(22 votes, average: 4.91 out of 5)
Loading...I have explained why it is almost certain that Luke did not himself write the passage describing Jesus “sweating blood” in Luke 22:43-44; the passage is not found in some of our oldest and best manuscripts, it intrudes in a context that otherwise is structured as a clear chiasmus, and it presents a view of Jesus going to his death precisely at odds with what Luke has produced otherwise. Whereas Luke goes out of his way to portray Jesus as calm and in control in the face of death – evidently to provide a model to his readers about how they too suffer when they experience persecution – these verses show him in deep anguish to the point of needing heavenly support by an angel, as he sweats great drops as of blood.
But if the verses were not originally in Luke, why were they added by scribes?
The key to answering the question comes from considering two data points. First, when were the verses added to the text? And second, how were they first “used” by readers/writers who knew them? On the first point, almost everyone agrees that the verses — if not original to Luke, who was writing toward the end of the first century (80-85 CE?)—must have been thought to be part of the Gospel already by the middle of the second century, as the story of Jesus’ sweating blood was “known” (found only here in the NT) by church fathers as early as Justin (ca. 150 CE), Irenaeus (ca. 180 CE), and Hippolytus (ca. 200 CE) (all three of whom refer to the passage). So they were added by scribes no later than 60 or 70 years after Luke first produced his Gospel.
This was a time of intense debate among early Christians, who were arguing vehemently among themselves over all sorts of issues, including how to
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So if I’m putting together a Bible quiz, “What evangelist wrote of Jesus sweating blood?” would be a good trick question?
The thing is you’d have to allow for two correct answers, since the matter is debated!
What are the counterarguments to ‘sweating blood’ being an insertion? The chiasm and anti-docetic arguments seem rather solid.
The standard argument is that scribes took it out because it portrayed Jesus in a bad light, as weak and needing comfort.
But Luke wasn’t really representing a docetic view, you think? The speeches in Acts, also written by the same author, seem to present Jesus as truly human.
Ah no, I don’t think he’s at all docetic. It’s usually thought that he eliminated Jesus’ fear in the face of death to show his readers how they too could face persecution in full assurance that God was on their side.
Would you ever do a post about the ascension?
To me this miracle is as huge and necessary to the gospel story as the resurrection, but I never hear anyone talk about it.
I don’t think I ever have — but I should! It’s mentioned explicitly in only one author, Luke, who gives two contradictory accounts of it, one at the end of Luke and the other at the beginning of Acts.
Interesting view.My main question is: knowing the forgery and authorship weakness of manuscripts, is any “forensic” reconstruction work reliable enough to be able to ascertain the “truth”about the events around Jesus death or even his own existence?
No, nothing exists like that, either to confirm or disconfirm the Gospel stories..
Thanks for your reply. Exactly! so, speaking of God… this is another argument to ask ourselves, is there any possible reasoning to sustain that there is a God that likes leaving billions of people clueless over generations wondering what is true and what is not…
Well, I suppose that would make zero sense if we knew what God was like and were sure he wasn’t like that. (!) But there certainly is possible reasoning for that view, since many intelligent and reasonable people hold it.
Well, if we understand God as an out-of-human-reality being, outside known physics law, and outside of any possible future human reasoning and knowledge, it would make non sense.
My point is that classical God attributes don’t match with observable reality since science emerged. One of the mismatches is the famous argument of continuous suffering and lack of meaninful, coherent and understandable “communications” with human beings.
Did you miss seeing pablog’s last clause? As I’ve understood your writings, you don’t think we can ascertain the “truth” about the events surrounding Jesus’ death, but we CAN be certain about his existence. So when you say nothing exists to confirm or disconfirm the Gospel stories, I’m sure you didn’t mean that to cover the last part of his question. Some might misread this.
I thought he was asking about archaeological evidence? Did I get that wrong? There is no archaeological proof that Jesus existed. And no one could possibly expect there would be!
No. you did not missed the point. Exactly, it is impossible to reconstruct 2000 years old evidence. The same concept applies to the many billions of material beings that have walked on earth. The matter is what are the practical limits of labeling past records as “unreliable”. In risk management, there is a concept known as As Low As Reasonably Practicable, which settles a very similar long-time dispute involving probability, consequences and decision making. This technique can be extrapolated to this field. It is probably a matter of a study on its own.
In Romans 1:1 and p.e. Romans 3:24 is written: Christ Jesus. Whereas in most verses is written: Jesus Christ. Is this a reflection of the discussions you mention in this blog? Is it true that translators of the Greek texts ‘corrected’ Christ Jesus to Jesus Christ?
Early Christian authors used both combinations.
What is this about a renowned New Testament scholar holding a seminar on November the 7th? About whether Jesus called himself God?
Stay tuned!
Speaking of renowned NT scholar, do you ever have Imposter Syndrome?
Never have, no. Maybe if I really were a big deal it could happen but as it is, I (think I) have a pretty healthy view of my abilities and inabilities, and am constantly amazed at the latter.
And of course, Jesus might have sweat blood.
The additional versus are not proved false by their later inclusion alone. It’s just that we usually accept that earlier versions are more accurate (until they conflict with what the all-knowing scientists tell us, at least for some).
Long ago I saw an oil painting of Robert E. Lee with two broken arms and was astonished. You never see any photographs of Lee with any encumbrances, certainly not two broken arms. In fact though, he broke both his arms in a fall from his horse before the battle of Antietam Creek in 1862. We automatically assume a painting is not accurate because it’s not a photo.
And we can mistakenly assume that a later addition to a text is false because it was added later.
Is John the only gospel that claims, or even comes close to claiming, that Jesus is God in the full, “Nicene” sense?
Is it correct that in Matthew and Luke Jesus has some degree of divinity starting with his virginal conception but is not pre-existent as he is in John? But in Mt and L it is not claimed, is it, that Jesus has Nicene divinity?
I wonder if heresies that said Jesus only appeared to suffer or was two separate people were stimulated in large part by the difficulty of believing that someone could be both fully divine and fully human? Perhaps some gradation of divinity could be accommodated in a single human person. However, at some point they come to clash too much to be believable?
Do you think that if Jesus’s divinity had been limited to what is portrayed in Mark that these heresies would have arisen?
This is the topic of my book How Jesus Became God. Jesus makes definitive divine claims in John, but not in the other Gospels. Even in John, though, he never says “I am God.”
Do you think that the Christian orthodoxy of the 4th Century was broadly consistent with the earliest gospels as written, including Thomas and perhaps parts of Peter? Or more consistent with them than the other varieties of Christianity were? In that sense might orthodoxy be correct in claiming that it was what was originally believed?
I suppose one reservation would have to be how much orthodoxy was influenced by Greek philosophy.
I suppose another reservation would be whether there might have been some gospels as old as the canonical ones which were suppressed for not being orthodox. Similarly, the canonical gospels were to some degree edited to be consistent with the emerging orthodoxy.
Finally, I suppose orthodoxy was strongly influenced by the practice of reading all four gospels in ways that made them more consistent with one another than would be the case if they were read independently.
No, I think orthodoxy of the 4th century was very different indeed.
Is 4th century orthodoxy more consistent with Paul than with the gospels? Or is there still a very great distance?
I suppose Jesus’s failure to return made for a huge difference between, on the one hand, the gospels and Paul, and, on the other hand, 4th century orthodoxy.
I guess they would have said they were perfectly consistent with both! My view is that orthodoxy represents a later development built on the foundation of Paul and the Gospels, but that hte foundation does not look like the superstructure.
All of a sudden I’ve become very curious about this. Could you briefly summarize the major differences between the NT and 4th century orthodoxy, or do a post on it, or point me to where in one of your books you discuss this?
The institutional church with its rituals and sacraments and authority structure is a major difference. And beliefs are at least partially formulated in terms of Greek philosophy. I would suppose that orthodoxy is probably more influenced by John and Paul than the synoptics, except maybe to the extent that the understanding of the synoptics is also strongly influenced by John and Paul. And an immortal soul going to heaven or hell probably became much more important than resurrection of the body and Jesus’s second coming.
Well, there are hundreds of differences. But in terms of christology, 4th century orthodoxy insisted that Christ was “of the same substance” with the Father — co-eternal with him and equal in glory, power, and every other way. No one in the first century thought that. I talk a lot about this in my book How Jesus Became God.
“Some Christians insisted that Jesus was fully human, nothing more than a man, chosen by God to be his Son, die for the sake of others”
1. Jesus called himself ‘son of man’.
2. ‘son of god’ has no literal meaning. Its figurative. meaning prophet of God.
3. Die for the sake of others, unfair, unjustifiable, cruel. It was never preached by Jesus but by others.
Matthew 16:21“From that time Jesus began to show his disciples that he must go to Jerusalem and suffer many things from the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and on the third day be raised.”
Strictly the sayings of the author. Same method used by Mark and Luke. Readers of Matthew actually believe the sayings of the writer and not that of Jesus. The author used the word ‘show’ with no further explanation.
4. Jesus performed the greatest prayer not wanting to be killed unjustifiably. “Not as I will but thou wilt.”
This is the best prayer because Jesus literally surrendered to God to fulfill Jesus request “Let this cup pass from me” God saved Jesus via ascension.
Do you agree a righteous son of god, complete innocent, to be killed for having done absolutely nothing wrong?
Are you asking me would the literal son of God be killed for doing nothing wrong? I don’t believe in God so I don’t have any way of answering that. Christians would answer Yes, that’s exactly what happened.
Bart, what is your opinion on the disputed quote, “Father, forgive them, they know not what they do”? It seems to fit Luke’s presentation of Jesus as a great man who, like all great men, are noble under pressure and give great speeches at the right time. As you note, only Luke has Jesus deliver a noble word of comfort to the grieving women as he is on the way to be crucified. And only Luke has the noble dialog with the repentant thief. So the disputed quote fits from that perspective.
Do you think it is original to Luke’s text? Can you elaborate on why it is disputed?
Yes, I think it’s original, and among other things is part of Luke’s idea that what Jesus’ executioners (often referred to as Jews) did was out of ignorance. The verse is deleted in some manuscripts, almost certainly, I think, by scribes who did not like the idea that Jesus was forgiving the Jews for what they did (since in their view, God himself never did)
Since Paul mainly only referred to Christ (rarely said “Jesus”), was he in some ways a separationist?
No, he gives no indication of that. He very frequently says “Jesus Christ”
I think Paul actually says “Christ” or “Christ Jesus” and rarely says “Jesus Christ.”
I think Paul is the only author who says “Christ Jesus.”
Do you find this to be significant?
Paul uses Jesus Christ commonly. Just in the first chapter of his first letter in the NT (Romans 1) he says “Jesus Christ” four times and “Christ Jesus” once. Christ Jesus also appears in the book of Acts.
Yes. It is interesting how Paul switches from Christ Jesus to Jesus Christ to Christ all within one thought. He does overall seem to prefer Christ Jesus and Christ. I have read before that this may be due to him not having met Jesus so he does not refer to him as “Jesus.” I wonder also if it may be due to him believing he had a “vision” of “Christ.” Do you have thoughts on why Paul always uses Christ in some way when referring to Jesus?
I’ve never been able to detect a pattern; but I have noticed that a lot of people switch around as well. Scholars today use “Jesus” to refer to the historical man during his life and “Christ” to refer to him as the object of faith among his followrs after they came to believe in the resurrection, but there’s nothing to suggest the early Christians did that.
Dr. Ehrman,
I just discovered this for myself, but I wanted to throw it by you to make sure that my thinking is correct. Unlike Luke, Matthew seems to assume that Joseph and Mary resided near or at Bethlehem at the time of Jesus’s birth, therefore bypassing the conundrum of them making the trip from Nazareth to Bethlehem.
According to Matthew, they were on their way back to Bethlehem from Egypt but realized evil Herod Archelaus was in power and so they decided to move to Galilee and settled in “a town called Nazareth.”
Here’s my question: because this is the first time Matthew mentions Nazareth, and he does not use the definite article behind Nazareth, does the grammar suggest that this was a new town that they never resided in previously? ie They moved to Galilee and settled in “a” village called Nazareth as if it were a new, unfamiliar city. Or is this a stretch from the Greek?
First two paragraphs: right. They are from and live in Bethlehem, and relocate only after returning from Egypt. The wording does not indicat that it is a new place; he’s explaining where it was since no one had heard of it (it was a small little hamlet)
If the cup in Luke 22:42 is the cup of his blood then couldn’t the chiasmus be
He tells the disciples to pray and then leaves them.
He kneels down to pray
He prays to the father to take the cup from him
An angel comes to strengthen him.
He prays more earnestly and sweats drops of blood (the cup of his blood)
He rises from his knees
He returns to the disciples and tells them to pray.
The problem is that the fifth element is two elements.
Q: What is the reason for not posting number of my comments & in case of posting, skipping commenting on them?
How likely is author of Luke to be actually Luke?
Where potentially the change happened (Antioch, Alexandria, Rome etc.)? & early 2nd century where the docetic vs orthodox were spreading?
I believe I post all of them, no? The only comments (from anyone) I don’t post are ones that are rude to others, proselytizing, or not relevant to the blog. Not many of those, but more and more these days. I don’t comment on every comment: I only answer questinos, since otherwise I’d have to comment on every comment and I’d have to quit my day job.
Luke: unlikely: look him up on teh blog and you’ll see posts on it. Change: do you mean in sweating blood? It’s impossible to say.
Dear Bart, with what confidence you have in your own scholarship and from your understanding of what you believe to be true, can you tell me, if the issue of suffering in this world did not exist, would you be a believer? Thank you
I’m pretty confident only about the things I’m pretty confident about. 🙂 And yes, if it were not for the reality of massive and horrifying suffering in the world, I would probably have no reason to doubt that there was a loving and all powerful God in charge of it.
“how to understand who Christ really was.”
“they maintained that Jesus’ human existence was not real, but was only an appearance.”
“Christians then had to figure out in what sense Jesus could be both man and God at one and the same time.”
The above are all examples of problems or controversy of the religion of Christianity. Christians had to debate, discuss about the status of Jesus. This is because Christians had absolutely nothing directly from Jesus or his disciples. Jesus never wrote any of the New Testament books.
Appreciate if you could express your frank views that many concluded that Christianity is about what others say about Jesus rather than what Jesus claimed about himself.
Yes, I think that the Christian faith arose only after Jesus’ death based on the belief that God had raised him from the dead, not on the basis of his own teachings.
“Jesus was a full flesh-and-blood human, born like everyone else, into whom a distinct divine being, the Christ, entered at his baptism (when the dove came from heaven into him).”
If Christ translates the Hebrew word for ‘Messiah’, and the latter was originally used for someone anointed and then for the prophesied victorious Davidic king, how did it end up being used for a distinct divine being who could enter people at will? There seems to be a huge, puzzling gap between the original uses and *this* use.
Yes, it’s interesting how words take on new meanings. I know a lot of people today who think the term “Christ” means “God.”
That makes sense: we live in a culture that believes fervently in the godhood of Jesus Christ, and so it is only natural to find people interpreting ‘Christ’ in the light of that belief. But what might connect the use of ‘Christ’ to stand for an anointed king, on the one hand, with the use of ‘Christ’ to stand for a human-possessing divine being, on the other? That’s my puzzle.
It’s a complicated issue, but it’s what I address in my book How Jesus Became God, if you’d like to see tyeh full answer. It has to do with the Christian belief that God “raised Christ from the dead.” The resurrection was not just a reanimation of the corpse. God, in thie view, took Christ up to heaven to live with him. IN the anceint world, anyone who was taken up to heaven was made a divine being. So Christ became divine.
Is there really a scholarly debate over whether the correct translation is “blood” or “like drops of blood”? If not, AstaKask’s question is a trick as suggested, because the correct answer is “none.”
A literal translation of the text is: “his sweat became as if drops of blood falling to the ground”
A tad off topic: did I just see a cartoon version of you on a certain Youtube channel? Or am I hallucinating? 🙂
Hey, we all have bad dreams.
Excellent chat with Paulogia. What do you think of the Illustrated Bart Ehrman?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=laYoOFPtY-k
A bit stern for my tastes…
Been meaning to ask for awhile. I think of scribes as “copyists” but many statements, such as the below, indicate they were theologians who had authority to change scriptures (not just comment in the margins – though I understand some margin comments were added to the body of the text by later copyists). On whose authority were changes made? On their own, or under direction by a bishop, etc.?
“There were scribes who were deeply concerned about “heretics” claiming that Jesus wasn’t really a human who underwent real suffering.”
It was done less on the basis of authority than on personal decision. Or accident. There were no higher-ups involved; scribes were indeed copyists who sometimes took on more the role of editors.
Didn’t the docetists (and others about different changes) notice the addition to Luke? And were their challenges in antiquity about changes to sacred manuscripts? Or, did the early church fathers, who must have known about different versions, simply pretend the one that agreed with their view was authentic?
We do know of challenges, but we don’t have any writings from docetists or other heterodox about copies of the Bible, since we don’t have writings from them at all, for the most part! I don’t think it was a matter of pretending that the text was original; people simply read whatever text they had available, and like today, almost no one noticed there were differences (just as today almost no one can tell you what is different between Matthew and Mark, let alone between two manuscripts of, say, Matthew)
Someone introduced a new line into Luke and surely there was a time when multiple copies were available to bishops and those writing apologies. I find it hard to believe one or more bishops weren’t in on the revisions and instructed scribes to make the change and destroyed versions in their domain without the revision. The illiterate lay Christian probably cared little except they were doing what they needed to do to get to heaven. Guess we cannot know, but my sense is that some “authority” looked at a scribe’s efforts and at the right moment told him to insert a “missing” phrase he claimed to have seen in a different version, or who knows, perhaps claimed divine inspiration. As costly as parchment was, I can’t imagine there were a lot of copies of any of the books going around. It all sounds very conspiratorial, these significant changes to earlier texts. What must the poor laborer who converted to Christianity have thought if they heard about different versions of the “word of God.”
Well, this is a good example about what is discussed in “Knowing What Jesus Said and Did”
Was Jesus in Agony Before His Arrest?
Well, the answer is very different in Mark and Luke as you explain here.
But not Mark nor Luke were there and all they write about it have nothing to do with what really, “historically” happened to the human being Jesus (btw, I even think this was not his real name) , more important they either didn’t mind what really happened, all they wanted was to tell their intended audience (their communities) a certain theological view about Christ the Savior .So we are trying to extract a “historical Jesus” from documents that are not intended at all in knowing anything about Jesus real life.
I don’t know if Mathew,Luke or John had access to “independent” oral traditions different from Mark but even if it was the case I think they would choose the traditions that fitted their interest and discard all others.
In the case of Luke, right as you stated (and I strongly agree) the way he “ portray Jesus as calm and in control in the face of death [was] evidently TO PROVIDE A MODEL to HIS READERS about HOW THEY too suffer when they experience persecution ”.
Even when Luke starts his gospel stating that “ I myself have carefully investigated everything from the beginning” (Luke 1:3) his work has the main goal of PROVIDING MODELS OF BEHAVIOR to HIS READERS/HEARERS , the gospel Jesus that “was opposed to violence” is the good roman citizen Paul said christians were supposed to be (Rom 13:1-7), again a MODEL OF BEHAVIOR, he paid his taxes (Mark 12:17) , he had no problems with roman authorities , in Mark the first “witness” is a roman centurion !!! (Mark 15:39) .
Dr. Ehrman:
Pardon the off topic question, but in your radio debate with Richard Bauckham, he brought up an interesting point (probably the only one you didn’t convincingly address, since the host moved on afterwards) when you discussed what the gospels were called soon after they started circulating. He stated that there had to be a way of differentiating them among the churches that were springing up, and that it was “inconceivable” that the early Christians wouldn’t have referred to them by their current names (especially as they purportedly had a copy or two of important early texts, and would refer to them in liturgy). You had earlier countered that you didn’t think they were called anything, and that the earliest references to the actual names probably weren’t to the gospels as we now have them, and that it was only much later that the names became standardized.
Can you elaborate on this, please? Do you mean that the books really were an undifferentiated set of texts, and weren’t referred to properly? Can you clarify the timeline on when it’s clear the reference is to the current books? Perhaps this is worth a post even!
Ah, an elaboration would take an entire post — maybe I should provide it! But short story: yes, they each were written and circulated anonymously in different locations (the tradition says that Mark was from Rome, John from Ephesus, etc.). That they are anonymous is certain: you will not find the name of the author in any of the verses of any of them. It is only later when communities started having several Gospels that it became necessary to indicate which was which — this one is Matthew’s, this one Mark’s, etc. Before 150 CE, every author who appears to quote one of the Gospels does so simply by saying that this is something the Lord said; around 150 CE Justin calls them the Memoirs of the Apostles when he quotes them, but he doesn’t name any Gospel except the Gospel of Peter (and what he says about it does not apply, e.g., to our Gospel of Mark. It is only in 180 CE, with Irenaeus, that anyone quotes them and calls them Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. by that time they had to be differentiated because all four of them were being used and circulated within the same communities.
Dr. Ehrman:
Thank you, very interesting. One follow-up.
What about the counter that Bauckham and Tim McGrew (who said everyone knew who wrote those gospels, or had an idea who did; not sure what the latter means though) brought up, that when these church fathers and others quoted the Old Testament, they often wouldn’t refer to the associated book by name, and so why should we expect the same for the New Testament?
I suppose that’s the point. If they want to say that “everyone knew who wrote those gospels,” — what make them *think* so? Where’s there evidence. They can’t very well that everyone knew who wrote the Gospels and THEREFORE everyone knew they were written by Matthew Mark Luke and John. That’s the question, not the answer. And if everyone knew, why did someone start telling everyone later?
Do you know how Martin Luther dealt with the expectation of Jesus’s return in Jesus’s own generation? Maybe the gospels as written leave Jesus an out. But isn’t it pretty clear that Paul believed in Jesus’s imminent return for much of the time he was writing? Though toward the end of his life Paul came up with a different interim solution.
Since Luther was so heavily influenced by Paul, he must have had to deal with Paul’s expectation of Jesus’s imminent return. And he was so focused on scripture in general that he must have had at least an inkling that maybe many of the early Christians expected an imminent return.
Off hand I don’t know if he thought Jesus was referring to the coming of the Spirit on the Day of Pentecost or something else; but he definitely did not think that Jesus had made a mistake.
“Yes, that’s exactly what happened.”
JESUS CRIED TO GOD TO SAVE HIMSELF. John12: 27 “Now is my SOUL TROUBLE. Father SAVE ME FROM THIS HOUR:”
JESUS PERFORMED THE BEST PRAYER TO SAVE HIMSELF Mark14:36 “Father, all things are possible unto thee; take away this cup from me: not what I will, but what thou wilt.”
John 12:35 “a little while is the light with you. lest the darkness overtake you” Ascension very soon.
Jesus prophesied five times, SIGNIFICANT NUMBER, ENEMIES CANNOT ARREST JESUS. John 13: 33; 8:21-29; 7: 32-34; 12:32; and12:35; 7:36;
“he(GOD) has not left me alone,” GOD SAVED JESUS. IMPOSSIBLE TO CRUCIFY WHEN GOD IS WITH JESUS?
John16: 4-5 “NOW I am going to him who sent me;”
John16:10 “I go to the Father, and YOU WILL SEE ME NO MORE”
Luke22:43 “angel, strengthening him(Jesus).” Angel accompanied Jesus for ascension.
John17:3-4 “having accomplished the work which thou gave me to do” Jesus completed all assignments. NO CRUCIFIXION.
John16:4-5 “But NOW I am going to him who sent me;”NOW.
John16:10 “you will see me no more;”
JESUS DID NOT WANT TO BE KILLED. NT shows 100 % Jesus can never be crucified.
I beg you, gentleman of authority, recognized scholar, explain all the above verses?
I think it is extremely important to differentiate between two very different kinds of questions. One is: what does the New Testament say. The other is: what actually happened in history. The NT is quite clear in numerous places that Jesus chose to go to his death willingly. That is not to say that historically it was actually that way. My view is that it was not that way. But I don’t overlook the verses of the NT that say it was that way. You seem to have a good knowledge of the NT, so don’t overlook those verses.
“what does the New Testament say. The other is: what actually happened in history.”
Please illustrate what “happened in history”? The West obtained their history from NT and perhaps one or two historians with almost insignificant information. Almost everything is reliant on NT and possibility of another recognized, sacred book…..which you refused to acknowledge.
I cannot blame you because of your background having associated with Christianity all your life. It is difficult to change a stand embedded for so long.
“clear in numerous places that Jesus chose to go to his death willingly.” “so don’t overlook those verses.”
“Those verses””death willing”were the words of the authors not Jesus. Invention of the scribes.
Matthew 16:21“From that time Jesus began to show his disciples that he must go to Jerusalem and suffer many things from the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and on the third day be raised.”
Strictly sayings of the writers. Same method used by Mark and Luke. Christians actually believe the composer,who were not eye-witnesses.
“Those verses” on crucifixion and resurrection contain more than 100 contradictions. You are aware Jesus was crucified two different times. All prophecies are fake. Such doubtful, fabricated evidence will be rejected by any Courts.
I think you’re assuming that historians treat Christianity different from other phenomena in antiquity. If they are actually doing history instead of theology, they treat the rise of Christianity and its writings the same way they deal with any other religion or philosophyt from antiquity, teh same methods, the same ways of scrutinizing sources, and so on. On the basis of a thorough examination, there are a large number of things we can say about Jesus and his followrs. (Historians don’t say something happened just because a source says so)
“Christian faith arose after Jesus’ death based on the belief that God had raised him from the dead, not on the basis of his own teachings.”
1. Base on historical evidence I totally agree with you “not on the basis of his on teaching.”
2. Christian faith arose only after Jesus death, is partly correct. NT Evidence proves Christianity started long after Jesus’s ascension not death. On road to Damascus Paul claimed he heard voice of Jesus who could have resurrected.
That was the starting point of the belief that Jesus rose from the dead. Beginning of Christianity.
Paul, the first who initiated this idea base on Damascus experience. He wrote first 10 books of NT to sell his idea to the gentiles.
3. Paul’s experience contain many serious contradictions. From resurrection they now have to cooked-up the story of death. Death inevitably become a prerequisite. Anything that is concocted can easily crumble, collapse. Crucifixion surely contain serious, unimaginable discrepancies. Almost 150 contradictions, conflicting narratives and all fake prophecies on crucifixion. Evidence justify there was no death. Jesus never a Christian.
4. Absolutely no verse “God had raised Jesus from the dead.
5. Do you agree Paul sold his dubious theology successfully to the West?
No, I don’t agree with this reconstruction. Paul was persecuting Christians before he became one. That shows they were already claiming that Jesus was raised from the dead as the messiah and son of God before Paul. You may want to read my book on How Jesus Became God to see how it happened historically. It wouldnt’ change your overall view in teh broad sense, but it would give you more solid historical grounding.
Fascinating topic, I’ve always had questions about. While there are many Christian oddities I took for granted growing up, this one has always stood out to me. Now, working in the medical field, even more odd to think of someone profusely sweating blood. People at my church have always been adamant this is not only literal, but a somewhat important part of the story of mans redemption.
The argument that this was added to make Jesus more human to refute a docetic perspective seems sound, but I do have a couple rookie questions. Justin and Irenaeus are mentioning this topic in the second century, yet it is not in our oldest manuscripts. 1. How old are our oldest surviving ‘gospels’ manuscripts? I’m thinking they are more recent than the second century. 2. If Justin and Irenaeus knew these stories or traditions, we assume it to have been in manuscripts they had at the time? Though i suppose there were plenty of oral traditions circulating outside the manuscripts as well. Do we have any historic evidence as to what records these early church fathers actually had access to?
The oldest fairly large fragments (sizeable portions of pages) come from around 200 CE; the largest cmomplete manuscripts are mid 4th century; 2. Yes, they would have either read the story in mss or heard it from people who had told stories they heard in mss. There were indeed still oral traditions floating around, but as time goes on most of them are riffs (of greater or larger extent) on biblical materials.
One idea I remember hearing about “Christ Jesus” versus “Jesus Christ” and Paul is that it is more an issue of grammar than theology. Christos is a Greek word and would be easier to decline properly than the Aramic name Jesus.
Since Jesus does not decline I’m not sure it wouldn’t matter either way? Paul uses both.
As a honest scholar with charitable heart, please share your expertise?
Matthew10:5 “go NOT into the way of the Gentiles, and into any city of the Samaritans enter ye not.”
Was Paul doctrines against the teachings of Jesus? “go NOT into the way of the Gentiles,”
Evidently, Paul’s way was the Gentiles way. He allowed consumption of pork, cancelled circumcision abolished the LAW, and made Jesus LORD. How can Jesus and disciples go against their own fundamental beliefs and starts a different faith Christianity?
Time is the crucial factor to be able to identify the truth. After Paul claimed he heard the voice, then he began his preaching, wrote first ten books of NT, with HIS ASSUMPTION of the resurrection of Jesus as HIS principal focal theme. Paul never met Jesus. How can he recognize Jesus’s voice?
Time; before this incident, Christianity did not exist.
Nevertheless, Paul’s first ten books must have convinced four Greek composers to come out with death fictions decades later to corroborate Paul’s popular resurrection ASSUMPTION.
Four books, decades later, another decisive time factor which contributed the plot of crucifixion with unbelievable three figure discrepancies, untruthful prophecies for not witnessing crucifixion, that they intended to back Paul’s resurrection conjecture.
Matthew’s Gospel is set up to explain that during his *public ministry* Jesus took his message to the Jewish people of the homeland, and no one else. They by and large rejected his message. And so after his resurrectoin, in Matthew, he tells the disciples now to go outside and “make disciples of all the nations.” So Matthew’s assumption is that the salvation brought by Christ goes to the entire world. Paul believed he had been commissioned to take it to the entire world. So in that respect,at least, he and Matthew have almost exactly the same view.
“OK. Paul persecuted the followers of Jesus who were later called Christians.”
Thank You and appreciate your honest expertise to a vital question below.
You confessed openly in writing and verbally “I am an agnostic.” “I don’t believe in existence of God.”
The entire Christian population and their many scholars as well as church leaders assume Jesus, his disciples and followers were Christians without any single confession like what you have done repeatedly on so many official occasions.
Their admission is crucial to confirm the Christian faith is truthful.
Similarly, Paul was the first person to assume resurrection of Jesus according to historical evidence as well as the evidence of the time in which resurrection was first made known.
Likewise, Christian assume Jesus was crucified without a single eye-witness evidence.
In your professional opinion as a reputable scholar in this specialty, are the Christian assumptions acceptable and truthful?
I think it’s absolutely historical that Jesus was crucified. The evidence is overwhelming. Paul himself says he was not the first to believe in the resurrection. All of our sources agree he was right. He was a later convert, who had earlier persecuted Christians for believing in Jesus’ resurrection.
Dear Dr.Erhman,
interesting post I think I would agree that the sweating blood is more plausibly understood as a later addition. Do you think the original writings of what we call Matthew, Mark, luke and John were from eyewitness accounts?
Do you accept that Mark’s source was mainly Peter as credited by Papias of Hierapolis?
If this is the case, do you believe the gospels were considered sacred? Or do you think the gospels were mainly spread through word of mouth, and only then much later the gospels were written down to collate the disciples said about Jesus’s life, death and resurrection?
Kind regards.
No, I do not think these accounts are based on eyewitness reports or that Peter was the source of Mark’s narrative. If you’re interested in my reasons, I have a book on the issue: Jesus Before the Gospels.
OK, I will check out that book👍
However, Paul claims to have see the resurrected Jesus in 1 cor 15 and Gal 1, and met Peter and James to discuss the more than the weather! Paul says what he received (from Peter and James) was passed on as first importance, so the gospel message was preached very early on (as you seem to agree). My point is, as the core of the gospels(Matthew, Mark, luke and John) narrative is very similar so it seems to me at least, the core message and beliefs are early and from eyewitnesses. Am I missing something here?
Matthew and Luke used Mark as a source for their accounts — that’s why they are so impressively similar. John, of coruse, is *very* different up to the passion narrative.
Yes, granted John is different, but my point still seems to stand. Paul is believed to be from an early source of information, Paul got his info from eyewitnesses and claimed to be an eyewitness himself. The core gospel message of Jesus’s death, burial and resurrection/appearances seems then to be from eyewitnesses too.
Yes, granted John is different, but my point still seems to stand. Paul is believed to be from an early source of information, Paul got his info from eyewitnesses and claimed to be an eyewitness himself. The core gospel message of Jesus’s death, burial and resurrection/appearances seems then to be from eyewitnesses too.
Paul certainly claimed to be an eyewitness to the resurrection itself, yes. If you’d like a full account of eyewitnesses in relation to the Gospel traditions, see my book Jesus Before th eGospels.
Okay, thanks, you have been very gracious with your time, in answering my questions.
It is a true honor to get to discuss such topics with an expert.
Dr. Ehrman: This is a really off the wall question, but I am curious as to your opinion on John Calvin? As a practicing Roman Catholic, I have nothing but respect for this man! He was brilliant! I have read most of his writings. Do you think you could have defeated him in a debate? Just curious on your thoughts…
He was absolutely brilliant. Since I was trained in a Presbyterian seminar in the Calvinist tradition, when my friends quoted Calvin it was like quoting the fourth member of the Trinity.