Loading...When I wrote a post about Lost Christianities yesterday, a funny anecdote occurred to me and I wondered if I had ever written a post on it. Yup, in 2012! It’s worth repeating. It has to do with Time Magazine (though it starts with Newsweek). This was back when people used to actually get these things in the mail, in the Pleistocene Age, and they were therefore a bit of a bigger deal.
Here’s the post, from nine years ago.
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Yesterday I learned that a story I wrote for Newsweek on the birth of Jesus was made the cover story this week. It’s kind of a goofy cover, but hey, I had nothing to do with that! The issue is now available. Get ‘em while they’re hot.
I want to reflect for a second on the cover story of a news magazine. I never realized it before getting involved with that (very strange) world, although it makes good sense once you think about it, but they really can’t decide on what goes on the cover until the very last second, in case something really BIG happens. As I found out in a very amusing way nine years ago at this time.
In December of 2003 I had been working with the religion editor at Time magazine, David Van Biema, who really liked my book Lost Christianities, and wrote a long story about it, focusing on the Lost Gospels. This was a crazy period for news — the second Iraq war had been going on for a while, Saddam Hussein was on the run, and as usual there were lots of important news stories just on American soil Still, for a couple of weeks van Biema had been telling me that he was hoping that they would make it the cover story. Closer to the date
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Well, at least the cover didn’t end up with a picture of Jesus and the brazen words “We Got Him.”
Great point, and too funny!
I found the covers online. Wow!
http://content.time.com/time/magazine/0,9263,7601031222,00.html
Ha!
I’m really interested in the linguistics of the New Testament. The texts that we have are in Greek, with a few scraps of Aramaic phrases. Yet the story they tell seems to be of an Aramaic-speaking movement that only later went out among Greek speakers. Do any of the NT writings seem likely to be by a native Aramaic speaker, or a poor Greek writer? Who among the writers would have been trained in classical Greek rhetoric? Do you think the writers knew the Hebrew Bible in the original, or were they mostly familiar with the Greek translations? Is there any way to see which phrases said by Jesus and others might have started out in Aramaic and later translated, and which were originally in Greek? Sorry if it’s a rambling question but I think it’s fascinating and something I haven’t heard enough about.
These are difficult questions that require an entire book. There are certainly some of Jesus’ sayings that make better sense when translated back into Aramaic. And in the past there have been scholars who argued that, say, the Gospels were originally Aramaic compositions. I don’t know anyone who thinks that today: it’s been thoroughly refuted. They were definitely composed in Greek. The only author that is often said to have been a native Aramaic speaker writing in Greek is John of Patmos (the book of Revelatino), but scholars have now convincingly shown that that’s not true either. My sense is that probblyl none of the writers of the NT knew the Scriptures in Hebrew or could even read Hebrew.
Mr. Ehrman, what’s the best and worst thing about being a world renowned scholar? (Eligible for a Time magazine cover!)
Next time I meet one I’ll ask!
Too reserved!
You are very funny, Mr Erhman, you make me laugh and lighten my day with your good humor. Along with giving me so much insight into what I suspected I more or less believed about the Bible to begin with and much, much, much more, you have given me many moments of enjoyment with your quick wit and fun-loving viewpoints and comments at times. Thanks so much and will look up that magazine cover.
Is it possible to get a link to the Newsweek piece from 9 years ago Bart? I would like to read it.
You could probably google it. (That’d be the only way I could think of getting it myself!)
Do you have links to either the Time or the Newsweek story you were involved with?
No not off hand. I’d suggest you google them?
Dr. Ehrman,
What is Paul talking about here? …was just reading that one of the reasons 1 Thess was rejected as authentic by the 19th century German school was because they thought this was a reference to the fall of the Temple in 70 CE:
“In their effort to keep us from speaking to the Gentiles so that they may be saved. In this way they always heap up their sins to the limit. The wrath of God has come upon them at last.”
MY sense is that he’s talking about God’s rejection of the Jews for their rejection of Jesus, just as he talks about his rejection of pagans for rejecint him in Romans 1. (THere weren’t too many German scholoars in the 19th century, though, who rejected 1 Thessalonians; apart from Bruno Bauer and a few of his ilk, almost everyone took it to be authentic, I believe)
Interesting story!