bishop of Rome); when Protestants came along, they pointed out the difference between Petros and Petra and said it couldn’t mean that, so it must be the *confessoin* that Jesus is the Son of God,that Peter had must made, that is the foundation. THE PROBLEM with that view is that Jesus could not have given Peter the nickname Petra, because in Greek it is a feminine noun (every noun is either masculine, feminine, or neuter). He had to give him a nickname that is masculine. That would be Petros. So it’s a word play, but it doesn’t quite work. Even so, there is nothing int he passage that identifies Peter’s confession as a rock in any sense.
Hi new guy with some questions,
1. It seems that there was quite a lot of letter writing going on between the church fathers where they discuss different passages, what percentage of the total bible or the NT has commentaries which have survived to the present day?
2. Were those letters or commentaries copied by scribes as well or do we have the originals? Or do we have some originals and some copies? And if there were, did the copies have textual variants?
1. I’ll be posting on this soon. Most of the NT can be reconstruced from comments of church fathers 2. WE don’t have originals, and one problem is that later scribes sometimes changed the quotations of the NT found in the writings of the fathers into the form of the quotations they were familiar with in their own copies of the GNT.
Dr.Ehrman, why were Gospels that contradict each other as to when Jesus became divine both decided to be included? And is there record of the debates over which made it in? The minutes of those meetings would be interesting, don’t you think?
Oh boy we wish we had the minutes. In the ancient world hardly anyone noticed there were contradictions. That should come as no surprise. In the modern world, even far more sophisticated readers of texts (i.e., most Bible readers) never notice either.
I get that most readers in the ancient world may not have noticed the contradictions, using the 2 birth narratives in Luke and Matthew as an example. But by the time the NT was canonized in the 4th century, wouldn’t the most educated scribes, church leaders etc. have noticed them? And if so, are there any historical records where these problems are addressed and offering possible solutions?
You would think! But think of all the highly educated preachers in the world today. Most in the English speaking world have not only had four years of college after twelve years of high school, but three years of ministrerial training. And despite their education, most of them they don’t see them either.
I know this thread is dated, but here goes. I’ve long suspected that the Christ believers of the first centuries did see and know about the contradictions and problems with the text. Instead of trying to work them out and correct the texts, they left them as they were and basically said, “Hey, it’s what we have.”
That also seems to follow a pattern of leaving the problems in. Consider the Christian triune godhead. The easiest paths would be to assume that the Holy Ghost, Father and Son are three separate deities or that they are just manifestations of one God. Both solutions were offered, but the one chosen is the most mysterious and the hardest to accept.
We see this repeated in other thorny issues. The tendency is toward mystery and contradiction. Hence I wonder about the assumption that scribes tried to harmonize and simplify their texts.
I don’t think it’s an assumption that scribes harmonized and simplified their texts; it can be shown pretty easily in the manuscripts.
“Assumption” was definitely not the right choice of words, implying that it’s mere axiom and not supported by plenty of evidence.
I will say that years of reading the Greek NT texts has given me a respect for the restraint of ancient copiests and editors, so I often rush their defense!
I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been tempted to change a vowel here or convert a participle into an infinitive there to make a difficult reading easier.
Their restraint suggests me that they thought, “Hey, I know, I know, but this is what it says. YOU figure it out!”
What are the denotations and connotations of the Greek word “begotten”? The English word is no longer used in contemporary language, except in religious discourse. Hence it is not clear to a casual reader what Psalms 2:7 and other verses with the word mean. The older English translations of John 3:16 retain “begotten” but newer translations don’t. Is this because of advances in textual criticism or in translation of the Greek? Suppose GJohn does contain an exaltation christology as would be implied by presence of the word, would this imply this form of christology is compatible with an incarnational christology (i.e. Jesus was divine in eternity past), in the mind of the author? Does any NT book contains both forms of christology? If Luke was able to reconcile exaltation christology at different points in Jesus’ life, it is not difficult for an NT writer to reconcile exaltation christology with incarnational christology.
This particular word means “given birth to.” When used of a woman it means “she has given birth” to a person; when used of a man it means “he has generated this child who has just been born” or “he is the one who made this child born”
For the earliest believers, would the point of Mark commencing his account with the baptism by John be to rehash a tradition that began as a way to legitimize Jesus taking over and extending John’s ministry? After all, we’re told that John had achieved much renown, and Jesus probably (in my view) started out as a disciple of John who took over John’s movement. Only after the crucifixion and the reported resurrection would the story mutate to one attesting Jesus’ adoption by God.
Yes, it certainly seems that way. All the Gospels, in different ways, emphasize that it is Jesus who is superior to John, and not the other way around. It is usually thought that they went out of their way to do so because there were lots of people who thought otherwise.
Professor, so if this was from the autograph of Luke; and, Mark was a source for Luke, what’s the chance the original Mark read similarly (today I have begotten you) rather than “You are my Son, whom I love; with you I am well pleased.”? It seems, well strange, Luke would take so much from Mark but somehow pull in an older tradition for just that one line.
There’s no evidence of it. It’s striking that Matthew has Mark’s version (evidence tht it was in Mark) but changes it from “YOu are…” to “This is…” (i.e. the voice now addresses the crowd, not Jesus)
Thanks Bart.
I find your argument convincing; that the text of Luke 3:22 originally read “You are my son, today I have begotten you”. Supporting this could be Hebrews 5:5 (and there are other indications that the writer of the letter to the Hebrews may have drawn on similar traditions to those of the author of Luke).
But in changing his source on the events of Jesus life (Mark); to correspond exactly with a quotation from the Septuagint version of the Hebrew bible; Luke appears to be acting to a similar purpose as he does elsewhere – as for example at Luke 23:46 where he substitutes “Father into your hands I commit my spirit” for “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” Both times, Luke inserts a ‘safer’ scriptural form of words; from that in Mark.
Certainly, the Luke text at 3:22 is capable of an adoptionist reading; but so too equally is the Mark wording. Luke – as you note – was certainly not ‘adoptionist’; so going back to exact wording from Psalm 2:7 would be more ‘orthodox’, than would retaining the original text from his source.
In my view.
Yes, I agree that Mark could be read that way too, though it’s probably not quite so obvious.
Hi. I know this is off post but just wanted to say that I’m delighted to be part of the Blog now and of course have been a big fan of yours from the beginning. I admire your deep insight and courage to have your strong convictions in the world we live in today…especially the US. Great to know we’re the same age with the same beliefs and convictions. Also both come from Kansas roots!
Take care…stay safe
Thanks. I didn’t see your comment when it first appeared. Apologie. ANd welcome.
Could it be that the author of Luke wasn’t fully convinced of even the popular Christological views of his day? Between Luke 23:47 claiming innocence rather than divinity, the lack of any mention of Jesus in the first five verses, and the fact that the angel telling Mary that he “will be called Son of God” (Luke 1:35) rather than just saying “he will be the Son of God,” I can’t help but wonder if the author just doesn’t really believe in it. Maybe the author was convinced later, or maybe editors changed enough to make it look like Luke had an “acceptable” Christology.
Yes, it’s hard to nail his views down!
Dr Ehrman,
Is there any hint in the Tanakh,that Yahweh has a son?
Also:is Yahweh specifically mentioned(in Greek) in any of the NT documents? If not, isn’t it a bit odd?
1. No. 2. The word for Yahweh could not be pronounced by observant Jews and so when they ran across it when reading allowed they simply said “Lord” (rather than pronounce the name). And so Greek speaking Jews and Christians writing about Yahweh would normally just use the word Lord instead of his personal name.
Is there any evidence to suggest that Luke’s birth narrative is also a scribal addition or alteration to harmonize with Matthew’s birth narrative?
In other words, could the original Luke have looked much more like Mark in it’s exaltation Christology? Probably very difficult to know for sure because of copies of copies of copies right?
I’d say the opposite actually. Luke’s narrative is so different from Matthew’s that it is clearly not trying to harmonize with it. But yes, I actually do think that LUke did not originally have chs. 1-2, and so in that sense it was more like Mark in having an adoptionist Christology. The virgin birth story would have been added only later.
Hi, Bart — you recently answered a Q for me about baptism and said Paul taught that baptism was not just a symbol, but rather a spiritual unification with Christ, although you said it was really more complex than that. It also seems like some of the church fathers (e.g., Justin) taught that baptism was a “line in the sand,” so to speak, making people sinless/giving them mastery over themselves. Does this belief in baptism’s actual transformative spiritual power in any way map onto the view of Jesus’s adoption by the Father at his own baptism?
Relatedly, some in the charismatic/Pentecostal camp take this adoptionist view now and use it as proof that since Jesus was a normal human adopted by God, and he could perform miracles, then we as normal people adopted by God can and should also perform miracles. Was this view about miracles in any way present among early adoptionists, or is this specific to modern Pentecostalism?
1. I don’t think so, mainly because I don’t think Paul had any information about Jesus’ understanding of himself; 2. Interesting. Early adoptionists believed miracles were possible because the same Spirit that empowered Jesus empowered his followers (as in the book of Acts). When I was a charismatic Christian, that’s what we all thought too.
Proto Luke is without the first two chapters (based on lectures by B. E.).
If without Q, we have “Mark” written in a much more elegant koine.
It was probably a gospel from the Canon of Marcion (BE).
Marcion was commercially successful in the most technologically advanced field of antiquity – shipbuilding and shipping. Then he started building churches and did so in an equally methodical way. Another success – a self-sufficient, profitable structure with staff, money and canon of books. Conquest of Rome and lost. The big game is over, but the congregation network is doing well. Propaganda is not enough. You have to change the canon to prove Marcion was wrong. Copy parts from Matthew (Q ??), add the first two chapters. And we have a new Luke on steroids. And everyone is happy.
Marcion’s posthumous influence on the development of today’s canon may be underestimated
Dr. Ehrman,
Do you have an idea when the next part will be forthcoming?
Thank you.
Rats: it got shoved under the carpet. I’ll need to put it in queue: the question will be why / how Luke can have various different Christological views all at once. But I have other things I have to address first. So I’ll get to it!
Good, we’re waiting! I was going to ask the same question…
Dr. Ehrman: An even BIGGER question is why did the KJV translators leave this out? They certainly knew it was the OLDEST Greek reading; instead, what they did was base their translation on the Greek and Latin New Testament manuscripts of this reading from Jerome’s Vulgate, correct? The Codex Bezae, from which this reading is from was included in Erasmus’s texts of the Greek New Testament; he made use of it as well! Also, why did the KJV translators ignore the OLDER Latin texts that predated the Vulgate when they had access to those manuscripts as well? From my understanding, these Latin texts are highly suggestive of the “This Day” language that you presume in this essay, expecially Matt 3:17 and Luke 3:22.
It’s not the oldest reading; and it’s found in a manuscript that was not available to the translators.
THere were decidedly and intentionally not translating from the Latin but from the Greek, based on a form of Greek text that had been around for nearly a century but which was not based on high quality mss.
Great post Professor Ehrman. Codex Bezae is an oddie but a goodie. In my list here of the most difficult readings in GMark:
http://earlywritings.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=2942&hilit=Cumulative&start=10#p91090
Codex Bezae is actually the leader in being on the right side. Rated the sixth best Manuscript by NA. Surprisingly, the Wikipedia entry for Bezae does not list 3:22 as an unusual reading.
I give birth to one question here. If you are right above, this suggests that original GLuke had no genealogy. Opinion Mr. Skeptic?
https://skepticaltextualcriticism.blogspot.com/
I”ve posted on that, arguing that Luke originally lacked chs. 1-2; BUT, I don’t see any reason to doubt that it had a genealogy. The genealogy makes perfect sense in ch. 3, if the book was lacking chs. 1-2 (but not if it has 1-2! As it now does)
Hi Bart, can you tell which manuscript says that; You are my son, today I have begotten you ”
Codex Bezae, and a couple of Latin mss.
I have a question about the ending of Matthew 28: 16 – 19, with the trinitarian formula. Is that part of the “original” manuscripts, or did that also make its way into the text? Even when reading it, it seems like the chapter could have ended at Matthew 28:15.
There aren’t any manuscripts that lack it, and so it is almost always thought by specialists to be original to Matthew. The stumbling block is the “Father, Son, and Holy Spirit” in v. 19, but the reason it’s a problem is becuasee when people read that they think “Trinity” (naturally). But in fact if one doesn’t see the developed doctrine of the trinity every time they see these three figures, it is not much of a problem. A lot of NT authors talk about the three separately as divine beings; here they are put together.
Dr. Ehrman,
If Jesus was begotten at his Baptism, who was he before then?
TIA!
It depends which early Christian you asked! Some would say he was the most righteous human who ever lived; others that he was an angel; others that he was God Almighty; others that he was a secondary kind of divinity; others… Ealry Christology is diverse and amazing!
I have a question for you, Bart. I am greatly impressed by the rise of asceticism/celibacy in 2nd century Christianity. In the letters of Paul, as well as the later non-canonical acts of the apostles, it is clear that a great wave of abstinence from sexual pleasure was sweeping the world, and was responsible in some part for the exponential growth of the sect. Especially in the Acts of Thomas, where part of the apostle’s message was to refuse marriage and physical relations in favor of a truer and eternal relationship. Do you think this wave of super-morality arose concurrent with Christianity’s rise, or as the outgrowth of the Pauline Gospel? And do you think it might have been pendulum swing away from the licentiousness and lewdness of the Roman ruling class? Thanks for taking a look at this issue.
Some people have suspected this, but when you actually look at the data there does not seem to be much evidence for Christians being more ascetic as a rule than other people as a rule. Some of the very great moral philosophers from antiquity came from the Roman upper classes, so I don’t think the ruling class could be characterized as licentious and lewd; on the contrary, consider the reforms of Augustus himself. I would say there were a number of known groups — pagan (some Platonic groups, e.g.), Jewish (including Essenes), and then (sonme) Christian who practiced various forms of asceticism and escape from the trappings of this world.
Hi Dr Ehrman,
I understand that the NA/UBS Critical Editions prefer to rely moreso on the Sinaiticus due to it being closer in age to the Autographs. At the same time, I read that the Sinaticus is said to have 23,000 corrections (I also read that Tischendorf said that there were 14,300).
If these numbers of corrections within the text are correct, then what reasons do Textual Critics give in response for still prefering the Sinaiticus?
Thank you. Regards
They decisions were not made on the basis of whether a reading was found in Sinaiticus or not.
But you should not think that the number of corrections has any serious bearing on whether its underlying text is highly reliable. If you’d like to read up on how textual decisions are made, you might want to look at the book The Text of the New Testament by Bruce Metzger. As you’ll see, it is a highly sophisticated process.
Thank you, Dr Ehrman.
I read that your book, The Orthodox Corruption of Scripture, which I believe is for academia, covers 100 or so changes that scribes appear to have made intentionally to manuscripts.
Do any of your other publications cover the same study for non-academics?
Thank you. Regards
Misquoting Jesus is kind of like it for the masses.
Great work, mostly convincing, but at the end where you have “How could look have it all three ways?” I think you meant “Luke”.
Just seeing who was awake. You apparently were the only one.
Dr. Ehrman: Some scholars would argue that this word is a misunderstanding of the Greek term “monogenes” does not refer to “begotten” in the sense we beget children; it means “having no peer unique?” The word gets even more complicated in other areas of the Bible. As a practicing Roman Catholic, there is an example in the Book of Tobit, 3:15 which says “…I am my father’s only child; he has no other child to be his heir.” I’m reading Raymond Brown’s “The Birth of the Messiah” and he seems to be leaning towards this idea. Would you agree? (He makes mention of Tobit in his footnotes several times already as well as the Dead Sea Scrolls.)
Yes, the word definitely does not mean “only begotten.” It means “unique” “one of a kind.” (SCholars who used to think it meant first born didn’t pay enough attention to the how it is used in other context and to the fact that it has one “n” rather than two.
“Mono” means one, obviously, but “genos” comes from the word to “be” or “become,” not from the word — which has two “n”s that typically means “born”)
Excellent blog! If we accept the thesis of “Forged” that the traditional authorship of the four canonized gospels may not be historically accurate, a suspicion arises that the contents of the gospels may be more motivated by the authors’ politico-religious agenda than by the authors’ intention to record events that are resilient to rigorous tests of historicity. If the supernatural events in the gospels are stripped away by skepticism, a puzzle remains. Does Dr Ehrman have a perspective on what was the most primitive magnetic feature of the man called Jesus, a homeless, itinerant, crucified preacher, that attracted the accolades of miracle-worker, luminary of the transfiguration, riser from the dead, ascender to heaven, and that made Jesus the focal point of so many vectors of Christological evolution discussed by Dr Ehrman? That Jesus “taught as one having authority”, as observed in Matthew 7:29, seems, in isolation, too inane a feature of the personality of Jesus to support the attribution of divinity and supernatural mastery to Jesus.
My view is that it was not Jesus’ personal charisma that made him the focal point of the new religion but events and circumstances that transpired after his death. I deal with the issues at length in my book The Triumph of Christianity.
Dr. Ehrman, would you answer this question for me: How did Jesus and his apostles perform water baptism?
Most Christians (Trinitarians) believe that the apostles baptized “in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.” (Matt 28:18-20). But Oneness Christians claim that they baptized “in the name of Jesus.” (Acts 2:38). The two groups of Christians believe that the wording is very important, and they don’t recognize each others’ baptisms as legitimate or effective.
From my research, the answer seems to be that it’s a nonsense question. Jesus and the apostles did not perform water baptism, but rather a spiritual baptism. In the words of John Dominic Crossan: “John had a monopoly, but Jesus had a franchise.” Only after John the Baptist’s death, when he could no longer perform the function, did Christians begin to perform their own water baptisms.
Is that right? Thank you!
I’m not sure they did practice baptism during Jesus’ life. If they did it would have been like John the Baptist: baptism to show repentance and cleansing in light of the coming kingdom.
Do you think it’s likely that Mark’s gospel originally read “today I have begotten you” as well?
No, there’s no evidence of that: there are no variants among our mss of Mark at that point, and it’s the text that Matthew has (which he got from Mark). It’s a Lukan change.
If this variant were in Mark, it almost seems like it would be a slam dunk, but it’s in Luke. In Luke, the author is explicit, Jesus is miraculously conceived by God and Mary, and doubling down on the idea, he seems to know as a young man in the temple that God was his father and he was in his house/about his fathers business. Do you feel the variant would have fit better in Mark? Is it possible it IS the actual original reading of Mark as well? Thank you for your time 😊
I’m saying the variant is original to Luke because it fits better into Luke’s ovreall conception of Jesus’ baptism as the point at which he was made the sin of God. The first two chapters of Luke appear to have been added later to his account (which originally began with what is now 3:1). It Takes a long time to show why this is likely the case (I’ve posted the discsusion on my blog several times: searchg for Luke’s Birth Narrative). But I have a longer discussion with all the evidence in my book Othodox Corryuption of Scripture, where I show that Luke is notoriously inconsistent in his portrayal of when Jesus became the Son of God. (His birth? Hist baptism? His resurrection? He states all three, explicitly!, in various passages.