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Loading...Looking through old posts on the blog, I came across this very interesting and important question from seven years ago. It’s a question I continue to get on occasion, so I thought we all might profit by thinking about it again. (And now, older and wiser, I would answer almost exactly the same way!)
QUESTION:
I have looked up the content of all the papyri I’m aware of (off of links on wikipedia, so who knows if they’re accurate).
It is my understanding that although p52, p90, and p104 are dated around 125-150 AD, they contain fragments of John 18 and Matt 21 only, and that it’s not until 200 AD that manuscripts emerge which actually contain accounts of supernatural actions by Jesus.
So, it’s possible that accounts of miracles existed in copies that got destroyed, but is it fair to say that the earliest available copies of accounts of Jesus’s supernatural actions date from around 200 AD?
In other words, assuming people on average had kids by age 20 back then, and thus 20 years counts as a generation, is it fair to say that the earliest available accounts of miracles by Jesus were written by the great, great, great, great, great, great, grandson of somebody who would have been alive at the same time as Jesus?
RESPONSE:
This is an interesting question! It is true that we do not start getting relatively complete manuscripts of the Gospels until around the year 200. But I don’t think it would be fair to say that this means that we do not have reports of Jesus’ miracles until then – unless we want to be overly-literalistic in our thinking.
This is why: as I have indicated in other posts …
The rest of this post is for blog members only. Not one yet? Gotta join! Costs little, gives lots, and helps those in need. Everyone wins….
Very balanced perspective. Great read. Out of interest, if one acknowledges the reporting in the gospels of miracles as not being added in later, coupled to the independent witness by early church fathers about miracles – and to my knowledge no historic contradictions by opponents of Christianity relating to.miracles by Jesus; kindly share your reasons for disavowing these miracles ascribed to Jesus! Thanks again!
I have no doubt people believed Jesus was a miracle worker before his death. I don’t believe all the miracles described in the gospels were ascribed to him during his lifetime, or perhaps for some time afterwards. Nor do I believe he at any time defied the laws of physics or biology but it does seem likely he had some ability to inspire in people the belief that he’d done something miraculous.
If he did in fact minister to the poor, the sick, the rejected–if he didn’t turn away from those who were rejected by society because they had diseases like leprosy (not necessarily Hansen’s Diseaese), or were blind, or suffered from mental illness–if he could treat them with compassion, inspire in them a belief they could heal themselves through faith (and who’s to say how many of them were only sick because they felt rejected)–well–that’s enough of a miracle for me.
And I understand you question whether he performed faith healings, Bart–but he had to have done something more than tell stories to have inspired the devotion that led to his being remembered the way he was.
“What terms are possible between a historical treatment and the acceptance of supernatural events? With the advent of Strauss this problem found a solution, viz., that these events have no rightful place in the history, but are simply mythical elements in the sources.”
~ Schweitzer, The Quest of the Historical Jesus (which I finally read based on your point in Jesus: Apocalyptic Prophet of the New Millennium: “Few authors in modern times can be said to have redirected the course of an entire field of study.”
Should some of your readers like to view more quotes, I assembled some of what I thought were the best lines from Quest, and grouped them by topic on my blog:
https://diogenesofmayberry.com/2019/04/30/select-quotes-about-christianity-from-albert-schweitzer/
You mention a few times manuscripts being “independent of one another.” I’m not sure what you mean by this. How would you know that they were independent of one another? Could they have been dependent upon common sources and still be independent of one another?
I mean they come from separate lines of transmission; ultimately of course all manuscripts are related to one another, just as all human beings are.
Are you aware of any trade books that provide a discussion of the most important extant papyri (as you do in this post)?
There are guides to textual criticism for beginners, yes; Probably if you look for titles kind of like that on Amazon you’ll find some.
I can offer another reason [besides not wanting to believe in the miracles] to think that miracle stories were added later: namely, someone might believe that a particular Gospel writer [Luke for example] originally portrayed Jesus as a philosopher or mystical teacher and that the miracle stories were added in later to conform with Mark etc, as well as to appeal to a wider, not-so-intellectual audience. Not that this scenario holds water without good evidence from textual criticism, but there it is.
You could also add to this argument that since the Gospels and their sources are based on oral traditions of early Christians, and since the stories of Jesus’ miracles were key to convincing the skeptical that Jesus was indeed the Messiah, it is highly unlikely that the original texts would not include those stories.
It is easy for me to believe that it only took a generation (or less) for there to be miracle stories about Jesus invented and propagated. Just look at faith healers today and how readily their followers accept the authenticity of their supposed miracles even while outside viewers are completely unconvinced. During my time in the church I heard many stories from the pulpit that were clearly fabrications told to “prove” a point. It’s easy to see 1st Century people who had a superstitious worldview attribute miracles to their leader, whether a result of exaggeration or outright invention in order to further their cause.
Dr Ehrman –
Somewhat related topic via early accounts of miracles – what are your current views on the layers (book of signs, book of sayings, evangelist, redactor, etc.) in John?
A humble request: Perhaps a repost (or reprise, but that might be too greedy a notion…) of these:
1) https://ehrmanblog.org/sources-of-the-fourth-gospel-for-members/
2) https://ehrmanblog.org/signs-in-the-gospel-of-john/
and various other related threads that tie together the layers/seams/influences/sources/authors/editors in John’s gospel. There’s so much richness and depth to what you’ve done/said around the topic that a recompilation might be fruitful for the blog community.
Many thanks!
I continue to subscribe to the source theories I laid out before, yes.
Awesome, thank you!
It seems to me that this is pretty powerful evidence that these miracle stories must have been in circulation in oral form before the gospels were written. If so, it seems we also must conclude that this is what people thought when they were remembering what Jesus said and did. This is not saying that the miracles actually took place, of course, but Jesus, like other ‘miracle workers’ of his time, must have left a pretty powerful impression among people that this was what he was doing.
Interesting and scholarly. Thanks.
P.S. With regard to contradictions, if authors cannot get the little things correct, then how can they get the BIG things correct?
I suppose they could, but, well, it’d have to be argued….
Could the same argument be made, if someone posed the question:
>> and that it’s not until 200 AD (or whenever) that manuscripts emerge
>> which actually contain
>> ATTRIBUTIONS TO CURRENTLY
>> RECOGNIZED AUTHORS OF THE GOSPELS.
?
i.e.
>> All of these witnesses are independent of one another,
>> and that is the key. If someone had taken a
>> NON-ATTRIBUTED version of Luke (or of any of the other Gospels)
>> and inserted ATTRIBUTIONS TO LUKE (or Matthew or Mark) into it,
>> in say, the year 130,
>> then surely SOME of the many manuscripts copied before then
>> in Rome, Alexandria, Caesarea, Ephesus, and so on and on would
>> have left at least a dim trace in the surviving manuscript record.
>> Someplace! But there is no such trace.
>> That is to say, if originally there were non-ATTRIBUTED versions of
>> Luke (or any of the others), there would be SOME record of them in
>> the church fathers’ quotations, the early versions, or the
>> surviving Greek manuscripts. But there is no such thing.
if not can you explain the difference.
Yes, but in this case there are counter arguments, including the fact that we know the titles were not original AND the books were not called by these names until the end of the 2nd century. That makes it a completely different situation.
How is it known that the gospels didn’t originally have titles? Are there early full copies of the texts without titles? Or early church fathers explicitly stating the gospels didn’t have titles? Or something else?
In part it’s because the earliest “titles” are “According to Matthew.” No one who writes a book would give it as a *title* “according to me.” At least no one did in antiquity! So this is someone else telling you who the author is/was (in their opinion)
Hi, Dr. Ehrman.
One day I was reading Mark 3, and I’ve found that the family conflict story (Mark 3:20-21) would be read seamlessly if one skipped verses 22-30 and jumped straight to 31:
Then he went home; 20 and the crowd came together again, so that they could not even eat. 21 When his family heard it, they went out to restrain him, for people were saying, “He has gone out of his mind.” 31 Then his mother and his brothers came; and standing outside, they sent to him and called him. 32 A crowd was sitting around him; and they said to him, “Your mother and your brothers and sisters are outside, asking for you.” 33 And he replied, “Who are my mother and my brothers?” 34 And looking at those who sat around him, he said, “Here are my mother and my brothers! 35 Whoever does the will of God is my brother and sister and mother.”
To me, this is an indication of Mark using different sources and inserting the verses 22-30 into an earlier story.
Can you recommend a book about Mark and the different (reconstructed) sources he used?
Yes, I’ve wondered about htis before too. I think the problem is that it seems to be Markan style to tie stories together like this, with events intervening that could be taken out (e.g., Jairus’s daughter; the cursing of the fig tree). So it seems to be one of the ways he writes.
Mark 1-8 (The Anchor Yale Bible Commentaries)
https://www.amazon.com/Mark-Anchor-Yale-Bible-Commentaries/dp/0300139799
So good. But dense.
Just like people who want to deny presence of miracle stories in the original NT manuscripts, the Jesus mythicists are motivated by a mistaken presupposition that endorsing existence of Jesus forces one to accept existence of a genuine miracle maker. But as you have explained in your textbook, accounts of miracles and miracle-makers in the Greco-Roman world were common place. When one looks at religious texts in other religions across diverse civilisations, accounts of miracles are dime a dozen (e.g. the hadiths & sunnas of Prophet Muhammad, the Buddhist canons concerning the Buddha and his disciples). In present day, there are loads of charismatic churches in the American Bible belt claiming occurrence of miracles on a regular basis, and lots of sincere believers testify to their authenticity. In the haydays of American televangelism in past decades, it was common to witness miraculous healings on TV.
Dr Ehrman,
Very interesting question – I have at least a couple that are related, and warrant some scholarly input:
1. Wouldn’t it make sense that the miracle stories were included at the get-go, since that’s what the gospel writer’s realized was a huge selling point in getting across the less supernatural but still important parts, like Jesus’ words of wisdom, which were given added import by a necessary narrative context the writer had to spin, if the actual records were not available?
2. In your personal view, were the miraculous stories based in part on actual events, that would, in and of themselves seem extraordinary, even to those of our own time (perhaps by our conventional ignorance of the actual influence our consciousness can have over the process of recovery from some ailment or injury)? Or were they based on a few memories of things that worked out, in of so many attempts, against all odds, merely by coincidence? That is, among so may healers and miracle-workers of his day, Jesus just happened to have the best track record, just by being in the right place at the right time (enough to warrant a written record). Or perhaps he did have more effective method than other faith-healers of his time?
1. My view is that the Gospel writers were not trying to sell the idea of Jesus and his miracles, but that they were writing to people who already believed in them. So they weren’t trying to convince anyone about them per se; 2. And no, I don’t think there are naturalistic explanations that provide the “real” story of what *actually* happened, events that later got misinterpreted as miracles. This *was* a common explanation in the 19th century, but I don’t think that’s necessary. I think the stories came about not from faulty memory per se by people who saw something else; they were generated in the oral tradition, mainly by people who didn’t see any of it.
Dr. Ehrman,
Like meohanlon, I believe “it make[s] sense that the miracle stories were included at the get-go, since that’s what the gospel writer’s realized was a huge selling point in getting across the less supernatural.”
You, “think the stories came about not from faulty memory…” but, “…were generated in the oral tradition, mainly by people who didn’t see any of it.”
Then you add, “I think a fascinating tale can be told about someone without miracles…’ Yet, you admit, “for ancient Christians to convince people that Jesus was the unique son of God…, he did have to do things the great figures of Israel’s past did, only better.”
Kavsor explains the problem when he says, “without the miracles there wouldn’t be much of a story to tell, an ordinary man with no remarkable background, inferior to John the baptist, who travelled around and reiterated John’s apocalyptic message ,interpreted the torah and managed to get himself killed…”
Can you give any example of how you think these earliest, non-miraculous oral traditions may have been worded in order to finally “convince people that Jesus was the unique son of God?” At this point, I see no other alternative than, the miracle stories must have been included at the get-go.
If the miracles had been added around 130 we’d expect to see some manuscripts that don’t contain the additions.
Could we use the same reasoning for the authorship of the gospels? If the names had only been attached to them around the middle of the 2C we’d expect to see some divergent views on who wrote them? Someone somewhere saying Philip or Andrew or James wrote the first gospel.
No, don’t think so. Because we know that before 180 or so no one was calling them Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. We don’t know of anyone telling stories about Jesus’ activities that did not include miracles.
I dont think its known that no one was calling them Matthew, Mark, Luke and John before 180 is it? Before 180 nobody was wondering in their writings who wrote the anonymous gospels.
I think the analogy still stands, after the 2C there’s no trace of a gospel of Luke without miracle stories so the conclusion is there was none earlier either – and after 2C there’s no trace of opposing claims to the authorship of the gospels so the conclusion is there was none before that either.
As stories about Jesus were transmitted by word of mouth before the gospels, without the miracles there wouldn’t be much of a story to tell, an ordinary man with no remarkable background, inferior to John the baptist, who travelled around and reiterated John’s apocalyptic message ,interpreted the torah and managed to get himself killed? the claim that he was the messiah and had to die,not to conquer was already a tough sell, a suicidal messiah with no supernatural powers and skills would have rendered it impossible. If I were God, I wouldn’t want him to be my son. I would let him stay dead. Therefore the invention of stories about the miracles meant to elevate Jesus above every prophet in the Hebrew bible.The miracles that other prophets performed collectively Jesus managed to do single-handedly and with less effort. There are other types of events in the narrative that if not supernatural but are at least unnatural. It takes (almost) a miracle to make a total stranger leave his job, his family and his village just by saying follow me, no questions asked. As a side note, the disciples’ lack of understanding, amnesia and cluelessness also seem unnatural or perhaps even preternatural. Am I too far off the mark dr Ehrman?
I think a fascinating tale can be told about someone without miracles (cf. modern religious figures), but I agree, for ancient Christians to convince people that Jesus was the unique son of God, yes, he did have to do things the great figures of Israel’s past did, only better.
I agree, but the Jews weren’t widely convinced that Jesus was the unique son of God. I think, he also had to do and out-do the things that were done by the gods of the Greco-Roman world, since the Gentiles are the ones who actually embraced him.
“All of these witnesses are independent of one another, and that is the key. If someone had taken a non-miraculous version of Luke (or of any of the other Gospels) and inserted miracle stories into it, in say, the year 130, then surely SOME of the many manuscripts copied before then in Rome, Alexandria, Caesarea, Ephesus, and so on and on would have left at least a dim trace in the surviving manuscript record. ”
Doc, how long would it take to “eclipse” story x with story y , until story x completely disappears?
how many years between lukes first copy and the year 130? Between this time , do you think it is probable that some ancient stories in luke were eclipsed by others ones because of scribal practice ?
the only evidence we have of uncontrolled copying is later on, for FIRST hundred years we do not know if it was controlled or uncontrolled because their are noanuscripts.
Oral stories can get eclipsed very quickly. It’s very hard to eclipse written versions, since copies are being made of earlier versions independently of the newer versions trying to eclipse the older.
can “uncontrolled variants” eclipse earlier variants?
for example , i will show 4 variants below
1.
“my god, my god, why have you forsaken me?”
2.
“my god, my god, why have you mocked me?”
3.
“my power, my power, why have you left me?”
4.
“my god, my god, why do i feel forsaken?”
lets say that variant four was the ORIGINAL,scribes were not being policed when they were copying . if variant four went missing, then this means that uncontrolled variant writing can eclipse an even earlier writing ?
Yes, that’s certainly possible, and it almost certainly happened sometimes. But it’s very rare, in comparison with what happens in the oral tradition, mainly because the change would have to be made extremely early in the transmission history of the text to infiltrate the entire tradition.
do you believe that the different endings of mark were added ? If yes, then does this mean that power /goverment control is not requirement to widely distributed additions into text?
That’s right, they’ve all been added. But there is zero evidence for control from above (certainly not from governmental officials), because of hte random nature of their distribution over textual witnesses. I don’t talk about Mark 16 in my book Orthodox Corruption, but I do address the question of whether there was any top-down oversight of textual transmission.
how come their was no angry reaction to the addition of endings to the ending of mark?
If their was no uproar, then we have evidence that christians were able to unite christians on forged endings because it agreed with their beliefs.
Because when someone would read their copy of mark, they wouldn’t realize that the ending had been added. They would simply assume it was the ending. It’s only in the modern period that most readers came to realize there were different ways to end the book — comparative studies of different manuscripts almost never happened in antiquity (apart from with a a handful of scholars)
Professor, should there be a question as to whether early Christianity, competing as it was with a pagan pantheon and accompanying mythology, would have grown as it did without supernatural stories?
Which just stirred a new train of thought: were there “professional” story tellers early first millennia?
There weren’t professional Christian story tellers, no, if by that you mean people who made a living off of it. And yes, for missionary work to be successful, almost certainly the miracle stories had to be told. See my book Triumph of Christianity.
Hi Bart this is off topic but when Tertullian claims the polycarp was a disciple of John do you think he is just repeating Irenaeus’ claim?
I haven’t looked at that in a long time and don’t remember off hand where Tertullian says that. But yes, if he makes the same claim probably so.
Did tertullian have access to the writings of irenaeus? I’m discussing with an apologist who is claiming this is independent attestation of the John/Polycarp link but it seems plausible to me that tertullian would have access to irenaeus’ writings?
Also another off topic! I saw in another thread that you date the martyrdom of ignatius (the text not the event!) to the second century, why is this? From the sparse info I can find online it apparently isn’t attested anywhere until the 5th century? Thanks
I don’t recall ever assigning a date to it. Where did I date it to the second century?
I should know the evidence off the top of my head, but alas — and I’m out of the country no where near my books. Can anyone help out here?
Hi Bart did you ever get chance to check this?
Afraid not. Still out of the country!
Dr. Ehrman,
Can scholars look at the manuscripts and determine if the disciples themselves “believed” Jesus in fact did miracles? Kind of how we can know that the early witnesses “believed” Jesus rose from dead even though you can’t prove it. We can’t prove Jesus did or did not perform miracles, but is it probable that the eye witnesses of his life believed he did? If so, what are your thoughts on how Jesus gained such amazing deeds attributed to him (Do you feel Jesus was purposefully deceiving)?
Thanks, Jay
No, I’m afraid we can’t use later written texts to determine what was really going on in the actual minds of the people they refer to.
Hi Bart, thank you for that very fair post! I note that you have come to a very similar rigorously intelectually honest conclusion about the resurrection – namely, that the earliest of the earliest followers of Jesus beleived it – even though you currently don’t :-). With the exception of Judas, the disciples, albeit after considerable doubts, both during his ministry and at his crucifixion, finally concluded that Jesus was a success in his ministry – that he was right in his apocalypticism, that he was indeed from God, that his mission was to die for our sins and that he would come again as the Son of Man in glory. You don’t currenly believe any of that, but they apparently did (albeit with variant Christologies, eschatologies, protologies, soteriologies, lapsologies, angelologies, cosmologies and all the other ‘ologies). Was it easier for them to beleive it than it is for us knowing what we know now and not knowing everything that they knew then? We will never know, but I doubt it.
Yes, ancient people had no trouble believing “miracles” happened; the problem was never whether they were possible, but who actually did them. Our problems today in a modern scientific world are very different.
Yes, I don’t think the gospel writers or the disciples seemed to struggle with miracles having happend and even the pharisees didn’t seem to struggle with the miracles having happned, unless the miracles themselves strayed into the province of ‘messianic signs’ according to John (such as healing a man born blind). However, what I meant was that the disciples *did* struggle with *who Jesus was*, both with whether he was the Messiah, whether being the Messiah meant being a political leader, whether he was just another prophet like Elijah or Jeremiah, or John the Baptist, whether he was right about his apocalyptic predictions, whether he was right to break the law of Moses at times, whether he was supposed to be rejected by his people, suffer, be tortured, abused and finally die the most horrible, degrading and agonising death. These were issues for them, not just for us. As I think you have said, the suffering servant (or Lamb of God) was not thought to apply to the Messiah, but only to Israel (although John the Baptist according to the 4th Gospel writer did see it applying to an individual). Furthemore, the Son of Man of Daniel and Enoch were not thought to be the same guy as the Messiah, so Jesus was kinda re-writing the prevailing accepted eschahtology and apparently conflating the prophet predicted by Moses, the Messiah-King, the Son of Man and the Son of God as you have pointed out. I suspect that was a lot to stomach for Simon the Zealot, Judas and any of the dsicoles who were trained in the scriptures. It would also have probably been quite in depth for the fisherman among them! I think they all continued to struggle with the question of whether Jesus was correct theologically, right in his apocalyptic predictions, a success in his mission and without sin – just like we do.
Interesting. Not having read them in awhile so I’m going on memory here… but I don’t think any of the Pauline letters/epistles contain any of Jesus’s miracles, and I’m not including the post-Resurrection appearances. How old are the earliest copies of those date to?
The earliest Pauline manuscripts are from about the same time as the earliest Gospel manuscripts. Hard to date, but around 200 CE?
Can we infer anything, given that date, from the fact that the letters don’t mention miracles? Are they silent because Paul doesn;t know about them or other reasons? They also don’t mention the virgin birth and other things covered in your previous books, just not sure whatis the take away from all that.
I think it’s impossible to know whether Paul knew about them or not.
When you say you don’t think Jesus did miracles, do you mean he wasn’t seen as a miracle worker in his lifetime? Or just that he didn’t really do miracles? There are plenty of people who are believed to do “miracles.” I bet some of them even believe they really do.
Even if there wasn’t evidence that the miracle stories were original, there goes a simple but true saying: lack of evidence is not evidence of lacking. Do you have evidence I’m enjoying a glass of wine while having dinner on my deck playing fetch with my dog? Then it cannot be true! Actually, of course it can be. Unless you have solid evidence I was someplace else tonight.
No, I think he was seen as a miracle worker — if not in his lifetime (hard to say, I think) at least soon after.
I just posted a comment with the same question. Sorry, missed this reply
The miracle stories have parallels in Greek pagan religions. Catholic Saint Justin Martyr wrote in about 150 AD:
“And when we say also that the Word, who is the first-birth of God, was produced without sexual union, and that He, Jesus Christ, our Teacher, was crucified and died, and rose again, and ascended into heaven, we propound nothing different from what you believe regarding those whom you esteem sons of Jupiter. For you know how many sons your esteemed writers ascribed to Jupiter: Mercury, the interpreting word and teacher of all; Aesculapius, who, though he was a great physician, was struck by a thunderbolt, and so ascended to heaven; and Bacchus too, after he had been torn limb from limb; and Hercules, when he had committed himself to the flames to escape his toils; and the sons of Leda, and Dioscuri; and Perseus, son of Danae; and Bellerophon, who, though sprung from mortals, rose to heaven on the horse Pegasus… This only shall be said, that they are written for the advantage and encouragement of youthful scholars; for all reckon it an honourable thing to imitate the gods…”
Bacchus -miracle of the wine. Aesculapius -healing miracles. Mercury -knowledge & debate. All sons of god. All were resurrected. All ascended into Olympus (heaven).
The Gospel writers believed in the miracles, and there existed an earlier oral tradition which spoke of miracles. Was the historical Jesus known as a miracle worker/exorcist?
Most scholars think the answer is decidedly yes. I’m not so sure. I think it’s hard to say — but he definitely was “known” that way soon after his death.
Dr. Ehrman,
Before you came to reject the historicity of the empty tomb, how did you think it became empty? i.e. What were some of your thoughts on what likely happened?
I could think of dozens scenarios that were *more* likely than a “resurrection.” What if a couple of grave robbers came at midnight, stole the body, were caught by the Romans and themselves murdered, and all three of them were tossed into a pit, no one knowing who any of them was or where the pit was. Seems highly unlikely, but not *impossible*, unlike a resurrection. Weird stuff like that happens all the time in real life. How many times have resurrections of bodies that will never die again happen. Say, among the 10 billion or so people who have died over the last century. Well, never. You could come up with all sorts of scenarios that are statistically FAR more likely than a resurrection, since the likelihood of a resurrection is virtually nil.