(10 votes, average: 4.70 out of 5)
Loading...This was a video debate I did last summer in London with British Biblical scholar Peter Williams. Peter has been a friend for a long time, and is a real expert on the manuscript tradition of the New Testament. He is also a committed evangelical Christian who does not believe there are mistakes in the Gospels. I so disagree with that. We had a debate about it on the Christian Radio program “Unbelievable” under their new series “The Big Conversation” Season 2-Episode 3, hosted by Justin Brierley.
It was a long and interesting debate. Peter has written Can We Trust the Gospels? and C S Lewis vs the New Atheists. My contention throughout the debate is that he has not answered the question adequately, that in fact virtually everything he says in the book is irrelevant to the question. It’s a very interesting and unusual attempt that he makes. But most of the book completely misses the point.
It’s the kind of book that anyone who wants very much to trust the Gospels will come away from saying “See, we CAN trust them.” But anyone who actually looks at what he’s saying, and who knows about the actual reasons people have for NOT thinking the Gospels are historically reliable, will say, “Wait a second! He’s simply countering arguments that no one makes, and is not addressing the arguments they do! That’s just building a straw man an knocking it down. That ain’t gonna work!”
Watch it and see what you yourself think. You can find it here:
Excellent debate. Hmmm…am I biased because I agreed with you? ???? Back many years go when I began my higher educational journey it was pointed out to me, when studying religion from an historical perspective, that we cannot jump from one discipline (historical scholarship) to another (theology) to form and defend our evidence and position. So I do find it amazing to how many people you debate that do that very thing.
Isn’t trying to portray Jesus as he is depicted in John, as if there is no discrepancy between how he is portrayed in the Synoptics, basically an attempt to write a 5th Gospel that systematically erases any discrepancies?
Yup, I think so. But try convincing someone else of that!
What a special treat on Saturday morning, no less!
Thanks!
Truly, and with as much charity and compassion as I can gather, I am about to stop listening to Christian apologists. Mr Williams seems earnest enough (though he appears to yearn for affirmation) but he wants to put his theology on a shelf with history and have it suffice for evidence. If he stands among the best the ‘academic’ faith community can offer, they are lost.
Thankfully, I understand a bit more about your insistence that the gospel narratives do contain some factual accounts of events and persons now. Listening, reading, watching, and learning. Thank you.
Do you think matthew and luke if they were writing 10 to 15 years after mark knew who wrote it?
And if they did shouldnt the name of the author be thought of as public knowledge?
No, I very much doubt they had any idea.
Dr Ehrman –
To your point above: If (the authors of) Matthew and Luke knew anything approaching the tradition Papias puts forward on the source of Mark (Mark writing down what Peter said; putting aside the twists and holes scholars have identified, including Dr Carlson here on the blog), could they reasonably have felt empowered to edit it? The very fact that they changed Mark feels nearly dispositive that they either didn’t know (or fully respect) who wrote it. Wouldn’t changing Peter’s words as written by his translator seem a pretty high editorial bar to clear?
Yes indeed!
But the writer of Luke-Acts must be a competent creative writer in his own right.
If he truly believes he’s writing an account of the son of god’s visitation to earth how could he copy, sometimes word from word, from some anonymous text – the provenance of which he’s completely oblivious to?
Especially if he’s claiming to have investigated carefully everything from the beginning.
Presumably because in those places he thought his source was accurate. (That’s why he was using sources!)
But why would he think it was accurate if he had no idea who wrote it?
One possibility is that he had many other sources which backed it up – but then why follow one particular source word for word when Luke is himself a competent creative writer – unless he felt Mark had some authority behind it.
Another possibility he thought it was accurate is that the gospel was widely read. But then to know this Luke would need to be in communication with lots of churches, which lessens the possibility of the author of Mark being forgotten -and more so when we have a second competent writer in Matthew making the same use of Mark.
I’m not sure what you’re asking. Every day I have people quote me articles from Wikipedia to prove a point or another, and they have no idea who actually wrote them.
But the accuracy of wikipedia has reached a certain level of acceptance based on its availability and wide use.
There must be some reason luke thought mark was accurate – he cant have simply found an anonymous gospel sitting on a park bench and decided to base his gospel on it.
Well, I’d say Luke 1:1-4 shows that Luke was NOT satisfied with how Mark told his account…
Yes he doesn’t think its perfect but his copying of it word for word indicates, i think, that he believes it has some authority behind it.
I think that looking for historical reliability in the concordance or not of the thousands of manuscripts of the Bible that are known today, is a smoke screen to hide the real issues, such as:
– Is there documented evidence of the existence of an oral tradition that can be traced to the alleged eyewitnesses? Theories of sources such as M, L and Q are nothing more than guesses, hypotheses and opinions, without any possibility of verifying their truth in a documented way, because they are supposed oral sources.
– Are many of the narratives of the Evangelists credible? Of course not. There are many stories that are clearly invented, pure fiction literature.
– Is there agreement between what is said in the Gospels and the few independent and contemporary writings of reliable and non-Christian historical sources? Very little.
– How did the authors of the Gospels find out about episodes of the life of Jesus in which they themselves affirm that there were no witnesses? For information of the protagonist himself? What is the value of a self-testimony?
– How are scientific, historical and geographical errors explained in an incontrovertible way and by means of the necessary evidence, without twisting the texts? It will be argued that in the original manuscripts, those errors did not appear and were introduced by copyists. So for what purpose? Those arguments make no sense.
The crux of the matter is not how faithfully the original manuscripts were transmitted and copied, but whether those original manuscripts tell a true story in each and every detail.
Because despite what the apologists say overwhelmed by the errors, inconsistencies, disagreements between one and the other Gospels and each one with itself, the details are, in many cases, the heart of the matter and therefore, terribly important.
And other questions that cast doubts that are very difficult to overcome, such as: if Jesus could write, why didn’t he write a single word?
After all, if the purpose of his incarnation was not only to die to redeem the past, present and future sins of all mankind, but also to clearly explain and teach what the Kingdom of God consists of, what is salvation and all the other doctrine that would later be called Christianity, why didn’t he take parchment and feather and began to write day and night? I do not get it. I must be very short of understanding Christianity.
My comment about the special treat on Saturday morning was written Saturday morning when the video was temporarily available. 🙂
When Peter says ” I have never tried to claim that I am doing history ” ,53.11, I think the game is up, although it probably was before , It’s fine to do Theology but whether sometime or other actually happened does matter ,otherwise we might as well start reading Lord of the Rings so we can create a religion out of that. I can’t believe good theologains don’t have an eye to the historicity of the text they are studing but in this case maybe I am wrong.
sorry I mean whether something or other actually happened does matter .
Coherence and accuracy are two distinct animals. A coherentist reconciliation of the gospels is surely possible at a certain level. But, to your point in the video, that’s not doing history. His “can rationally trust” vs “what some in history departments do” distinction was an interesting rhetorical device. He’s absolutely correct – trusting an account because it has accurate place and people names is not what most history departments do! And, even on place and people names, Mark’s account seems to not even do that all that well!
Why do you think Peter’s book totally glosses over the issue of contradictions in the NT? In a book entitled “Can We Trust the Gospels,” you would think this issue should take center stage. But he spends a mere six pages on the subject, and doesn’t address a single contradiction of merit. Instead, he summarily concludes: “For all the many contradictions that have been alleged in the Gospels . . . I do not know of any that cannot possibly be resolved.” We’re interested, of course, in “plausibility” – not “possibility.” Unfortunately, his book provides no guidance.
Not a very satisfying discussion. It seemed to be all over the place.
Williams said that there are no early manuscripts of the gospels without the attributing authors’ names. That’s quite a blue chip of a thing to say. I literally stopped the video and watched it again to make sure I heard him correctly.
He replied to a message I sent asking about this very thing.
I forgot to add that Peter’s reply is on his Twitter account. I think he said that uniformity of the titles on the Gospels indicates the authors themselves did not put them on there, but I don’t really understand why. Although, he does say that none of the earliest Gospels (fragments?) are without titles. How far apart are these mss from the time someone mentioned them with titles? What I am wondering is whether a church father mentioned the Gospels without their titles even though we (possibly) have mss dated to an earlier time with the attributing authors’ names.
There’s a couple of critiques of the debate out now, but I haven’t read them just yet.
What do you think of the Spider-Man argument? The comic Spider-Man gets lots of details about New York – places, people, events, etc. right, but this doesn’t mean we can infer that Peter Parker was swinging around Manhattan in the 1970’s.
Ha! Exactly.
Judas hangs himself and the corpse hangs there for a time, getting ripe. The rope snaps and when the body falls to the ground the entrails burst forth – the reason being that the belly skin is rotted through and fragile. This still leaves the reason for why the field is called the Field of Blood unclear, of course.
Yeah, that’s a common view. Doesn’t work, though, since he would not fall head-first.
Distinguished Sir,
I was thrilled to see this uploaded on YouTube Saturday morning and on Sunday, the defenders of the faith conference discussion panel too was uploaded, these lively discussions really did make my weekend! In both exchanges you floated like a butterfly and stung like a bee! Quite a few times in your discussion with Peter you said, “This is not an argument anybody makes.” At the outset around 11:50, Peter says he believes the gospels were actually written by the disciples and that he can’t imagine a good reason why anyone would attach Mark, Matthew, Mark and John to the gospels if they weren’t written by them? On many occasions, you’ve addressed this by pointing out a few reasons why this is implausible, one example you say is in the gospels themselves the authors never claim to be disciples of Jesus. What percentage of scholars believe as Peter does on this issue? 1% or .01%?
In light of these fresh and invigorating debates, I’ve looked over a few of your books which in there entirety occupy at least 3 meters in my personal library, particularly Judas Iscariot, Forgery & counter forgery and Jesus before the Gospels to review your pointed and scholarly rebuttals to arguments presented by Peter and the apologists at the defenders conference. Furthermore, I’ve purchased The birth of the Messiah by Raymond Brown, Excavating Jesus by John Crossan, Who wrote the Bible by Richard Friedman, A textual Commentary on the Greek New Testament & A text of the New Testament (4th Edition) by Bruce Metzger.
Cheers!
This was an interesting debate in which, Peter Williams clearly stated that Scriptures are,as he said,inerrant.You Bart,showed him inerrancy are mistakes.There are mistakes in Scripture,I think he knows that but will not admit.My view and takeaway from this debate is believers base their conviction primarily on faith and an existence of a God.Others like you Bart have traversed both sides of the of the path and are looking for truth wherever it leads you.Either way ,this religion without a doubt has revolutionized the world over and continues to do so.This book (Bible) has stirred up interests on both sides for many years.. Prof. Ehrman I totally see where you are a thorn in their heart. Innately they probably think you are a genius though. How well you construct your questions that are not familiar to what they are used to hearing and so you pose a threat to their belief.Even with Mike Licona at the Defender’s conference,you used the word skeptical as to how historians approach history.He wanted to use neutral,and so you both nodded in agreement (well sort of).Sometimes I wonder how much hubris contributes to men’s thinking.My question is,what is at stake here between belief and non belief?I am also a skeptic and the veracity of a God existence is sketchy for various reasons.I must admit,there is a transcendent goodness that seems to prevail when the mind is engaged with in the Bible and that result is manifested outwardly( not always,but frequently). For me I believe,the Bible was instituted to teach a common dialogue for the world to follow and in return find harmony and peace among all cultures.That is extremely difficult to accomplish and do not believe we can.
Well, you tied him in knots. He clearly has no interest in history. His mind is made up and he’ll jump through any hoop and engage in any variety of intellectual contortion in order to reconcile his preconceptions with the evidence. He’s a true believer. His entire world view is contaminated by his belief system, and it’s kind of impossible to reason with him because he’s in a different world. “Christian history isn’t normal history.” Another way of saying that the believing Christian is going to play by different rules. Hopeless. Nice guy, though, Very earnest. Just not credible.
Took me a day to get to it, but thanks for sharing this video debate!
Hello Bart,
Around 19 minutes, or so, into the video, you agreed with Peter that Jesus predicted the fall of Jerusalem before the Romans came in and destroyed the temple. You have other reasons for dating all the gospels after that and that is fine with me. However, could you mention a reason or two why Jesus predicted the fall of Jerusalem before it happened?
Thanks,
Jerry
Same reason people predict things that happen all the time. Election of Trump; fall of the Soviet Union; Allied victory in WWII; etc. etc… People have views about what’s oging to happen and sometimes they are right! (Other Jews also predicted the destruction of Jerusalem, e.g.)
wow, a too one-sided debate,
.I have two questions…and a problem
Why do you think christians are so interested in debating you? It seems counterproductive to them.
When did inerramcy became a so important problem for chistianity?, I mean, Jesus and the gospels contradicted many times the jewish scrptures, early and medieval churches did too. I believe protestantism made the inerrancy so crucial that I had to be held so irrationally.
my problem is that I tried to search other questions I made in the blog but when I research with my nickname in the search box I get only one result but Itshould be many. What could be happening?
1. Credibility; their followers can say they can stand up to doubting schlars; 2. At the end of the 19th century, the Niagara Conferences. 3. I’m not sure! Try searching for a key word you used?
Thank you, but didn’t work. With another word appear a lot of results but I need to dig into all of them to find my comment.
I have come across this issue as well. What I do is write down the title of any post I comment on, and then if I want to return to that thread of comments I just type in the title of the post and scroll through the comments.
Do the gospels that never made it into the canon get their geography and other details correct. If they do, why are they not accepted as scripture by apologists?
Ha! Well, they certainly get some things wrong…
Jay, it seems the majority of modern-day Christians are completely ignorant of the fact that other literature was produced by early Christians other than what is in the New Testament. If they are aware, they probably don’t read any of those texts. If the Christian is aware of and reads any apocrypha, they are probably just extremely grateful they don’t have to defend the additional events, principles, or doctrines found therein; such as when Jesus haphazardly murders people in his childhood (Infancy Gospel of Thomas), or when a gigantic cross emerges from the tomb and speaks (Gospel of Peter). The list goes on. I presume they are quick to proclaim they are heretical texts and want nothing to do with most of them. (I know you want an answer from Dr. Ehrman, but there are my two cents!)
A weird specific moment happened during the question of the theological claims of Jesus. You used the theologically weighted “I am” statements in John to contrast with Christ’s identity in the synoptics, but then discounted the “I am” statement in a theologically suggestive text in Mark on the basis that “I am” is just a way to say “yes,” citing an example in John that is playing on the theologically weighted “I am” in John! Can you explain this section of the video to me? I was confused.
Yes, you need to look carefully at the passages. “I am” can indeed be a reference to God’s own name (Exodus 3:14-16). But it doesn’t have to mean that: it can simply be an answer to a question: “Yes I am.” It gets used that way by the man born blind in John 9:9. In the passages in John, though, it is not an answer to a question, but an assertion of personal identity. Look up the passages and you’ll see. (E.g., John 8:58).
I enjoyed the debate but like most evangelicals he is trying to prove too much when he tries to argue not just that the Gospels are generally reliable but rather that they are inerrant. It seems many non-believers and evangelicals believe the line should be drawn such that the Gospels must be either inerrant or they must be unreliable. But most Christians I know just don’t really care if the gospels are completely correct in every particular about how Judas died.
In a different debate I think google maps or siri came up for directions. And yes both can have glitches. Google maps was freaking out when I was in downtown New York and siri sent me to wrong locations at least twice that I specifically remember but they are nevertheless reliable.
I certainly agree with your critique of his view of believing the victim. He seemed to want to fold on making a historical case for Christ way too quickly.
He made a fair point about Luke knowing the ancient world. Certainly if Luke seemed unfamiliar with the ancient world that would count against him. You offer hypotheticals of how his criteria could be met but someone could still be wrong. But that is true for most historical criteria. Something could be reported against interest yet still false. Something could reported close in time but still false. etc.
I think your overall point is that while Luke’s general knowledge is preferable to him being ignorant that alone is not going to outweigh the problems he has on the reliability front. They really didn’t allow you to go into why you thought Luke was unreliable.
You concede that there may have been earlier accounts and perhaps even agree that there likely were earlier accounts used by the gospel authors. So why does it matter when the first known gospels were written? We would think that Matthew and Luke would have been about as accurate in transmitting the information from those earlier sources as they were in transmitting what Mark wrote. Whether you think they transmitted the contents of Mark accurately or not is really like asking is the glass half empty or half full.
I couldn’t say I “concede” that. That makes it sound like I’ve given into his argument! I’ve always thought this. (And said and taught it). The reason it matters when the first Gospels were written is that the Gospels we have are not simply replications of some earlier sources, but are their own accounts based largely on oral traditions tha thad been in circulation for decades. The earlier accounts they used may have been written 6 months earlier or 6 years earlier. We don’t know. But making them earlier doesn’t make them accurate. (Just watch two different TV news channels: who is giving the accurate reporting — 12 hours after the events???) In any event, we don’t have any reason to think these earlier sources were written many decades earlier. And since these would have been sources in Greek, they certainly were not written in Palestine near to the beginning of the Christian movement!
I guess the reason I say you “concede” this is is because the existence of written sources that predate the gospels cuts against your argument that what we have in the Gospels is the result of the “telephone game.” The telephone game does not involve written material.
I agree that making them earlier does not make them accurate, but earlier source material is a valid historical criteria is it not?
“The reason it matters when the first Gospels were written is that the Gospels we have are not simply replications of some earlier sources, but are their own accounts based largely on oral traditions that had been in circulation for decades.”
Why do you think Mark could not have had any written sources? And why do you think that Q and any other possible written sources must have only been written at least decades after the events?
My sense is that people try to press the analogy to far and then say “it’s too far.” But I’m not pressing it that far. I”m not saying — and have never meant to say — that *all* the accounts of Jesus before the Gospels were oral. There were certainly written accounts. Luke tells us so. But virtually of the stories about Jesus that Luke inherited were told orally before they were written. That is, the earlier written accounts were *themselves* based on oral reports that had been circulating for many years (one piece of evidence: they were told in Greek). It’s to *that* extent that it’s like telephone. Mark too may have had written sources; long ago it was widley thought that his passion narrative came from a written source. But note, I say that their accounts are based “largely” on oral traditions. And even if he used a written passion narrative, *it* was based on ealrier oral reports. I don’t see any way around this. I.e., I don’t think there’s any plausible way of imagining it any differently, since no one was videotaping it or recording it on the spot for posterity.
Thank you for your response. I do appreciate that many scholars say these accounts were based on oral tradition. But I have not really ever heard any sort of full explanation as to why they hold that view.
One reason I have heard is that few people could read, writing was expensive, and so writings were rare generally. And while I think that obviously supports the view that there may not have been any writings prior to Mark (or q) it seems the certainty of the view overstates the evidence. Would you agree that it is also true that if mark or the other gospel writers did incorporate other written accounts those earlier accounts would likely be lost? That is, if you take any given writing that was written back in say 33 AD chances are we would not have a copy of it today.
It may be that Mathew and Luke were “largely” from written sources Mark and Q. But I agree my saying that is just moving the question back to Mark and Q(s) or L(s) or M(s). So lets focus on what we think may have been the earliest writings we have such as Mark and Paul.
You say “one piece of evidence: they were told in Greek” Now here it may be that parts of Mark were told in Greek because they would not make sense otherwise. But does that exclude the possibility that other parts were not from Greek? Do we have reason to think all of Mark’s possible sources must have been oral and from people who only spoke Greek? If we have reason to think Mark only understood Greek ok. But it could have been people translating other documents or translating eyewitness accounts into Greek from other languages. Sure they told him in Greek but that wouldn’t necessarily equate to many years of oral tradition – certainly not decades.
Paul apparently had the funds and inclination to write. He also writes about meeting with various apostles in the church and seems to identify some sort of institutional structure. I mean sure it is not the College of Cardinals but there does seem to exist some sort of institution. Are we to think that institution had nothing about Jesus’s life in writing?
Yes, if Mark and the others used earlier sources, those sources are certainly lost. Mark appears not to have known Aramaic; there’s nothing to indicate he had written sources (if he had them) in anything other than Greek.
Hi Bart I’ve heard some apologists claim that Judas falling “headlong” (prenes genomenos) Is a scribal error and was originally “ presthes genomenos“ (becoming swollen) and this is borne out in some manuscripts. Is there any truth to this?
I’ve never heard that. Are you sure you’re remembering correctly? There’s no manuscript evidence for it. I wonder if they were talking instead about the account in Papias, that Judas was punished for his sin by being made to bloat up to an incredible amount and kind of … burst?
Apparently that reading is in later Syriac, Georgian and Armenian manuscripts – but I can’t find the source for that and I guess that could be due to translators trying to harmonise?
I’d be interested in knowing if the reading is in Syriac, Georgeian, or Armenian. It’s not, to my knowledge!
Unfortunately the claim provides no source so I don’t know which manuscripts they mean. The NRSV also suggests “swelling up” in a footnote but doesn’t say why
Does luke say that judas physically paid for the field vs matthew who says that the priests physically paid for the field?
Acts says Judas bought the field; Matthew that hte priests did.
As far as the reliability of all of the Biblical scripture, which Peter seems to say is all inerrant, the OT part of it appears to be so much more problematic. Obvious differences of the same account all over the place. Chronicles vs Kings, the many doublet accounts, genealogies, historical and archaeological problems, and the list goes on. I just don’t see how anyone as educated as Peter can possibly see all of this as inerrant word of God. At the same time I admire him and people like him for continuing to maintain their faith even with all of these issues. I certainly struggle much more then them.
Dr. Ehrman, you should debate Frank Turek! It would be highly entertaining. Something simple like “Is the Bible Inerrant.”
I’m afraid I don’t know who he is.
Bart,
I’m a regular listener to “Unbelievable” and the “Big Conversation” subset thereof, so I listened to the debate on the podcast from one of those sources. I assume the verbal content was the same as in the UTube link you provided here.
My question is this: During the debate, although you repeatedly said that you believe the gospels are unreliable, you never actually explained why you’ve reached the conclusion. I’m sure that one reason for that is that there was not enough time allowed during the debate for you to fully address the issue. Would you please tell me the title(s) of your books which you believe most directly address that issue? I have many of your books, but I’d like to go back and re-read those that are most directly on point.
Thank you.
P.S. Do you know if anything can be done to allow us to use the “Tab” key in order to indent a new paragraph? Every time I do that, my blog entry closes and the screen scrolls up to the top of the page. It is very frustrating.
I think there is certainly reliable information in the Gospels! But if, as a lawyer, you have four witnesses who contradict each other on a number of points, and say other things that are just implausible, and yet others that you know just aren’t true, even if over half of what they say is right, you probably wouldn’t label them as “reliable.” Probalby where I address the issue most directly is in Jesus Interrupted.
Hi Bart,
First comment on your blog! I’m not sure if you go back and read comments on older posts, but here I go. Two quick Qs:
1) in the debate you seem to concede the idea that the gospel writers had deep familiarity with local Palestinian geography and customs, but in “Jesus, Interrupted” you suggest that the opposite is true! I take it you were conceding for the sake of not getting too tangled in the weeds?
2) what do you think of “inference to the best explanation” as a mode of reasoning? Debates with apologists seem to revolve around defending/attacking the idea that there is *some* wiggle room for inerrancy. Basically due to unavoidable epistemic constraints it’s going to be impossible to disprove inerrancy, as indeed with many other absurd positions, but I think we do a disservice to the perception of scholarship by allowing apologists to frame the debate this way. The question should always be, in my view, what account best explains the data we have? Well – leading question I guess, what do you think?
Thanks
Jordan from the UK
1. Actually, I didn’t want to, mean to, or think I did concede the point. I just wanted to stress it was irrelevant. If we had a longer debate I wuld have pointed out the serious geographcial mistakes.
2. Yes, I think I agree. Hisory is a matter of establishing greatest probability. And for historians, at least, that can’t be done by appealing, for example, to supernatural agency, as Peter does.
[Mar 2:7 KJV] Why doth this [man] thus speak blasphemies? who can forgive sins but God only?
[Mar 2:10 KJV] But that ye may know that the Son of man hath power on earth to forgive sins, (he saith to the sick of the palsy,)
[Luk 5:21 KJV] And the scribes and the Pharisees began to reason, saying, Who is this which speaketh blasphemies? Who can forgive sins, but God alone?
[Luk 5:24 KJV] But that ye may know that the Son of man hath power upon earth to forgive sins, (he said unto the sick of the palsy,) I say unto thee, Arise, and take up thy couch, and go into thine house.
Here is an instance in which Mark and Luke convey reasonably similar accounts which seem to leave the reader with two choices.
A. Either the Pharisees were wrong and someone besides God could forgive sins
or
B. The authors saw significance in the hostile testimony of the Pharisees and the affirmative testimony of Jesus which conveyed a strong inference of Christs divinity through his right to proclaim sins forgiven.
Which seems the more plausible explanation?
I think it’s highly significant that Jesus does not respond by saying, “I *am* God, and now I’ll prove it to you” but instead sais that “The Son of Man has power to forgive sins” (which I take to mean “The Son of Man ALSO has power….” — i.e., the power given by God. so it could be read both ways, and maybe it’s intentionally ambiguous. But it is not a clear claim to divinity at all, in my view (NOTE: priests in the Temple could also pronounce forgiveness of sins. That didn’t make them Gods. It may be that Jesus is saying he ahs the same authority as temple priests)
Yet in both texts we have the Pharisees declaring God alone can forgive sins. Why would they say that if Jesus was merely attributing to himself a priestly capability. The Pharisees would have instead said, “This man is not a Levite, was He not born in of Judean parents? How can he claim to forgive sins.?” Instead their objection was that of encroaching upon Gods sole authority, thus calling it blasphemous.
Now I would not claim that at that moment the disciples understood this as a inference to divinity, and I would concede Jesus kept his cards close to his chest, to the point of frustrating the Jewish elite who were chomping for an open confession as well. “If you are the Son of God tell us plainly“ Jesus was coy by design on several fronts, seeming to control the timing of his ultimate arrest. If you look at the things he said and did right around the passover in his third year it’s clear he was instigating the full wrath of the Jews almost as if he wanted to be crucified. Earlier than that he stopped short of giving them what they needed to trump up charges.
Then consider these clues of Matthews partially veiled sentiment.
“The Son of Man is Lord of the Sabbath.” (Matt 12:8)
“Immanuel, God with us.” (Matt 1:23)
My point would be to say that at least Matthew might very well have been affirmative of a divinity doctrine regarding Christ. However because his gospel was in part designed for evangelizing an unbelieving Jewish audience, he may have been careful to not upset their sensibilities with a blatant divinity claim like John did until after they saw Jesus as the Messiah according to prophecy. Then those with the “spirit” could be shown the full revelation. If John was in fact the last gospel (after 70 AD), then the Jews were already scattered and the power structure to put an open claim to divinity on trial was no longer a factor. Matthew left them a bread crumb trail, whereas John left a billboard.
The point would be that, as usual, Jesus is disagreeing with their assertion.
Dear Bart
I thought your debate with Peter Williams was excellent and in good spirit. It made compelling and enjoyable listening and watching. Depite my evangelical leanings, I thought you came over as far more rational and reasonable and I thought that Peter’s belief in the inerrancy of scripture let him down. The central theme of the discussion about differences between John’s Gospel and the synoptics (especially Mark), reminded me of my post on the blog earlier in the year entitled The Markian Messianic Secret & The Johanine Messianic Revelation (which seemed to spark extensive debate), where I asked whether the two Gospels really did conflict as much as you suggest. I would be really interested in whether you think my suggestions hold any water. For ease of refference (and now slightly re-phrased), my amateur suggestion for reconcilling the apparent conflcit, was 2-fold:
1. Over the approximately 3 years of Jesus’s ministry (or however long it was), Jesus may have, at different times and to different people, spoken differently about himself and the Kingdom (eg to the inner disciples vs more peripheral disciples vs Galillean crowds vs Jersusalem crowds vs pharisees/leaders etc). That is to say, different people were given different degrees of accesss to different aspects of his what he said about himelf. Certainly there is evidence in the symoptics for Jesus tellling his disciples stuff about himself that wasn’t for general consumption. Therefore perhaps the Markian Messianic secret ‘mofifs’ relate more to what said to ‘outsiders’ and the Johanine ‘I am’ proclamations relate more to what Jesus said to ‘insiders’.
2. Over the time from the beginning of his ministry to the end, one could also possibly posit a kind of progressive revelation in that the Markian Messianic Secret ‘mofifs’ relate more to Jesus’s early ministry whereas the Johanine ‘I am’ proclamations relate more to what Jesus said toward the end of his ministry. I further speculated that maybe the length of Jesus’s ministry was long enough for even Jesus himself to learn who he really was and what his destiny really was. I fully accept that this way of attempting to reconcile the Markian Messianic Secret with the Johanine Messianic Revelation is likely to be an over-simplification, but I think it offers some ideas for how such differences could be reconciled. I suspect someone has suggested this sort of thing before. https://ehrmanblog.org/forum/the-historical-jesus/the-markian-messianic-secret-the-johanine-messianic-revelation/
Many Thanks
Reasons to trust the Gospels
Hi Bart,
I found your debate with Peter Williams very interesting. As usual I find your
arguments much more convincing and relevant.
However it seems very clear that the Christian church or the Roman
church are simply not interested in what Jesus said or did.. Or if they are interested
they consider it totally irrelevant to the way they treat each other. For instance
Jesus commandment: love your neighbour certainly cannot be applied to the way
Christians treated each other. They had discussions they had disagreements about
doctrine and the loser was lucky to come away with their life. So much for
Christian love. In fact I’m not at all sure why the church which became the official
Roman calls itself Christian. They do not seem to have followed the example of
Jesus in any serious moral way. Warfare fostered by the Church was commonplace during Middle Ages.
I was brought up in England in the Roman Catholic
family. I was sent to a Catholic boarding school.. I would say that the most
important thing that I learned is that sex is largely immoral unless you’re married
and want to have children.. As long as you do not enjoy the experience.
Fortunately I looked to therapy for emotional help. I came to realize that
this approach to life is essentially insane. Since then I’ve started to enjoy my life. I’m
no longer tortured by the fear of going to hell for eternity because of some
insignificant peccadillo. I don’t see why God would put his energy into torturing
people for eternity.