Note:
Only those reader comments which are given a response are listed in
this Index:
Martin
writes:
Your website is excellent. Thank you for making your work freely
available. I found it when looking for some informed criticism of Lee
Strobel's book [The Case for Christ]
which a "committed christian" friend of mine lent to me after I asked
for a good case for his faith. I did not have a solid response to the
book and I look forward to benefiting from your work [Challenging the Verdict: A
Cross-Examination of Lee Strobel's 'The Case for Christ': see
excerpts at StrobelIntro.htm and ctvadvert.htm].
While I have been an atheist for almost 40 years, I have
never really had a coherent picture of how christianity arose. Your
work on the mythicist position provides answers beyond anything I could
have hoped for. Oddly, I felt after cursory research that the mythical
Jesus view seemed plausible despite the ready dismissal about which you
so rightly complain, and the non-christian "evidence" for his
historicity seemed weak, but I was unaware that such a coherent thesis
as you lay out could be constructed. Now that I have read it, it seems
that no other account comes close to making as much sense. It has the
kind of power that I remember plate tectonics had when it emerged as
the successful organizing principle for a wealth of disparate
geological observations. Suddenly elements which made no sense fitted
together - like a puzzle - and previous silly speculations of orogeny
through geosynclines or the spread of organisms across mysterious land
bridges could be discarded.
Keep
up the good work. If I have one complaint, it is that you have written
so much that I am spending most of my free time on your website!
Roger writes:
As a victim of a
Jesuit education, it has taken me a long time to shed the Christian
religion. Your writings have helped enormously. I am still endeavoring
to understand why I, and other people that I regard as reasonably
intelligent, can believe such (now obvious to me) constructed rubbish.
Bruce writes:
For the last several days I have been reading the web
sites concerning your work, The Jesus Puzzle. The work is masterful and
quite readable.
I wish I had this information when I was 12. It would have
spared me a lot of anguish; a comforting shining light in a dark world.
I was raised in an unnecessarily strict Irish-Catholic world that made
no sense to me. I questioned the myths from about age 8 onward, much to
the consternation of a long line of nuns which, in turn, got me in a
lot of trouble at home. I spend several decades after that studying and
arguing most of the same issues you present so well.
Randy
writes:
I count you
as one of the early influences in my own research into the origins of
that
religion which plagues us. Though my focus has been more on the
origins
of Judaism, which I have come to believe was greatly influenced by the
Persians
and Zoroastrianism, I am beginning to see those same roots as having so
much in
common with Christianity that I cannot understand how it could be
ignored. Not only did Zoroastrianism provide aspects of Christian
belief
ranging from angels, Heaven, Hell, Satan, etc., but the first
monotheistic
religion
to preach an eschatology that would be resolved by a divine savior
(they called
him the Sayoshant) who would redeem mankind and establish a kingdom of God was Zoroastrianism. I think a
pretty clear case could be made that Judaism was consistently
influenced by
Zoroastrian beliefs and that ultimately, after Alexander's destruction
of the Persian Empire, these influences were covered up
by the Hasmoneans.
The point
is I wondered if you had ever considered that a lot of the mystery
religion
beliefs were examples of Persian influence on the religions of their
captive
nations. It simplifies the creation of the Jesus myth.
Revelation reads like the Avesta (much of the Zoroastrian
holy book
was destroyed by Alexander and then later by the Muslims so there are
large
parts of it that could not be reconstructed), as it fits closely the
eschatology
therein expressed. In fact there have been a few books published
about
the parallels between the Avesta, Daniel and Revelation (both
Lawrence
H. Mills and Mary Boyce have written extensively on this subject).
Thanks for
the site and your views. I think anyone who does not
seriously
consider your arguments and professes to be a biblical scholar is
simply
fooling themselves.
Gary writes:
Thanks for your
great web site and your jesus puzzle work. The two new
articles on Hebrews and Galatians were very welcome. I have spent the
last half year examining these and the other "Pauline" letters. After
reading your work and that of G. A. Wells, I decided to read the
letters through and see how well the mythicist argument held up. It
holds up very well.
Noel
writes:
I've been simply
taken over by your web site, sir. I recently came across it and am so
happy to have access to the wealth of material there. Thank you for
your efforts. I love your way of reasoning, your writing voice has to
be near-perfect, and the writing itself is quite clear and correct, a
quality I appreciate as a copy editor. So far, for purely logical
presentation, you are the man.
Tom writes:
I'm a regular visitor to
your website, and have enjoyed your articles and reviews. I
accept your
mythicist arguments (as much as I can understand without Greek skills),
including your newest analysis of Hebrews.
Rod writes:
I am a big fan of your
work and consider your website to be a valuable source of information
and
enlightenment. I would especially like to thank you for turning me on
to
the “Testament of Man” series by Vardis Fisher (I had never heard of it
until I
visited your website). I located and purchased the books one by one
through the ABE.com website and finished reading the series this past
summer.
Wow. Someone really needs to bring that series back into print.
David writes:
Just a quick note to say 'Many thanks' for your website and all the valuable
information contained in it. After being a
fundamentalist in my teen years and then rejecting this and all
religious belief, I have retained my interest in the subject. I
was wholly 'converted' to G. A. Wells in the 1980s and
therefore always welcome discussion from the Mythicist stance. I have heard
numerous various Christian counter-arguments and as these invariably fail
to produce anything useful and, sadly, are primarily devoted
to unpleasant personal insult, these, to me, merely confirm
the weakness of the Christian position on the historicity
question.
Larry
writes:
Thanks so
much for your excellent book, "Challenging The Verdict" and please,
please, please tell me you plan on writing a book (or at least a
review) on
Lee's new book, "The Case for the Real Christ". Best wishes in our
quest to find happiness and to avoid suffering.
[E.D.: I have no plans for a
review. Once you've read one of Lee Strobel's books you've
read them all, since he uses the same kind of devices and special
pleading methods no
matter what his specific subject matter, and once you've read one
review exposing those devices, you can safely dismiss anything he has
written. However, there is a very good amateur review on the web of his
The Case for the Real Christ. Check out Paul Doland's http://www.caseagainstfaith.com/articles/therealjesus.htm]
David writes:
As a former Lutheran Pastor, who began to question as a
result of NT studies in
seminary, I have one thing to say to you: thank you.
Nick writes:
My name is Nick, and i am writing to you from Athens, Greece. I have
read your book 'The Jesus Puzzle' and i want to congratulate you for
writing such a book. I am a devout Christian and i believe not only
that Jesus existed, but also that he is God incarnate, although i have
to admit that your argument for the non-existence of Jesus is worthy of
serious consideration. Your book provides new insights and is thought
provocative.
"In love with God" writes:
You
have to be the dumbest person out there to blasphemy God. You
won't be talking like this when your in hell burning. Its not too
late to change your wicked ways. You make me sick to my stomache,
all the hypocrites and blasphamers do. No respect for God, He is
the reason you are alive.
Ben
writes:
As a
former child member of a Christian cult (Armstrongism), I have made
slow progression towards the realisation that religion is a purely
human construct. Such things as the various inconsistencies in
the gospels etc are never mentioned in churches. Yet even as a
child I read and questioned them, yet no good answer was given to me as
to why the "holy accounts" did not coincide. The evolution from
brainwashed Christian to atheist has been slow and painful. It is
still an issue of contention between members of my family.
I have read with interest your thesis The Jesus Puzzle. I
have also recently finished "Forgery in Christianity" by Joseph
Wheless. If your thesis is correct and Jesus never existed except as an
abstract, then I must assume you agree with Wheless that the scriptures
are "pious forgeries"; ie not written by who is claimed to have written
them. Nor written early in the 1st century but are rather the
product of doctrinal advancement in the 2nd century. For all
intents and purposes, "forged" to reinforce the particular doctrines
and authority favoured by the forger.
My question is this: Why do I see the dates of the
Gospels creeping forward from the 130-180 CE indicated by Wheless (from
the writings of Irenaeus) to 100 or even 90 CE by certain other
writers, even critical writers? I realize that Wheless' work is
old but his theories seem sound. I cannot believe that if "God's
Holy Words" were floating around for nearly 90 years that none of the
early church fathers would have mentioned them. Has new evidence
of extant early manuscripts of Gospels been uncovered proving an
earlier date?
I understand that the argument from silence is not
considered conclusive. However, for myself the idea is simply too
incredible that early religious fanatics would not have spouted from
"Holy Gospels" and quoted them at length had they known of them at all.
Response to Ben:
When were the Gospels written?
Ben has opened up a large can of worms
here. “When were the Gospels written?” may be the question which
critical commentators would place at the very head of the list of most
important and debatable issues in all of New Testament research. Those
familiar with my writings will know that I do not subscribe to the very
radical late dating of the Gospels (post-130 and beyond) held by the
likes of Joseph Wheless or the Dutch Radical School of the 19th
century, or moderns like Hermann Detering and Acharya S, and even
Robert M. Price, but would place Mark in the late first century (the
90s, let's say, as does G. A. Wells, discussed below), with the other
three canonicals following within the next few decades. The question is
a complex one, involving other non-Gospel documents, and issues
historical and theological within the Christian movement covering
almost a century. To try to bring them all together into a detailed
examination would be beyond the scope of this response. But perhaps we
can look at a few key elements.
Traditional attempts at dating have been
primarily dependent
on the analysis of the Little Apocalypse of Mark chapter 13, which most
mainstream
scholars have regarded as referring to the upheaval of the Jewish War
of 66-73
CE, centered on the destruction of the Temple
and much of the city of Jerusalem
in 70. Its key element is the reference to the “abomination of
desolation” (13:14). A
possible Jewish literary source used
by Mark has been postulated as having originally referred to the threat
by the
emperor Caligula in 37 CE to set up a statue of himself for worship in
the Jerusalem Temple.
Be that as it may (there is
no direct evidence for such a document), Mark in creating his own text
was
drawing midrashically on Daniel 11:31 and 1 Maccabees 1:54, both of
which use
the phrase “abomination of desolation” to refer to the setting up of a
pagan
altar within the Temple sanctuary in the time of the Seleucid king
Antiochus
Epiphanes (167 BCE), which led to the Maccabean revolt. (Antiochus also
imposed
the placement of pagan altars throughout Judea.)
It has
been generally assumed that Mark in 13:14
used the term to refer to the sacrilegious activities of the Romans in
the Temple
when they conquered the city in 70 (though this appears not to have
involved
the setting up of a formal pagan altar).
But there are difficulties here. The whole
tone of Mark’s
scene suggests that it is not a simple allusion to history placed in
Jesus’
mouth in the form of a prophecy. If the event of the “abomination of
desolation” lies in the writer’s—and the readers’—past, what is the
purpose of
the reference and especially its accompanying warnings? Why would Mark
include
it? Rather, it has the same content and atmosphere as other passages in
the
Synoptics (and in Q) in which prophecies are made about the future
coming of
the Son of Man, what can be expected when he arrives and how best to
prepare
for it ahead of time, even if one does not know the hour.
In other words, such prophecies are meant
to
enlighten and
caution the reader, not to recount history. Indeed, Mark goes on to
have Jesus
prophecy about the coming of the Son of Man. And the insertion of an
‘aside’ at the very reference to the abomination of desolation—“let
the
reader understand”—is Mark’s alert to his readers
that this is something cryptic,
something the reader is going to have to interpret. There would be no
necessity
for this if Mark were simply having Jesus refer to a future (for him)
historical
event every reader was familiar with.
In such a context, in fact, the passage
about
the
abomination of desolation and the urged response to it would make
little
sense. By the time the Romans have conquered Jerusalem
and desecrated the Temple,
the
campaign would essentially be over, the country overrun. There would be
no
thought of a man being “on his roof” or out “in his field” attending to
normal
chores, with still time to flee to the mountains. Nor is it easy to
understand
why Mark would place such warnings and directives in Jesus’ mouth
unless they
were relevant to his own readers—unless they were directed at those
readers,
which could hardly be the case if the whole thing referred to an event
in their
past.
To get around this problem, it is sometimes
suggested that
Mark was written in the years just prior to 70, when the war was
building and
the Gospel writer anticipated the event of the “abomination” and the
necessity
to flee. But this raises more problems than it solves. Even during the
build-up, would the writer have truly anticipated the utter destruction
of the Temple,
“not one stone left upon another”? Would he have recommended waiting
until such
a climactic moment before fleeing to the hills? Would he, from such a
vantage
point, not have been likely to view the accelerating events he was
witnessing as
a sign that the End was indeed near, and thus would not have introduced
earlier
in the chapter broad hints that a certain amount of time after
the throwing down of the Temple would be yet to pass before
the final days, that following “battles near at hand and far away”
(13:7) “the
end is still to come”? That “the Gospel must be proclaimed to all
nations” (13:10)? It is hard
to believe Mark would
consider such a requirement to have been fulfilled by the year 66. For
such
reasons it is difficult also to place the Gospel shortly after 70, as
traditional scholarship tends to. Thus, we need to look for another
‘event’ some
time after 70 to which the “abomination of desolation” and its
accompanying
advice can refer and serve as a relevant warning to Mark’s readers to
drop
everything and flee.
When stepping back and looking at the
entirety of Jesus’
prophecy in Mark 13, we find that it is a curious mix, until we
perceive that
it conforms to traditional apocalyptic writing and devices. As in the
classic
example of the book of Daniel, written between 167 and 164 BCE while
purporting
to be the product of someone earlier (in this case the prophet Daniel
some four
centuries previously), the writer of Mark has included, as part of a
prophecy by
his Jesus some four decades before the fact, the destruction of the
Temple in the
Jewish War. The writer of the book of Daniel had his Daniel ‘predict’
historical events up
to 167—predictions which of course had come true—in the hope that the
readers
would have faith in the additional prophecies being made for their own
future after that date.
Similarly, Mark ‘hooked’ the reader into thinking that the Jesus
figure—or the
movement he is meant to symbolize (we are not sure if Mark’s
allegory-Gospel
envisions a founder figure he believes existed)—had accurately
predicted a future
historical event; by this Mark hopes to convince the reader that his
own
prophecies about the arrival of the End time, beginning with the
abomination of
desolation, followed by dramatic celestial events and the arrival of
the
Son of
Man as laid out in 13:24-27, can also be trusted to happen.
The lesser apocalyptic events outlined in
13:8-13, wars and
earthquakes, false messiahs (repeated in v.21-3), floggings in
synagogues,
arrests, trials and betrayals, are likely also things that have already
been
happening, prophecies fulfilled, including between the Jewish War and
“the end still to
come.” But the abomination of desolation which Mark is predicting is
yet to
occur. The scene is clearly meant to have meaning for his readers, to
serve as
a warning for their own future. Its portrayed character seems quite
specific,
and we should presume that Mark has a real development in mind which he
perceives as potentially imminent in his own environment.
And what was that environment? Here we face
another difficulty,
in that the writer directs Jesus’ warnings to “those in Judea.”
But is Mark writing to “Judeans”? After the War, actual Judeans were to
a
great
extent dispersed, dead or enslaved. What “abomination” were they yet
facing
that they could flee from and save themselves? What Christians now
inhabited Judea?
Moreover, what members of a Jewish community would need the
explanations for
Jewish traditions which Mark supplies throughout his text? And why is
it that the writer
shows a misunderstanding of certain geographical features of Galilee
if he were part of a Judean-based Jewish-Christian community? Such
questions lead
many to
surmise that Mark was written outside Palestine,
and for a readership of non-Jewish Christians. (However, there seems no
need to
push him as far away as Rome,
especially if we assume that Mark’s Q-like environment spells a locale
not too
far from Galilee—probably Syria,
where we can see that the Kingdom-preaching movement embodied in Q had
extended.)
Thus we ought to conclude that the phrase
“those in Judea”
does not refer to literal Judeans, but to Mark’s readership, as a kind
of code
phrase. It would be pointless to construct a prophetic scene out of
scripture
and have Jesus warning a group of people who had nothing to do with
that
readership. Perhaps the “people of Judea” was
used by
Mark’s community to highlight its self-understanding as the new people
of God’s
promise.
That the scene was inspired by scripture is
clear
from the passage in 1 Maccabees which contains key elements drawn on by
Mark.
King Antiochus had set up the “abomination of desolation” in the very
Holy of
Holies of the Temple, but he had also built pagan altars throughout the
country
and ordered the Jews on pain of death to worship the gods at them (1
Macc.
1:54). Mattathias and his five sons defy the King’s orders and start
destroying
the altars throughout Israel,
killing apostates and the king’s officers. Then:
“Follow me,”
he shouted through
the town, “every one of you who is zealous for
the law and strives to maintain
the covenant.” He and his sons took to the hills,
leaving all their belongings
behind in the town.” [2:27-8, NEB]
Mark borrows the latter thought in 13:14:
But when you
see
‘the abomination
of desolation’ usurping a place which is not his (let the reader
understand),
then those who are in Judea must take to the
hills,
not stopping to take anything from the
house,
not even a coat. It
has been suggested that a closely similar situation existed in the
reign of
Domitian (81-96), specifically around the year 90, when this emperor
planned to
force Jews—which would have included Christians, since the requirement
applied
to all Rome’s subjects—to participate in the rites of emperor worship.
While we
don’t know if there was any intention to set up special altars for the
purpose,
the parallel with the situation under Antiochus as recounted in 1
Maccabees is
striking. Is this the “abomination of desolation” Mark is referring to,
the
threatened practice of pagan rites to be established in all the
empire’s
centers, which Christians could never agree to participate in? Mark,
through
Jesus’ symbolic prophecy, was warning his community about this imminent
eventuality, this new abomination. Taking his cue from 1 Maccabees, he
advised
them to “flee into the hills” as Mattathias and his sons had done. It’s
a
compelling proposition. And it would place the writing of Mark no more
than two
decades following the horrors of the Jewish War, so resonant of the
crisis
surrounding Antiochus, a time when the idea that the End and the
arrival of the
Son of Man was around the corner could still have been alive and vivid.
As
well, in a location like Syria
this resonance makes much better sense than a directive to Christians
in Rome
to flee into hills.
G. A. Wells [The
Historical Evidence for Jesus, p.108-112] presents this analysis in
detail,
drawing on E. A. Haenchen’s Der Weg Jesu.
He says in part:
Haenchen argues, then, that what Mark envisaged was an attempt
by a
Roman emperor to force pagan worship on Christians, as Antiochus had
done on
his subjects. The Book of Revelation [E.D.:
generally
dated to the 90s as well] reckons with such a possibility. The
point was
not baldly stated, since open criticism of imperial power would have
been
dangerous not only for the author but also for the community in which
his book
was used. For this reason, Revelation’s author sometimes writes “Babylon”
when he means “Rome,” and
disparages an emperor without mentioning his name. But to make sure
that he
will nevertheless be understood, he several times insists that his
readers should
seek out the secret sense of his words (“If any man hath an ear, let
him hear”;
“Here is wisdom” for him “that hath understanding,” etc.).
Haenchen argues that Mark had to be equally cautious of Rome,
and for that reason adopted the same method of warning his readers that
his
message was in coded form (“let him that readeth understand”). And he
decodes
Mark’s message to read: As soon as preparations (that is, the setting
up of an
image or altar) are seen being made for a compulsory sacrifice to a
pagan god
or to the emperor himself—as soon, then, as the sacrilege is seen
standing
“where he ought not to be”—then those in Judea (that is, Christians)
are to
flee to the mountains. Judea is named because
Mark
regards the coming Roman persecutions as fulfilling the prophecy of
Daniel; he
reproduces Daniel’s phrasing so as to be unintelligible except to his
Christian
readers, who will understand that, although only those in Judea
are mentioned, Christians anywhere in the Empire are meant…
Other features noted by Wells support the
logic of a date
around 90 for Mark’s composition of this chapter. But another
interpretation
has been raised by more radical scholarship, in keeping with the trend
noted by
Ben to date all the Gospels post-130 or even later. Could the
abomination and the warning to
flee refer to events of the second Jewish War/Revolt of 132-135 CE? By
this
reading, Hadrian’s establishment of pagan altars on the Temple
mount after 130 became the “abomination of desolation” which Mark is
referring
to, and with the revolt under Bar Kochba taking shape in response, Mark
is
warning his readers to flee to the hills. In this case, “those in Judea,”
where the revolt started, would be meant literally.
This interpretation, however, encounters
much
the same
difficulties as before. It is highly unlikely that Mark is writing in Judea
for Judeans. If his readership is as far away as Rome,
or even only in Syria,
there would be no need to urge people in those areas to take to the
hills. The
second war, as a rebellion and in terms of the Roman response, was more
limited in scope and territory than the first one.
Proponents of the later dating also point
to
the possibility
floated at the time of the Bar Kochba revolt that the Temple, destroyed
60
years earlier, could be rebuilt, and that this is what Jesus is
alluding to
when in Mark 14:58 he is accused at his trial of having said: “I will
throw
down this temple, made with human hands, and in three days I will build
another, not made with hands.” Is this meant to be a prophecy of the
Bar Kochba
situation, when Jews were holding out the expectation that the Temple
would be rebuilt? (This would require that Mark wrote before the
failure of the
revolt by 135.)
Yet this requires a serious contravention
of
the words of
the statement itself. First of all, the rebuilding of the Temple
after 60 years is hardly “three days later,” and Jesus is saying that
it is
himself who will do the building, and not “with hands.” The prophecy
clearly
bears a spiritual significance, with the three days no doubt referring
to his
resurrection. It should also be asked why any Christian would have an
interest
in seeing the Jewish Temple rebuilt, to resume the old sacrifices which
Jesus’
own sacrificial death had supposedly supplanted. Mark would be very
unlikely to
purposely associate Jesus’ prophetic intentions with the rebuilding of
the Temple,
especially at a time when Christianity had made a complete break with
Judaism
and there was mostly bad blood between the two groups.
Associating Mark 13 with the second Jewish
War of the 130s
is problematic enough to be denied credence. Besides which, there are
difficulties of a more general nature associated with such a late date.
By 130,
apocalyptic expectations among Christian’s had receded. The Gospel of
Luke, for
example, downplays any immediacy for the future Parousia of Christ,
whereas for
Mark the event was almost around the corner. And yet, if Mark was
written no
earlier than 132, this means that the other two Synoptics, and even
John, would
have had to follow as redactions of Mark almost immediately, within a
handful
of years. By the 140s, Marcion was operating in Rome
and putting together his canon of authoritative documents in support of
his own
theology. It featured a shorter version of the Gospel of Luke (probably
the
postulated Ur-Luke later doctored and expanded by the Roman Church
around or just
after the
middle of the 2nd
century). Justin, hardly a few years later, was
speaking of, and quoting from, multiple accounts he called “memoirs of
the
Apostles.” The fragment P52 of the Gospel of John, usually dated
about
125—though around 150 would be a more cautious and reasonable
‘mean’
date—would indicate that at least an early version would have been in
existence
no later than the second quarter of the century.
This would mean that all of the four
Gospels
would have to
be crammed into a window of composition not much longer than a decade.
Since it
is assumed that they were not all composed in the same center, this
would necessitate
an immediate and rapid distribution of copies of Mark to most major
Christian
communities and its equally immediate transformation into other
divergent
versions. This is something which is hardly suggested by the dearth of
witness
to the Gospel story in many centers even well past the mid-point of the
century. To get around that, some radical scholars have suggested that
in fact
Marcion’s version of Luke was the original Gospel, a suggestion too
problematic
to seriously countenance. One of the things it requires is that Mark
was actually
later, and not the first Gospel; but Mark as a drastically reduced
version of
Luke or Matthew cannot hold water.
As well, the mid
to
late 2nd
century dating of all the Gospels has required that other early
Christian
documents be judged as forgeries and placed beyond the mid-century mark
as
well. This includes 1 Clement and the epistles of Ignatius, since these
are
regarded as showing at least a basic knowledge of some Gospel elements.
(Here,
I believe the latter view is weakly supported, at least in terms of
elements
that would have been derived from circulating written documents. The
Ignatian
epistles in their simpler, “Shorter” recension may be forgeries, but
written
not too long after his death.) The epistle of Polycarp, perhaps from
the 130s,
also shows signs of Gospel knowledge, as does, rather crudely, the
epistle of
Barnabas from roughly the same time. But when most of these documents
are
pushed past the mid-century in the interests of supporting the radical
late
dating of the Gospels, we get the sense that the whole structure has
become unwieldy,
an unstable contrivance. When it is occasionally suggested that even
the works
of Justin are a later forgery (I've even encountered the same for
Irenaeus), the whole thing verges on the outrageous.
Firm attestation of written Gospels is
admittedly late, in
Justin (150s) and by inference in Marcion a few years earlier, but this
in
itself cannot determine the date of composition; especially since
modern
scholarly dismantling of the Gospels to reveal their midrashic
non-historical
nature points to a situation in which they could well have been written
decades
earlier as allegorical works, known within a limited range of
communities but not
to emerge into the wider light of Christian knowledge until they began
to gain
traction as historical documents, relevant to a newly-imagined genesis
of the
faith. (I regard Ignatius’ basic Gospel biography of Jesus, from
sometime
between 107 and 120, let's say, as “rumors” of an historical Jesus
based on a Mark or
Matthew beginning to make waves from somewhere beyond his own community
of Antioch, since
Ignatius makes no appeal to a written document in support of his Jesus
crucified under Pilate and fails to make mention of any teachings or
miracles
attributed to him.) A date of Mark around 90, with Matthew following
perhaps a
decade later, Luke a decade or so after that, and John not too much
beyond the Synoptic group, would fit all the details of the picture
which early
Christianity presents, including knowledge of the Gospel ‘events.’ Only
by the
year 180, as witnessed in the writings of Irenaeus, did all four
crystallize as
canonical, having passed through a certain amount of editing by the
Roman
Church and acquiring the names of their newly-imagined authors.
Ben is puzzled by the fact that Christians
did not quote
from these “Holy Gospels” soon after they were written, if the proposal
for their earlier composition
is correct. But one cannot quote from something which has not reached
one yet,
or is not regarded as something representing the words and deeds of an
historical person.
Doug writes:
I've
been a long-time reader of your website and have e-mailed you in the
past and
you've even posted a couple of my posts along with your responses on
your
Feedback page. I puzzle over your interpretation of "according to the
flesh" in Romans 1:3. You say it refers to "the realm of flesh"
in the upper heavenly spheres of Platonic cosmology. But the same
phrase
is used in Romans 9:3 where Paul clearly means that he is biologically
related
to his Jewish brethren. In Ephesians 6:5 and Colossians 3:22 the
authors
use the phrase to refer to the masters of slaves. In 2 Corinthians 1:17 and 10:2 the phrase refers to
the carnal, unspiritual
nature of man. Isn't the most logical reading of the phrase in Romans
1:3 that
Jesus was a real man who (Paul claims) was literally descended from
King David?
Also,
your reading of the passage in Hebrews 13:11-13 seems counter-intuitive
in the
same way. If Jesus being executed "outside the camp [I think Doug meant to say 'gate' here]"
was a
mythological derivation from the sacrifices offered by priests in the
days of Israel's
wandering in the
wilderness then why didn't the author just say Jesus was also executed
"outside the camp"? Instead, he writes "outside the gate."
You speculate that he suggests in verse 13 that Christians are
outsiders
in the same sense that Jesus was. I gather you mean that in the first
century
outcast Christians were "outside the gate" because in those days the
Jews lived in walled cities rather than camps. But if that is the case
then
why, in verse 13, does the author go right back to saying "outside the
camp"? It seems obvious to me that he speaks of Jesus killed "outside
the gate" because he was in fact a real man who was crucified right
outside the walls of Jerusalem.
Response to Doug:
Romans 1:3 and "kata sarka"Again / Outside the Gate
(Hebrews 13:11-13)
Romans 1:3, seconded by Galatians 4:4’s
“born
of woman,” is
the passage most often appealed to when challenging or questioning the
mythicist case and my own especially. On the latter passage, I have
increasingly over the years leaned toward regarding it as an
interpolation, and
my most recent Supplementary Article, “Born of
Woman?,” explains why and
discusses the matter in detail. However, I do not regard Romans 1:3 as
an
interpolation, but it is the passage whose explanation in the context
of my
case is most consistently misunderstood. I will make another effort to
try to
clarify.
First let me repeat two points I have
regularly made. If
biography, this would be the only such reference Paul ever makes about
an
historical Jesus (allowing that 1 Thessalonians 2:15-16 is an
interpolation—on
which many critical scholars agree—and 1 Timothy 6:13 is part of a 2nd
century document, not by Paul; in any case, the latter too may be an
interpolation—see
the Appendix to Article No. 3, Who Crucified
Jesus?). Since there is no identifiable reason why Paul should
refer to
Jesus’
historical descent from David in the context of Romans 1, this would be
an odd
singularity. However, it is not so odd if we draw on that context to
explain the reference and its source.
Romans 1:2 makes it clear that Paul is
speaking of the
source of his gospel about Jesus: namely, the “gospel of God...about
his
Son” as
found in the prophets. The descent of the Messiah from David is a
prominent
element of traditional Jewish prophecy, and Paul is stating that he has
derived
such information about Christ from those prophecies. Since it is in
scripture,
he is led to apply it to his spiritual Christ, even if it originally
applied to a human man. How he conceives of that
relationship between Christ and David is not clear to us, but such a
connection
is not impossible, given what we know about ancient mythical thinking
and the
relationship between heaven and earth and between spiritual and
material
counterparts in Platonic-style cosmology. We don’t know even if he had any clear understanding of it in his own mind,
or was
simply relying on scripture as pointing to some cryptic truth. The fact
that he
pairs this relationship to David with an obviously scriptural and
spiritual
‘event’ in verse 4 also persuades us that the former is a scriptural
and
spiritual conception as well, having no necessary connection to an
historical
tradition about an historical person.
What, then, of the “kata
sarka”? Here in particular there is usually a misunderstanding
of my
treatment of this phrase. I have never said, contrary to Doug, that it
represents “the upper heavenly spheres of
Platonic cosmology.” As we know, it is usually
translated as
“according to
the flesh,” but what does that mean?
The phrase is used in a variety of contexts, as Doug suggests, and the
natural reading is that it refers to flesh of the fleshly realm, that
is, the realm
that
humans are a part of. Sometimes the word “sarx”
can be a reference to actual humanity, as in Romans 9:3, or more
loosely to
aspects of being human, as in 2 Corinthians 5:16, where the phrase does
not
refer to Christ’s ‘flesh’
but to the “human standards”
by which people like
Paul have previously judged Christ.
This is not to say that the term sarx does not at times refer to Christ’s
own—spiritual—flesh
(more on this shortly). In regard to the
phrase “kata sarka” itself, in The Jesus Puzzle
(p.122) I allowed that it could in certain places, like other phrases
using sarx, signify Christ
taking on “the spiritual counterpart of flesh.”
(Scholars do acknowledge such a concept and use of the word: see The Jesus Puzzle,
p.103 and the latest edition of Bauer’s Lexicon.)
But I have since moved away from that option for “kata sarka”
itself (and I trust I am allowed to change or refine my position on
some things over eight years) to focus on the other interpretation I
offered. “According to the
flesh,” while woolly, primarily suggests the
meaning that would be conveyed
by the
translation “in relation to the flesh,” “in regard to the flesh,” “as
affecting
the flesh,” etc. One can see that here the word itself is not a
reference to
Christ’s own (spiritual) flesh, but rather to humanity, to the fleshly
material realm. It is
Christ’s relationship with that realm
which is at issue.
Thus we need to analyze Romans 1:3 from the
point of view of
a meaning not of ‘Christ in his own flesh was of David’s seed,’ but
rather ‘Christ
in relation to David and the realm of flesh was of his seed.’ The
difference
is significant because the concept no longer hangs on literal or
standard
meanings
of the word “flesh.” The word itself can be allowed to assume its usual
meaning, as a reference to humanity and the fleshly sphere. In
relation to humanity and its sphere
(“kata sarka”) Christ possesses or
has assumed a certain character having to do with David. The knowledge
of that
character has been derived from scripture. Believers like Paul in a
spiritual
Son of God discovered in scripture have applied, of
necessity,
characteristics to him which scripture has revealed, such as a
relationship to
David, and (possibly, if it is not an interpolation) the “birth” from a
woman in Galatians 4:4,
derived from Isaiah 7:14.
As I said, these concepts would not be
impossible in the
context of Platonic mythology, though again, we cannot know just how
Paul and
the early Christians understood them. The epistles
are full
of references to “mysteries” of God that have been revealed, including
the
mystery/secret of Christ, and we can point to a subsequent “mystery”
which Christianity
has accepted without understanding it, namely the Trinity. Given the
evolution
of the concept of Jesus, the Trinity doctrine became necessary in order
to make
room for Jesus in a monotheistic Godhead. It is no more outlandish to
think
that early Christians accepted the spiritual Christ’s relationship to
the human
David simply because it, too, was necessary: scripture said so, and
that scriptural designation
had to
be applied to their heavenly Son and Messiah.
In the matter of Romans 1:3, I have further
suggested
(taking a cue from C. K. Barrett, something which is regularly
misunderstood as well) that “kata sarka,” in its
meaning of ‘in relation to the flesh,’
could also envision that “flesh” in a locational
sense, as “in the sphere of the flesh,”
to use Barrett’s phrase and give it a more
pronounced locational meaning than he probably intended.
Since the
ancients had greater associations of location than we do in
distinguishing
between flesh and spirit and the inhabitants of both, the activities
performed
by spiritual beings which affected humanity—and particularly if they
involved
suffering and death—belonged to a specific lower area of the universe,
usually
located below the moon. Paul is not clear about the exact location of
Christ’s
crucifixion, but there are certain indicators (such as 1 Corinthians
2:8) that
he, and others, regarded the agency of that crucifixion as the demon
spirits.
They were denizens of that “sphere of flesh” below the moon, inhabiting
the
firmament or “air” up to the region of the moon and possessing their
own kind
of material corporeality, though not of human
flesh. (Again, see The Jesus Puzzle,
p.103.)
Thus, the thought behind Romans 1:3 could
include the idea
of Jesus’ redeeming activity when he had descended to the realm of
fleshly
corruptibility, which did not have to be all the way to earth itself.
It
was in this context that he was seen as possessing his
scripture-revealed
relationship to David. In traditional Jewish thought the Messiah, as
descendant
of David, would be the savior of Israel, and so, as Savior, Christ in
that role
which he assumed upon his descent into the realm of flesh may have been
conceived as being “of David’s seed,” as scripture indicated. There is
also a
wide spectrum of meaning, from literal to symbolic, in which that
relationship
to David could have been interpreted, and from the brief and cryptic
reference
in 1:3 we cannot tell where along such a spectrum early Christian
thought lay.
“Kata sarka” can be used in
metaphorical ways in other contexts, such as the common reference in
the
epistles to “walking kata sarka,”
i.e., living and behaving according to the ways of the flesh (e.g., 2
Cor.
10:2-3), or judging by worldly standards, or acting according to one’s
baser
nature. It can describe the human condition or a state of mind. It is
hardly a
stretch to assume the possibility of an equally symbolic intention in
Romans 1:3. The savior of Israel would be a “son
of David,” and just as “son
of God” was applied to many people in a
non-literal sense, Jesus as the seed of David may also have been meant
in a non-literal way, especially when scripture had to be accommodated.
In the excerpt below, I point out that gentiles are spoken of as “of
Abraham’s seed” in a sense
that is not meant to designate literal physical lineage.
In regard to the locational sense behind
this
verse, we can postulate the same in the first line of the
christological hymn of 1 Timothy 6:13,
which uses a variant of kata sarka:
“who was
revealed
in flesh [en sarki]…”
This need not be a reference to Jesus’ own
flesh, but to the
realm of flesh, of humanity: he was revealed to humans within their own
sphere.
The hymn goes on to say nothing about an earthly career and specifies
that he
was seen only “by angels” and “was proclaimed throughout the world,”
with no
mention of him proclaiming himself or anything else in his own voice.
(Compare
also 1 Peter 3:18.)
In the upcoming second edition of The Jesus Puzzle I will be providing a
new and lengthy study of the
use of the term “sarx” in the
epistles and how this can lead us to non-literal and non-human
interpretations
of certain characteristics given to Christ. For now, I will quote an
excerpt
from that planned Appendix here, where it focuses on Romans 1:3…
I
outlined earlier that several
usages of “sarx” do not describe
flesh per se, but relationships: between humans, and between humanity
and
divinity. Thus Paul says (Romans 9:3) that the Jews are his “kinsmen
according
to the flesh (kata sarka)”; Abraham
is “our forefather according to the flesh (kata
sarka).” Since the phrase should be entirely superfluous and
unnecessary,
we can only assume that Paul uses it because in his thinking the human
world
contains other relationships that are not
according to the flesh—such as the one between Abraham and the gentiles
who are
his “seed”: a mystical linkage based on faith and being “in Christ,”
not on any
necessary physical lineage. (See Romans 9:8, “the
children of the promise [i.e., Paul’s gentiles]
are regarded as [Abraham’s] seed,”
the latter word being the same as the one used in 1:3.)
We can also note that in Galatians 3:16, Paul
declares Christ to be Abraham’s “seed”
through a rather tortured exegesis of scripture dependent on the word “seed”
being in the singular. Since he can bring the gentiles into this “seed”
equation through their mystical link to Christ, it would seem that Paul
is designating Christ as “seed”
of Abraham in a similar mystical fashion, dependent on scripture. If he
had meant it literally, he need merely have proclaimed it through human
genealogical channels, as Matthew and Luke were to do. His strained use
of scripture would have been unnecessary.
If
humans can have a
relationship to humans mystically, as in the case of the gentiles being
of Abraham’s seed, then there should be even less
impediment to
seeing Christ, a spiritual entity, also having a relationship to a
human figure in
the same
way: mystically. We have just seen it in regard to Christ’s
relationship to Abraham. Christ being of David’s seed should be no less
feasible, no less non-literal. The concept is arrived at through
mystical thinking,
and is derived from scripture. Why does Paul in Romans 1:3 use
“kata sarka”? Because here Christ has a
relationship with the inferior world of humanity. It is ‘in relation to
a human
being.’ Note that in the next verse, we have its opposite counterpart:
a
relationship on the level of spirit. Christ relates to God as his Son “kata pneuma.” The “according to the
spirit” is cryptic here, because it adds the phrase “of holiness,” and
it has
been an unresolved question as to whether this is a reference to the
Holy
Spirit or to the spiritual venue of the event, the spiritual realm of
heaven.
These two verses may also be a pre-Pauline
liturgical unit, which by
its nature
(and the demands of poetic structure) imposed a “kata sarka
/ kata pneuma”
dichotomy upon the text, so that we cannot know the exact intention or
understanding behind the first phrase, or even if there was much of
either.
Also, as discussed in Chapter 8, the lead-in of verse 2 makes it clear
that Paul
is assigning the source of both these items to scripture, to the gospel
of God
about his Son as pre-announced in the prophets. We do not need to
assume that
Paul invented or repeated these words with any concrete comprehension
of what
it meant for a spiritual being to be “of David’s seed.”
That
Christ could be regarded as
“of David’s seed” in a way that was not a literal earthly lineage
should be
evident once an historical Jesus arrived on the scene. There is a
secondary
reading of Acts 2:30 which speaks of Christ as a “descendant” of David kata sarka who would gain the throne of Israel.
Since the author of Acts belonged to the line of thought that Jesus was
born of
a virgin, he was thus not being presented as a literal descendant of
David.
Ignatius does the same thing in his epistle to the Smyrneans: he
declares (1:1)
that Christ was “of the line of David according to the flesh (kata sarka),” yet in the same sentence
declares him born of a virgin (something derived from Isaiah 7:14, with its “young woman”
mistranslated in the
Septuagint as “virgin”). This should have ruled out any understanding
of Jesus
as a literal human descendant of David. Ancient and modern apologists
have
subsequently come up with the idea that Jesus was a descendant of David
through
Mary. But ancient royal lineage was not through the female. And when
Matthew
and Luke came to invent lineages for Jesus, they presented the line of
descent
not as through Mary but through Joseph, even if he was only Jesus’
nominal
father. But ‘adoption’ would have been an even weaker linkage, and just
as
unacceptable. And yet Irenaeus and Tertullian both state that Jesus’
descent
from David was through Mary, even in the absence of any such genealogy
and in
contradiction to Matthew and Luke’s genealogy. Thus Christians for two
millennia have been faced with an unresolvable conundrum. If those
ancient
Christians were able to accept and live with such an irrational
contradiction,
they would surely have been able to accept the equal conundrum of a
spiritual
Christ being of the “seed” of David. In both cases, they were kowtowing
to
scripture.
Throughout
this book, I have been
stressing the concept of scripture itself being the embodiment of the
‘event’
of Christ. He and his activities have been “revealed” through a new
reading of
scripture, and apparently solely from
scripture. From there one discovers information about him—even
including what
he “says.” Hebrews 10:5 assigns him a “body” for sacrifice because it
said so
in Psalm 40:6-8 (LXX), which the author quotes, understanding it as the
voice
of Christ speaking from scripture. (That’s the ‘speaker’ he refers to
in 1:2 as
the voice of God in these “last days.”) Even in 5:7, the writer has
Christ
performing things “in the days of his flesh” which are drawn from
scripture. 1
Peter 4:1 has him “suffering” (which had to be in “flesh,” not in
spirit)
because Isaiah 53 told him so, and that is the source he appeals to in 2:22-23. There is no oral tradition
or
historical memory in evidence. Through such revelation Christ has
“come” in the
present time, which is why so many of the references in the early
non-Gospel
record talk of Christ in the present tense. As Bishop Lightfoot
observed in
regard to 1 Clement over a century ago, they know him as a present
phenomenon
rather than as an historical man of the past, memories of whom guide
and enrich
the community. Thus, Christ is “of the seed of David” because it said
so—even
using those very words—in many messianic passages of scripture now
identified
with the spiritual Christ. And maybe that was simply that.
If
Christ can be seen as having a
mystical relationship with David and Abraham, he can be seen as having
a mystical
relationship with Israel
as a whole. If he can be seen as in some way of the seed of David kata sarka, he can have some connection
to Israel
kata sarka as well. Again, there was no
need for the early Christian cult to understand exactly what this
meant. The
general concept of spiritual-material parallels between heaven and
earth would
aid in accepting it in principle if not through comprehension. And
since the
thought of people like Paul already contained so much of a mystical
nature that
could hardly be rationally explained, such as the inclusion of humans
in the
spiritual “body” of Christ, why should anyone have balked at Romans 1:3?
As for Doug’s query about “outside the camp/gate” in Hebrews
13:11-13, he has apparently not yet read Part
3 of my recent study of the Epistle to
the Hebrews, in which I discuss these verses at some length. I will
reproduce a
key passage of it here:
The
“camp” is the camp of the Israelites at Sinai. First of all, a
change from this word would again be needed no matter what, because the
writer
could hardly specify that Jesus had suffered outside this “camp.” Jesus
did not
suffer and die at Sinai, or at any other “camp.” A parallel governed by
scripture would still have to specify some other location; it is the
“outside”
that is the essential part of the parallel. And what “gate” might the
author
have had in mind? Since the “outside” at Sinai is related to the
“inside” where
the animal was sacrificed, we may suppose that the “outside” in Jesus’
case was
similarly related to the “inside” where he offered his own sacrifice,
the
latter being the heavenly sanctuary, or simply heaven itself where the
sanctuary was located. If his thought was governed by the scriptural
precedent,
then in order to reflect a proper parallel with the sacrificed animal,
the
“outside” in Jesus’ case must refer to heaven. Outside Jerusalem would
have had nothing to do with it, since
Jesus’ offering of his blood did not take place inside
Jerusalem. And Jesus did indeed have to suffer and die
“outside”
heaven, since
he could not undergo such experiences within heaven itself. Thus, we
may
presume the strong possibility that in the writer’s mind the “gate”
refers to
the gate of heaven.
Why,
then, did the author revert to “camp” in verse 13? Well, he could
not maintain the reference to heaven, since he could hardly suggest
that the
readers join Christ outside heaven. Nor, on the other hand, could they
join him
outside the Sinai camp. But the writer has made certain parallels
between the
situation of the Israelites and that of his own community, and he
implies one
in verse 14, in that both they and the Israelites are, for now,
homeless,
seeking a new city.
The present community is outside the pale, not belonging to this world.
And so
was Jesus outside his own home when he underwent death. The thought of
“joining
Jesus outside” would reflect a paradigmatic relationship between Christ
and his
devotees, in which both share similar experiences of separation and
suffering.
Furthermore,
if “gate” had been the gate of Jerusalem, there
should have been no reason not to
continue that motif. Both writer and readers could readily have
envisioned
joining Jesus on Calvary “outside the gate of Jerusalem,” even
if only in spirit. There they could
be seen to suffer together. Verse 14 even speaks of a “city,” or rather
of two
cities, the worldly one they have left behind, the other the one to
come, the
heavenly Jerusalem. The former city would have fitted perfectly
with the earthly Jerusalem, outside of which the community could have joined Jesus. Yet
the
author does not continue the “gate” idea. This virtually rules out the
thought
that in the previous verse he has the gate of Jerusalem in
mind, and supports the idea that it is
the gate of heaven. And so he was forced to revert to “camp,”
even
though—as in
so many of his attempts—the parallel was imperfect. But at least the
Sinai
camp, being in the wilderness, far from home between the old Egypt
and the new Promised Land, would bear a
similarity to the situation the believers felt themselves in. And so
the motif
was pressed into service, an analogy that was, perhaps, “not meant to
be
pressed,” although envisioning themselves within their own ‘camp’ in
which they
temporarily set up abode (like the Israelites) while awaiting entry to
the Promised
Land, would not be a stretch. In getting inside the writer’s mind, of
course,
we can only speculate, but even speculation can be rooted in the text
and in
logical deduction.
Tim writes:
Why would you
avoid looking at Revelation 13:8 which says Jesus was crucified before
the world was made? Wouldn't that help your argument? To me, it goes
nicely with the idea of Paul, 1st Clement and Colossians all saying
that Jesus was the firstborn of the dead (how could he be if he is the
Jesus in the Gospels?), but being killed before the world began he
WOULD be the first to come back from the dead.
Response to Tim:
Revelation 13:8 -
When was Jesus slain?
Revelation 13:8 (literally):
And there will worship him all those
dwelling on the earth
whose name has not been written
in the scroll of life of the Lamb who was slain
from the foundation of the world.
Grammatically, the Greek is ambiguous. It
could be the ‘names’ written from the foundation of the world,
or the ‘slaying of the Lamb.’ Many translations make a note of the
ambiguity,
but most opt for the former meaning. Perhaps it is the more natural
reading in the context of Revelation as a whole, which speaks of the
predestined salvation of the elect, as recorded in the sealed scroll
(ch. 5-7). Such ideas usually include the principle that such
predestination has been decided by God since the beginning of time.
In English, an uninflected language, we can
sometimes have difficulty formulating sentences to make clear the
relationship between different elements in them. Greek, being
inflected, has less difficulty in maintaining the sense of those
relationships within a long and complex sentence, although in
Revelation
13:8, there is no inflection in the final phrase that can be
grammatically linked to one or the other of the possible antecedents.
But the
ambiguity lies as much in the English translation as in the Greek
original. The structure of Greek phrasing places “slain” after the
noun it modifies, “tou arniou tou esphagmenou” (lit., “the lamb
the having been slain”). But
if we translated the third line above as: “in the scroll of life of the slain Lamb” there would be less incentive for our
minds to link “from the foundation of the world” with the antecedent “slain.”
Interestingly, there is a classic ambiguity
present in a passage which is very pertinent to Tim’s query. He is suggesting the point that if
Jesus, according to one reading of Revelation 13:8,
was killed at the foundation of the world (in a mythical spiritual
context), this would cast light on what various writers have in mind by
saying that Jesus was “firstborn of the dead,” since he would be the first to die, and be
resurrected. He calls attention to Colossians 1:18. In the hymn about
the Son (1:15-20), 1:18 says:
...he is
the beginning, the firstborn [prōtotokos] from the dead...
1
Corinthians 15:20 has a similar thought:
But now
Christ has been raised from the dead, firstfruit [aparchē] of those who have fallen
asleep.
Tim is
right in suggesting that the concept of Jesus dying and rising at the
time of the foundation of the world would, in one way, fit well with
the mythicist case. If that mythical redeeming act took place outside
the boundaries of material space and time, it could have happened at
any ‘temporal’ point.
Traditional myths of the gods were generally
placed in a primordial time at the ‘beginning’ of
things, or sometimes
simply in a remote and undefined past. But with the arrival of
Platonism and the concept of divine activities being acted out in a
higher spiritual realm, temporality became in a sense timeless.
However, early Christian thought does seem to place Jesus’ salvific
acts at a point ‘subsequent’ to
certain historical events in Jewish
history, even if they do not or cannot locate them at a specific subsequent point in time,
or at some equivalent point to lower-world temporality. But we have to
keep in mind that ancient mythological concepts did not—and
certainly
do not for us—lend
themselves well to rational, scientific analysis,
and whatever intuitive grasp the ancients may have thought they had on
the subject is something we can no longer share. It is also possible
that they regarded Christ’s acts as ‘subsequent’ simply in
terms of the revelation and application of those acts. Christ
would be the “second Adam” because
the applied consequences of his acts postdate the consequences of the
acts of Adam. 1 Corinthians 15:22: “For as in
Adam all die, so in Christ all will be made alive.” This
in itself would not preclude the act of Christ from which that
consequence
proceeds as having occurred even before Adam’s
existence. It is not the “when” of
Christ’s
redeeming act which matters, it is the “now” of it, as
revealed and applied through apostles like Paul. This is something we
can
see throughout the epistles. The event of Christ’s death
and rising is
relegated to some undetermined past, never historically specified,
while the focus is placed on the present-time revelation of that act by
God and the benefits now available from it. My recent Article on “Born of Woman”? examines
that very feature of the Galatians 4 passage.
The
passage pertinent to Tim’s query,
and to my own examination of the
question of when Jesus was conceived to have performed his act of
redemption, is 2 Timothy 1:9-10, for it seems to present the concept
that Jesus performed that act “before
time began,” (pro chronōn aiōniōn, lit., “before
times eternal”). The
meaning of that Greek phrase is unclear; biblical commentators cannot
agree on just what the writer has in mind here. (See The Jesus Puzzle,
p.118-119.) But it seems to be speaking of a dimension that lies
outside or before the span of world history, the spiritual sphere of
God. The question is, what is it that took place there? Here is the
layout of the passage, and I’ll note
the grammatical ambiguity I
referred to earlier which is entailed in it, an ambiguity which in fact
has an effect on our interpretation of the issue being discussed.
8
...the gospel according to the power of God [theou, in the genitive case]
9 the one having saved [tou
sōsantos, in the genitive case, referring back to “God”]
us and called us to holiness,
not from any merit of ours but according to
his own purpose and grace,
which was given to us in Christ Jesus before
the beginning of time
[lit., before times eternal, pro
chronōn aiōniōn],
10 but now manifested [i.e., God’s grace]
by the revelation [epiphaneias]
of our Savior, Christ
Jesus [Xristou
Iēsou, in the genitive],
having abrogated [katargēsantos, in the genitive]
death
and brought life and immortality to light
through the gospel...
The
ambiguity resides in the “having
abrogated,” “katargēsantos” in the
genitive case. Does it refer back to the immediately preceding “Christ
Jesus” or does
it look all the way back to the end of verse 8 (it’s all one
big happy sentence
in the Greek), to “God”? As such
it would be in parallel to the whole of verse 9 and part of 10, which
is introduced by “the one
having saved us” which
refers back to God. The distance and intervening material is not
technically a problem for Greek because inflections help keep track of
things, and the ambiguity may arise simply by
the accident that the intervening thoughts end with a noun which also
happens to be in the genitive.
This
reading would fit well within the
context as a whole, for the writer is speaking about the actions of
God. Verse 9 speaks of God doing the “saving,” in
parallel with the similar thought in the latter part of verse 10, the “abrogating” of death,
etc. Moreover, that the writer is intending God as the performer of
this second
action is virtually required by the means cited for it: “through
the gospel,” which for
Paul and the pseudo-Pauls is always a product of God, a gospel received
from him
through revelation (the “brought to
light” also
points to knowledge revealed). It would indeed be odd for the writer to
be
saying that Christ abrogated death and brought life and immortality to
light “through the gospel,” which in
the immediately following verse 11 is the gospel assigned to Paul, not
to Jesus.
Thus
we can see that once again, consistent with so many other expressions
in the epistles, the redeeming acts of Jesus are relegated to some
indeterminate time and place, and he and those acts are spoken of as
having been “revealed” (epiphaneia can be
taken in its sense of the revelation or manifestation of a god, rather
than as a physical, historical “appearance” implying
incarnation).
Instead, the focus is on the
benefits of those acts now being applied, through a new revelation
granted by God to people like Paul. This is in complete sync with the
analysis of Galatians 4 I mentioned above.
But now to
pro
chronōn aiōniōn. What is it
that is located there, before times eternal? Grammatically
speaking, it is God’s “purpose
and grace.”
Does this mean that God merely formulated his purpose at or before the
beginning of time, or did the redeeming act of Jesus take place at that
point, with its benefits stored up to be revealed and used at a future
time? On the other hand, it could be maintained that only the “grace” is being
said to have been given pro
chronōn aiōniōn, since “given” is in the
singular, and because it is awkward to speak of “purpose” as being “given.” But what
does it mean to say that God’s grace could be given before times eternal? Would
this imply that the grace was
created (if not yet bestowed) through the performance of Christ’s act? If
that act transpired in the heavens at the hands of the demon spirits,
it needed only the creation of those heavens and spirits in order to
take place, with God and a pre-existent Son acting with foreknowledge
even before the occurrence of the Fall for which it would serve as a
redemption. On the other hand, would such a gleaned meaning be
compatible with the temporal implications of other
references to Jesus’ redeeming
act elsewhere in the epistles?
One could
argue on both sides of the uncertain meaning behind this part of verse
9. But if the possibility inherent in its ambiguity were workable,
this passage could further lend support to Tim’s
suggestion that
Christ’s mythical
acts could conceivably be located prior to the
creation of the world, in a mythical and timeless dimension. Certainly,
the evident exclusion from specific and recent history, which this
passage and others in the epistles present to us, is a strong
indication
that such acts were, at the very least, envisioned to lie outside the
time and location of material human history. In a world of myth.
In the
second edition of The
Jesus Puzzle, I will be examining in depth the 2 Timothy passage
and
others, in order to try to answer the question of where and when Jesus
died.
Keith writes:
I
have enjoyed your website enormously over the last few years and have
learned more about the bible and christianity from you than I ever did
from all those Sunday sermons I heard while I was growing up.
I have a couple of questions about the apostle Paul. In 1
Corinthians 11, when Paul is relating the words of Jesus at the last
supper, I understand that Paul seems to be referring to something that
he received through revelation and not through human channels. But on
the night that Jesus supposedly spoke those words, to whom was he
supposedly speaking to? Who was there to hear the command to "Do this,
as often as you drink it, in remembrance of me." How is this
interpreted in the cosmic christ belief?
Also, when Paul says in 1
Cor. 15:8 that Jesus appeared to him even though he was "untimely
born", what does Paul mean by this? This seems like an odd thing to say
since Paul was supposedly a contemporary of Jesus.
Response to Keith:
Jesus' Audience in 1 Corinthians 11:23 /
Paul an "Abortion" (1 Cor. 15:8)
The words introducing this passage “For I
received from the
Lord” identify what Paul is about to say as the product of personal
revelation.
Apologists, but also regular scholars, try to find ways to get around
this, but
it’s pretty clear that Paul would not be claiming this as his own
personal
knowledge derived from a revelation to himself if such knowledge was
circulating throughout the Christian community in oral tradition. He
would look
pompous and foolish. Besides, we can find no mention of the Gospel Last
Supper,
or Jesus’ reputed words on such an occasion, anywhere else in early
Christian
documents before the Gospels. It is notably missing in Hebrews, 1
Clement and
the Didache. The latter document even contains the description of a
Christian thanksgiving
meal, but there is no sacramental significance attached to the bread
and wine,
let alone words of Jesus linking them with his body and blood. This
void would
suggest that no such tradition was floating about, and that Paul’s
implication
of direct knowledge from his heavenly Christ is the right
interpretation.
Most attempted explanations of the phrase
claim that the use
of the preposition “apo” (from the
Lord) signifies that Jesus was the ultimate source of these words, that
Paul did not receive
them
directly from him but through oral transmission—as opposed to a use of
the
preposition “para” which would
have signified direct reception. But this distinction was not
universally
adhered to,
even in the New Testament. (See my Article No. 6, The
Source of Paul’s Gospel,
for a full discussion of this matter.) In any case, the claim founders
upon
Paul’s very clear declaration that “I
received from the Lord,” which looks to allow for no intermediaries.
Bauer’s
Lexicon makes this admission: “Probably 1 Cor. 11:23
is to be understood in the same way [i.e., as the previous definition:
‘hear
from someone’s mouth, i.e., from him personally’]; Paul is convinced
that he is
taught by the Lord himself.”
Paul’s discussion of the communal meal
shared
by the
Corinthians (1 Cor. 10 and 11) indicates that they already regarded the
bread
and wine as a “participation” in the body and blood of Christ (10:16), and Paul in 11:23 is reminding them of something
he has already told
them. It is quite possible that the whole sacramental significance of
the meal
is his product, part of his preaching message. He is likely building on
a
thanksgiving meal of Jewish origin, but such a practice was also common
among
pagan cults. Most of the mysteries had them, and it was also common to
regard
such a meal as having been established by the god, in some mythical
setting.
Such things are foundation myths, meant to explain and justify a
group’s
practices and rituals. Some mind at some point came up with them, or
carried
them further, and there is no good reason to reject the idea that we
may well
have identified the mind that was responsible in this case.
The cult of Mithras had a meal modeled on
the
mythical meal
shared by Mithras and Helios the sun god following Mithras’ slaying of
the
bull, in which the two deities made a covenant between themselves. That
meal is
depicted on many Mithraic monuments and meeting places. Was it regarded
as
having taken place in some dimension of reality? That would be
difficult to
say, but it certainly served to symbolize something. Unfortunately, we
have no
Mithraic writings to enlighten us. Is Paul in 1 Corinthians recounting
a scene
he believes actually happened somewhere? What exactly has the Lord
revealed to
him? We need to realize that Paul is seeking to counter the
Corinthians’
objectionable behavior at their meal by stressing its sacramental
significance.
He has been under pressure to come up with something. Has the ready
example
of sacred
meals in the cultic atmosphere of the time (he refers to the “table of
demons”
in 10:21), along with
traditions of
the divine establishment of such meals, led him to dream up a
foundation scene of his own?
What do his words of the Lord constitute?
Quite possibly they are the
words that Paul himself would have spoken about such matters to people
like the
Corinthians. He could well have said to them, “This bread is the Lord’s
body,
on your behalf; when you break it you do so in remembrance of him. This
cup
represents the new covenant in his blood; when you drink it, you do so
in
remembrance of him.” He could then have converted such words into words
of
Jesus, changing the pronouns accordingly.
Keith asks, who is the Lord speaking to?
Well, Paul does not
say that he was speaking to his disciples. Nor does he really need to
have envisioned specific mythical figures to whom Jesus has addressed
these words; they are in effect addressed to Paul’s
earthly audience. And while most translations
have
Paul identify the occasion as “on the night he was betrayed,” this is a
Gospel-induced rendering of the verb paradidōmi,
which simply means to hand over or to deliver up. Elsewhere, Paul says
that God
himself delivered up Jesus (Romans 8:32),
while in Ephesians 5:2 and 25 it is Christ who “delivered himself up on
your
behalf.” In Paul’s hands, the concept need be no more than one of
‘surrendering’ to the salvation role determined by God and accepted by
Jesus. Nor
do we need to imagine that Paul had worked out some heavenly (or even
earthly)
scene in his mind. Paul needed only to convince himself that in some
setting,
Jesus,
like many other savior gods, had spoken these words which founded the
ritual
and rendered the Christian meal of sacramental significance.
Nor is
there an impediment to placing a mythical event at night, perhaps
inspired by Paul's linking of Christ with the Lamb of Passover (1 Cor.
5:7), whose celebratory meal, and probably Christian meals in general,
took place after sunset. We might
note that
Paul curiously uses the imperfect tense for “was delivered up,”
actually saying
“on the night he was being
delivered up,” making the meal and the
delivering up
going on simultaneously. While we should not read anything conclusive
into this
curiosity (almost all commentators pass it by without remark), it may
suggest
that Paul’s conception was not quite as literal as the Gospels later
rendered
it.
We also need to keep in mind that here,
too,
there was a
spectrum of interpretation of such salvation myths. Plutarch, in Isis and Osiris, is the best example in
his declaration that “these stories did not actually happen as
described.” He
says this to caution his addressee, the priestess Clea, not to regard
them as
literal; rather they are allegory. (The 4th
century Sallustius says the same thing.) The very fact that Plutarch
does so testifies to
a
certain portion of the population actually believing they are
literal. Paul Veyne’s oft-cited Did the Greeks Believe in
Their Myths? is not too helpful
here, because he focuses on the classical Greek mythological figures of
gods
and heroes, and not the myths of the savior gods. But even he notes the
range
of belief and skepticism about details of those mythical stories
between the
“ingenuousness of the people,” “the educated classes” and “the learned”
[p.42-43].
Where do Paul and the early Christians fall
on this
spectrum? His remarks about Jesus’ “suffering” would indicate that he
regarded
it as in some way literal, that his spiritual Son actually suffered and
died at
the hands
of the demon spirits in the heavens (“the rulers of this age” in 1 Cor.
2:8),
but how literal would he have regarded all the details of such an event
that
our modern minds could come up with? When he was crucified, did the
demons use
‘heavenly nails’? Did the tree on which he was hung in the firmament
(Ascension
of Isaiah 9:13) have leaves
and roots,
perhaps requiring watering? Some apologists I have debated are fixated
on the
question of such literality, considering that, because such things
trouble
their own modern, scientific and literally-oriented minds, they must
have
bothered the ancients and precluded them from adopting such
mythological
claptrap.
But we know that concepts like the heavenly
city of Jerusalem
existed: did it have cobblestoned streets and brick houses? Some
apocalyptic
documents have the evil angels warring against each another in the
heavens: did they use
swords and spears? There is no indication that the writers would not
have conceived of such things as literal in some spiritual form, and
Platonist cosmology carried to its ultimate level should certainly have
allowed
for
them. Ancient views of how the world operated were not like ours, and
we cannot
bring our own modern outlooks and logical mindsets to bear on them.
Their
concepts of the nature of life and the universe, of divinity and
humanity, are
no longer tenable. We cannot tell exactly how Paul saw his Lord’s
Supper scene,
or whom he conceived Jesus was speaking to, but we are not entitled to
impose on
him the subsequent literality of the later interpretation of the
Gospels which
began in the second century and started the process of turning
Christianity’s
initial mythical thinking into earthly history, a mythical sacred meal
into a
supper on the eve of an historical Passover. If Mithraism had triumphed
and
done the same, we would today be wondering about where the fossil of
the
historical bull Mithras slew might be found (some Mithraic Mt. Ararat
perhaps), and upon what sort of
table its meat
and blood was laid for consumption by Mithras and Helios, the latter,
no
doubt, turned into some symbolic historical figures.
As for Paul’s description of himself as an
“abortion” in 1
Corinthians 15:8, Keith is not the only one puzzled as to its meaning.
Paul
Ellingworth [A Translator’s Handbook for
1 Corinthians, p.293] says: “This phrase and the rest of the verse
present
serious problems for the translator.” He suggests as possibilities that
Paul is
referring to “an insult made against (him) by the people of Corinth,”
or “the monstrous
fact of a persecutor becoming an apostle,” or even “some previous or
widely
known use of the expression, as one might refer, for example, to ‘the
fiery
furnace,’ with Daniel 3 in mind.” The Translator’s
New Testament admits “The sense in which Paul uses the word [ektrōma] is not very clear.” It, too,
suggests that “It may have been used by his enemies as a term of abuse,
accusing him of being as undeveloped and repulsive as a dead foetus…If
Paul was
turning his opponents’ abuse to advantage, no modern English
translation has
succeeded in making this clear.” The NEB
makes an attempt: “In the end he appeared even to me; though this birth
of mine
was monstrous, for I had persecuted the church and am therefore
inferior to all
other apostles…”
Jim writes:
First
of all, can I say what an eye-opener your website and other materials
have been for me! I have often argued the case against a historical
Jesus with Jehovah's Witnesses and others at the door, but your
arguments, and some of those on other websites which look at similar
issues, have certainly helped.
However, I notice that you often refer to the myths and legends
attached to for example Pythagoras, Apollonius of Tyana, Alexander the
Great and so on (even down to Rabbi Schmeerson!) The obvious point that
arises from these examples, to my mind, is that we are dealing here
with real people, who other real people responded to in such a way as
to create the mythos. However, your argument is, it seems, the opposite
of this: that a mythic character, already invested with Godhead, was
"brought down to earth" as it were by followers at a later stage. The
former examples are ascending, if you like, while the latter example,
Jesus, is descending. Do you have a view on this, and couldn't this
suggest that, at some point, and in some way, the mythic Christ of Paul
and others became associated with a small group of followers of a Hasid
type individual from Galilee?
Not that I believe this, but it does seem to point up a potential
problem in your position as a whole. I don't think I've seen this
particular issue dealt with anywhere, but I could have missed it.
Thanks again for your very erudite and, I find, unbiased
approach to the question, working from the evidence rather than
imposing the desired answer from the start.
Response to Jim:
Galilee and Paul: Joining Historical and
Mythical Figures?
We should first of all note that where
figures like
Pythagoras, Alexander the Great and Rabbi Schmeerson are concerned, we
have
independent and strong evidence about their existence, beyond whatever
we might
label ‘myth’ that has been attached to them. Whereas, for Jesus the sum
total
that the earliest record gives us is simply the myth.
And what a myth!
Pre-existent Son, agent of creation, sustaining power of the universe,
God’s
throne partner and intermediary between divinity and humanity. As an
expression
of the Logos (see 1 Cor. 8:6), Christ is the model, the ‘first idea’
from which
the world and humanity follows. Finally, he is the redeemer of the
world’s
sins, uniter of a sundered universe and victor over the demon powers of
the
heavens. Needless to say, the aforementioned historical figures pale by
comparison. Moreover, Alexander the Great may have attracted legendary
elements,
but he
was never lost sight of as an historical figure at a specific time,
performing his actions in an identifiable earthly location. Whereas
until the
Gospels came along, at least half a century after his death—and
more, if one measures by their dissemination—no
one locates Jesus within either historical time
or
place.
A qualification could be made in regard to
Q
(although we
know Q only through the prism of the Gospels), and this may be what Jim
has in
mind. In fact, Q as revealing the genuine original Jesus is what recent
critical scholarship such as the Jesus Seminar proposes—with one
crucial
difference. None of those critical scholars (to my knowledge)
postulates that
the “mythic Christ of Paul” was not in
some way based on the Q Jesus. They still envision an “ascending”
process, not
an originally independent mythical Christ, or a Paul who had nothing to
do with
the Gospel Jesus of Nazareth. That remains too radical a step to be
taken by mainstream scholarship.
What Jim is proposing is that we do what
the
scholars are
loath to do: make Paul’s Christ entirely mythical and postulate a
junction
between the two: the “genuine Jesus” of Q becoming associated with the
spiritual heavenly Son of the Pauline cult, or vice-versa. Essentially,
of
course, he is proposing my own position—but again, with a crucial
difference.
The Jesus of Q looks to be only an invented founder, developed in the
community’s mind
as it, and its recorded material, evolved over several decades. Q
itself provides
the main evidence for such a scenario. I have made an extensive case
for that
scenario in The Jesus Puzzle,
chapters 14 to 19, and won’t repeat it here. But I will explore one
aspect of
it further.
It is my contention that Mark is the pivot
point at which
those two diverse phenomena initially came together, the Kingdom
preaching
movement centered in Galilee which invented its
founding
sage, and the mythical Christ cult of Paul & Co. which never had
any link to an historical figure. But this view has to be
carefully nuanced. The first Gospel did not constitute a Big Bang, a
six-bridesmaid
wedding of the two, mounted in a straightforward fashion at a single
point in
time. Let’s note that it doesn’t matter here whether a Q founder
did exist
or not. By the time Mark is translating the movement he was a part of
into his
Gospel, the belief in the existence of such a founder seems to be
established,
at least in some circles of it. (It is missing in the Didache, whose
chapter 11
also entails a similar Kingdom of God preaching movement. See Appendix
8 of The Jesus
Puzzle, or the section on the Didache in my review of Crossan’s The Birth of
Christianity.)
First of all, Mark barely renders his Jesus
of Nazareth
divine. (Some would say not at all, though this is an exaggeration.)
Jesus’
death as an Atonement is scarcely developed; Mk. 10:45 could owe as
much to the
4 Maccabees concept of martyr-atonement as to anything else. None of
the lofty christology of Paul (as noted above) and of other documents
like
Hebrews
figures in Mark’s picture of Jesus. Whatever his roots (or combination
thereof), Mark is not coming from a full-fledged Christ cult of the
Pauline
variety to which he wants to give voice in his Gospel. (This is one
reason why
I am skeptical of proposals that Mark directly knows Paul or is
building
upon him.) A complete melding of Galilee and Jerusalem
would not be accomplished until the later 2nd
century and even beyond.
Second, Mark is not attempting to write
actual history. Even
individual elements of his ministry of Jesus—miracles, prophecies,
other
anecdotes—are midrashically constructed out of scripture, even
though it
is all placed in a setting which reflects the teachings and activities
of the
community on which Q was based, a broad movement of which Mark was a
part. On one level, the
ministry symbolizes that movement. Even if he believes the Q founder
existed,
Mark has little or no specific historical material to draw on to
incorporate in
his Gospel. This, by the way, is another good reason to reject any of
the Q
material as actual historical traditions going back to a genuine Jesus.
Even
if, as I suggest, Mark was located in a circle which did not possess
the Q document
itself (since he includes none of the Q material used by Matthew and
Luke),
there is no reason to think, if the latter represents preserved
traditions
about Jesus, that Mark would not have been familiar with some of them
through
those oral channels.
Thus, the proposal that a “Hasid type
individual from
Galilee” (or any kind of teaching figure) has served as one side of
Mark’s
composite equation is considerably weakened by the difficulty of
actually
uncovering in any reliable fashion such a figure, or elements that need
to be attributed
to him.
We cannot be sure to what extent Mark himself envisioned his Jesus of
Nazareth
as representing an historical figure. And with his scarcely-divine
Christ
missing much of the cultic trappings of the Pauline scene, we cannot
identify
the exact nature of the other side of his equation either. Nor can we
tell the
nature of the ‘resurrection’ envisioned by Mark, as he has no
appearances on
earth or in flesh. Thus, the idea of Mark as a dramatic wedding of an
historical Galilean teaching figure with the cultic Savior-Christ of
Paul is
lacking in clear definition, although the general principle seems sound.
Pertinent to this is that the reconstructed
Q
demonstrates
that the Galilean Kingdom
movement had nothing to say about a death and resurrection for its
supposed
founder. He is not even made an agent of salvation; he is given no
soteriological role in regard to his own person. One might then ask
what would
have led anyone to link such a limited figure, or the idea of him, to
the
transcendent mythology of the Christ cult. The answer would be that no
one person or group did.
Such a large-scale development took place only in increments, which is
why the
process in the record is so drawn out and uncoordinated, covering
decades.
Mark’s dying and resurrecting Jesus might be seen as much an
allegorical reading
of the believers’ own role and fate as a translation of Paul’s dying
and
rising Christ in the spiritual world. His passion story could have been
generated by a
variety of influences.
Such a general ‘wooliness’ as to derivation
between one
writing and another (or others) should warn us against seeking to
create too
defined a
picture of sources, especially written sources. A surviving document is
only
the tip of an iceberg, representing one version of a broader background
‘noise’
of ideas held within wider circles whose extent we are unsure of,
perhaps
expressed within other documents that have perished. They are isolated
windows, partially opaque.
If we find similarities in a given writer with another writer or set of
writers, we cannot rush to a conclusion of direct dependence,
especially if
there are notable divergences or missing parts. The similarity may be
due to
derivation from that background noise, from which the surviving
postulated
source document is also a derivation and innovation of its own.
Mark would then represent an initial and
limited conjunction
between the two, a point of contact which only subsequently
crystallized in a
way Mark would not have envisioned. Ignatius, perhaps two decades after
Mark,
has heard of and absorbed the idea of Jesus of Nazareth in a basic way,
linking him with the
much more mystical and cultic Christ of the Pauline type—the latter
being part of the world he inhabits to
a far greater degree than Mark did. A different type of cultic Jesus in
the
Johannine community, a Revealer Son rather than a sacrificial one,
encounters
the Jesus of Mark and/or his redactors Matthew and Luke, and someone
decides to
mesh the two, hedging on the sacrificial aspect but incorporating the
crucifixion in a non-atonement way in keeping with existing
Johannine christology (the Son as the bread of saving knowledge, etc.).
The
creation of the Fourth Gospel resulted in something
substantially different from its predecessors, a difference all
of later
Christianity has worked to deny or downplay.
As for Paul, his own cultic Jesus,
with whom
believers could enter into mystical linkage (a concept much like that
of the
mysteries and something which Mark shows no inkling of), languishes in
its own
circles of faith for some time until it is pulled into orbit along with
other
satellites that are coalescing around the now historically-viewed
Gospels to
further enrich Mark’s relatively tame initial conjunction of
disparities. And
so on, through that wonderful “riotous diversity” of the early
Christian and
proto-Christian record that has so taxed orthodox scholars
for
centuries. Such centripetal forces increased until everything crunched
together
more or less by the end of the 2nd
century, a reverse Big Bang that
created the core Jesus of Nazareth which close to two millennia of
world
thinking has mistakenly envisioned as the starting point and explosive
force of
what is actually a far more fascinating evolution of ancient world
religious obsession.
Complex? Yes, but Occam’s Razor has no
bearing here. We know
from a study of history of all sorts and times that complexity is the
rule of
the day, and nothing is merely “simple.” Besides, Occam’s principle
states that
we should look for the simplest explanation that accounts
for all the evidence.
That evidence is diverse and complex, while the simplistic “Gospel
Jesus”
explanation fails to come close to being adequate.
Michael writes:
I found your site in early January, and at the very least,
am impressed by your respectful demeanor and writing style. The points
you make
are certainly fascinating, and I believe that your site is
definitely one
that I would recommend to people interested in a discussion of the
Jesus
Mythicist position.
However, there is a question that I wish to pose. In around 165 (AD),
the early
Christian Apologist Justin Martyr wrote his work Dialogue with
Trypho. At
the beginning of Chapter 108, Justin recorded a letter, supposedly
going around
the Jewish community at the time-
"A godless and
lawless heresy had sprung from one Jesus, a Galilean
deceiver, whom we crucified, but his disciples stole him by night from
the
tomb, where he was laid when unfastened from the cross, and now deceive
men by
asserting that he has risen from the dead and ascended to heaven."
I have read articles where you have discussed Mr. Martyr,
but you never
actually talked about the "letter". Although it may appear irrelevant,
it simply seems to be an early mention by the Jewish community of the
empty
tomb. This is even more interesting due to the fact that you (and I)
feel that
the majority of the Gospels weren't written until the 2nd century,
and I
can't help but feel that nobody would bother to respond to a claim
that came from people that at the time, were merely members of a
small
savior cult.
Response to Michael:
Matthew's
Guards at the Tomb, and the Toledoth
Yeshu
I am not sure where Michael derives the idea that Justin is
speaking of a “letter.” The passage he quotes speaks of Jewish
spokesmen going
out to proclaim those contentions, but there is no mention of anything
in
written form (nor is there in his previous reference to this apologetic
activity by
Jews, in chapter 17, where the word “publish” in translations
merely means
‘spread about’). In any case, this is indeed the earliest reference
outside the
Gospel of Matthew to a claim by the Jews that the disciples stole the
body of
Jesus, supposedly an explanation meant to discredit Christian claims of
his
resurrection. We find another reference, apparently, in Tertullian a
few
decades later in De Spectaculis 30, a
passage we will also look at. Let’s note, however, that both of these
references are
Christian ones, not Jewish, and in fact we find no such claim in any
writings
by Jews themselves, from earliest times right through the Talmuds. The
Jews, to
judge by their own writings, show no knowledge of such a claim on their
own
part, that the disciples stole the body. (And that includes the Toledoth Yeshu
which we’ll examine later.)
We might also note that, in general, we
have
no contemporary
evidence—outside the claim in Matthew—that Jews prior to Justin were
saying
anything in dispute, condemnation or ridicule of Gospel or Christian
traditions
about an historical Jesus. If we exclude someone like Tacitus (if
authentic) as
simply ‘historical’ reference, the same applies to Greek and Roman
writers. It
is only in the years immediately following Justin that we encounter the
pagan
satirist Lucian poking fun at Christian doctrines surrounding
Jesus, and
the 3rd
century Origen preserves, and answers, criticism by the
pagan writer Celsus who wrote his Alēthēs
Logos around 170. In that work Celsus, according to Origen, framed
his
accusation that Jesus was actually the son of Mary in adultery with a
soldier
as coming from a Jew. (He also made other criticisms in his own voice.)
If that
is accurate and not a device on Celsus’ part, we can presume that
slander about
an historical Jesus and criticism/ridicule of the Christian story had
arisen
among Jews about the same time as similar pagan comment, although we
have no
extant record of such from Jewish writings. The later Talmuds contain
alleged
records of such things from the earlier period, but the reliability of
those
later developments as accurately reflective of earlier Jewish comment
can be
questioned. (See my review of Frank
Zindler’s The Jesus
the Jews Never Knew.)
It all begins, getting back to our main
topic, in the Gospel
of Matthew (which I would date not long after 100 CE), in his scenes of
the
guards at the tomb (27:62-66, continued at 28:4 and 11-15). There the
Jewish
priests persuade Pilate to set Roman guards before the tomb where
Jesus is
buried, so as to preclude the possibility that his disciples will steal
the
body and claim he has fulfilled his prophecy that he would rise after
three
days. At the resurrection, the guards faint in shock. Afterwards these
(Roman!)
guards go to report to the priests what happened and are offered a
bribe, which
they accept, to say that they had fallen asleep (on duty!) and during
that time
the disciples had come and stolen the body. Matthew concludes the scene
with
this remark:
“This story
became
widely known, and is current in Jewish
circles to this day.”
Few critical scholars, if any, are willing
to
give the scene
as a whole credence. Matthew is the only Christian writer to record it,
and the
story of guards being placed at the tomb and being subsequently bribed
to
explain its empty state is generally regarded as Matthew’s invention to
counter
a current Jewish claim that the disciples had stolen the body. In other
words, they
say, the only factual thing about it is that final line, that there was
a
circulating ‘spin’ by the Jews to explain the alleged resurrection: the
disciples stole the body; but there were no guards, in shock, asleep or
otherwise.
My contention, however, is that even the
concluding remark
is fictional. If this bears the marks, as some claim, of a separate
authorial
comment, it would make Matthew out as a liar, either way you look at
it. Either
the statement that this is a current story among the Jews is false, or
the
statement is true but Matthew, to judge by his words (which we’ll
examine closely), is declaring that the made-up scene of
the guards
is true, which is a lie, since scholars have every reason to judge this
scene
to be Matthew’s invention, not the least because it is attested to
nowhere else. It is
almost
impossible to think that in over a century of Christian writing,
including the
other three evangelists, no one before Justin would show any knowledge
of either the presence of guards at the
tomb or the tradition among Jews
that the disciples had stolen the body. If it were known that guards
had been
posted, it would be difficult for the other Gospel writers to construct
their
scenes of the resurrection and its aftermath and not take them into
account.
Like Matthew, they would surely have been led to record the guards’
witness and
reaction to this event. And if the Jews were really widely declaring
that the
disciples stole the body, as Matthew claims, the other evangelists
would surely
have felt the need to deal with it in some fashion; if
Matthew’s
guards
explanation was fiction, they would have had to come up with some
apologetic counter of
their
own to the accusation.
If early Christianity was founded on the
claim that Jesus of
Nazareth had exited his earthly tomb in risen flesh, any claim on the
part of
Jews that the disciples had stolen the body could not fail to be seen
by
Christians as a dangerous rejoinder that would require rebuttal, and
we should expect to find some response to it in the wider record. Nor
would the
Jews themselves have underplayed its potential usefulness, and so it would have been widely spread among
them. But there is something of a hitch here. Such an invented spin by
the Jews
would involve a double admission on their part: that the body was gone
and the
tomb was empty. We might ask if they would be willing to make such an
admission,
or would they be more likely to find ways to argue that the body had
not
gone
missing and the tomb was not empty? (Jeff Lowder argues this in the
book he co-edited with Robert Price, The
Empty Tomb.) This would make
Matthew’s contention very dubious, and in fact we have no early record
of an
argument between Jews and Christians over either point. We don’t even
have
Christians themselves referring to an empty tomb before the Gospels
came along.
Matthew, we might note, seems to imply in
his
final line
that the Jewish ‘spin’ arose early. He uses the aorist tense for “was
spread
about,” which suggests that such a claim by the Jews was begun early
on,
certainly before his own time. The “to this day” is meant as a
subsequent
development, as illustrated by the NASB translation: “This story was
widely
spread among the Jews, and is to this day.” The implied early
circulation makes
it even less likely that the other evangelists and early Christian
writers would have missed hearing of it and addressing it. If disputes
were
going on over empty tombs and stolen bodies in the mid first century,
we could
wonder why, in 1 Corinthians 15 where he is proclaiming the necessity
of
believing in a gospel of Christ’s rising, Paul does not address such
disputes
and counter them in some way, as Matthew does. In the face of such
claims as
Christianity is supposed to have been making, a man being God and
fulfilling
the Jewish scriptures in his life on earth, it is astonishing that
neither the
Jewish record of the time nor the early Christian record from the likes
of Paul
gives us an indication that such a give-and-take over these supposed
claims was
happening. (Paul defends a crucified Messiah, which could encompass a
spiritual
one, but he never defends his faith against the blasphemy of turning
a man into God.)
Scholars, as I said, are persuaded that
everything before
28:15b is Matthew’s invention. But in seeking to retain the final line
as
accurate, they are overlooking one feature of it which throws a
monkeywrench into the works. “And this
story was spread about…” What story? What is the “stolen body”
story
according to Matthew’s own words? It is the ‘fact’ that the elders
bribed the
guards to say, if knowledge of the missing body came to light: “His
disciples
came by night and stole him away while
we were asleep.” The whole sense of Matthew’s scene, especially
with those
last four words, implies that he has in mind the entire account of the
posted
guards when he uses the phrase “this story was widely spread,” and not
just the
bare fact that “the disciples stole the body.” But the guards story
itself has
been rejected as almost certainly fiction. And the story is further
rendered
ludicrous and unbelievable by any idea that the Roman guards could be
bribed to
say that “we were asleep.” What good is a bribe when to admit such a
thing to
Pilate would have resulted in their execution? The priests’ assurances
that
they will smooth things over with Pilate and “see that you do not
suffer” is a
piece of Matthean naivete, though it may show that he recognized one
problem
with his story.
Thus, Matthew in his final line has to be
referring to the
entirety of his preceding concoction. Verse 15b cannot be intended as a
separate ‘authorial insertion’ by which he declares the actuality of a
simple
accusation that the disciples stole the body. His language tells us
that the
story he says is preserved “by the Jews to this day” includes
the whole guards scene. In any event, if (whatever the
claim encompassed) it was “widely known to this day,”
one might ask why
Matthew
felt any necessity to step outside his narrative and inform his readers
of
something they would already be familiar with.
So what was Matthew doing? Was he telling a
bare-faced lie
in his entire guards-at-the-tomb sequence? Such a judgment would
require that
we evaluate all the Gospels as lies from start to finish, since so much
of
their content constitutes scenes contrived out of scripture, or blatant
alterations of their sources in Mark with no apparent concern for
historical accuracy.
But if the Gospels are essentially allegories, symbols of their
writers’ faith
and real-world activities and expectations, then they are not intending
to
record actual history, and we need not call them “liars.”
Perhaps Matthew
just
got carried away in that final line in declaring his story of the
guards
‘true.’
But why did he introduce the stolen body
idea
at all, if it
was founded on no claim by the Jews about such a theft? It could be
said that
it was entirely unnecessary; it could even be said that, if no such
spin
existed, why make it up and place it in his readers’ minds as a
possible
argument against their faith in the resurrection? Why, as well, risk
giving the
Jews the idea? (Although they must have missed it, since no Jewish
extant
source has picked up on it—only Christians!) The answer is quite
simple. If we
regard the Gospels as essentially allegories, Matthew is working within
that
internal literary world. He has decided he needs the guards scene within his own storyline. In enlarging
on Mark’s ‘novel,’ he considers that the idea, the possibility, that
the
disciples stole the body would be something that would occur to the
reader,
just as it occurred to him, and thus he includes a reproof against it
by having
guards bribed to present such an excuse. For that, he needed to have
guards
posted there in the first place, something no one else thought of
doing. (The
apocryphal Gospel of Peter has a similar guards scene, but this work is
almost
certainly based on Matthew. For J. D. Crossan’s different take on the
GoP, see The Jesus Puzzle, n.78.)
Thus Matthew was not taking a risk of
putting
the thought in
his readers’ minds; he assumed it would be there unbidden. Some
listeners to
readings of the Gospel of Mark in his community may even have raised
such questions. And if he was not claiming history, there was no fear
that he
would be
giving ‘enemy’ Jews ammunition, since the latter
would not (as yet) be
taking
the story seriously as history, if they even encountered it. Apparently
the
Jews did neither, for some time afterwards.
It is also possible that Matthew, in
including the guards, was doing nothing more than providing a ‘nice
touch’ for his
story. Hellenistic romances were all the rage in
the
early Christian period, and many of them involved concluding episodes
centered
on tombs where the hero or heroine had been laid (often not really
dead), and a
lot of
shenanigans took place in those tomb settings in the final scenes.
Adding the
charge and guard sequence may have been motivated by little more than
Matthew
wanting to put in his own shenanigans at the tomb in his final scenes.
As for
that concluding line, it does enhance the impact. Instead
of
“stepping outside” the narrative, he was putting himself into it. In an
entire
story of fictional stuff, it doesn’t seem out of place that the author
could
feel comfortable with inserting something which is also making a point
that is
not true.
A brief digression: For those who reject a Q and have Luke copying
Matthew, why did Luke not carry the guards scene over into his Gospel?
This is particularly telling if Matthew’s final
line were true and the Jews were indeed spreading the idea that the
disciples stole the body. Surely Luke would have known of such a spin,
and thus should have found Matthew’s entire guard
sequence as a useful counter to it. Even if the spin was Matthew’s
fiction, would Luke have had sufficient reason to doubt its
truthfulness and ignore it on that basis? Luke is the most ‘gentile’
of the Gospel writers and may not have lived in a heavily Jewish
environment, so not hearing about this Jewish apologetic should not
have convinced him that it did not exist and that Matthew was making it
up. (On the other hand, if the author of the original Luke was still
writing in the “allegory”
mode, he might automatically presume that the guards scene was the
product of Matthew since he, Luke, might not have regarded the death
and resurrection of Jesus as historically factual, and nothing about
Matthew’s guards scenario appealed to him on a
literary basis.)
But now we need to consider those two later
passages in
Justin and Tertullian. Might they represent knowledge of a Jewish spin
about a
theft of the body from the tomb? Or are they entirely derived from
their
reading of Matthew, both writers simply assuming that Matthew was
telling the
truth about an actual Jewish spin known to him? There is nothing in
either
author which would rule the latter out. Justin says to Trypho:
“You [the Jews]
have sent chosen and ordained men throughout
all the world to
proclaim that
a godless and lawless heresy had sprung from one Jesus, a Galilean
deceiver,
whom we crucified, but his disciples stole him by night from the tomb,
where he
was laid when unfastened from the cross, and now deceive men by
asserting that
he has risen from the dead and ascended to heaven.” [ANF translation,
vol.1,
p.253]
Other than the reasonable possibility that
Jews by the time of Justin were going about condemning the Christian
sect as a heresy, there are no details provided here which
would suggest any
independent source or tradition besides one or more of the Gospels.
Tertullian is the
same. In his
tirade
against the perfidious Jews suffering in the flames of hell, Tertullian
might be
interpreted as saying that he shall throw their own words in their
faces:
“This,” I shall
say, “this is that carpenter’s or hireling’s
son, that Sabbath-breaker, that Samaritan and devil-possessed! This is
He whom
you purchased from Judas! This is He whom you struck with reed and
fist, whom
you contemptuously spat upon, to whom you gave gall and vinegar to
drink! This
is He whom His disciples secretly stole away, that it might be said He
had
risen again, or the gardener abstracted [i.e., removed], that his
lettuces
might come to no harm from the crowds of visitants!” [ANF, vol.3, p.91]
But all these details are derivable from
Matthew
and the other
Gospels. Indeed, it is inherently unlikely that Tertullian is quoting,
or even
paraphrasing, actual spoken or written words by Jews in some
anti-Christian
polemic. It would have required an intimate knowledge of Gospel details
on
their part, supplemented by nothing else that did not conform to
canonical
Gospel content. It would require that Tertullian is reflecting actual
Jewish
polemical practices, something which is attested to nowhere else, since
nowhere
else (not even in the Toledoth) do
Jewish writings betray such a degree of intimate knowledge and use of
details
from Christian Gospels. In fact, as witnessed in the later Talmudic
references to
Jesus, the Jews seem almost ignorant of the basic Gospel scenario,
having Jesus stoned or hung, taking on full responsibility for his
death with nary a hint
of
Pilate and the Romans’ role, variously locating Jesus almost a century
to
either side of the Gospel period. (The Toledoth has Jesus literally hanged
on a tree, by Jewish sages during the reign of Helena widow of
Alexander Jannaeus, around 70 BCE.) Everything about
Tertullian’s remarks
suggests that he has conjured up details from Matthew and elsewhere,
and
allotted them to Jews so that he can throw them in the faces of his
hell-bound
deniers of Christ. Note that he does not actually say that the Jews
have spoken
such words. This could simply be a literary and very emotional device
he has
adopted
within
a passage of “fervid rhetoric” (to use the ANF’s
footnote
phrase).
We might also take a look at Tertullian’s
final words. The
“gardener” would seem to be derived from John, but in the latter there
is no
hint that the gardener figure has been introduced with any intention of
squelching some “The gardener did it!” claim by the Jews. The reference
is far
too weak and indirect (unlike Matthew’s sequence) for that. It is
undoubtedly
no more than ‘color’ for the scene, Mary Magdalene mistaking Jesus for
the
gardener and failing to recognize him in order to create more emotional
impact
when she does. John adding the gardener (a character never actually
seen) so as
to demonstrate that such an innocuous figure had, or could have had, no
role in removing the body, is far too subtle,
too
easily missed for that to have been his motive.
However, Tertullian seems to witness to
something
subsequently made out of John’s ‘gardener in the background’
in just that direction.
He alludes to his polemical Jews declaring that the body was
stolen,
if not by the disciples, then by “the gardener” who wished to remove
the body
of Jesus so his followers and other visitors would not be coming to
visit the
deceased and trample his lettuces growing in the vicinity. Now, the
Jewish Toledoth (to be looked at presently)
does introduce such a character as the gardener, but there he is
portrayed as
having removed the body and buried it elsewhere in order to preclude
any possible
theft by Jesus’ disciples, not to protect his lettuces. And the Toledoth, as we shall see, was hardly
early enough to have influenced Tertullian, though a Jewish spin along
Tertullian’s line could conceivably have existed and been later
transformed in
a different direction in the Toledoth.
Yet the possibility of a Jewish source for
Tertullian is
hardly compelling. It’s a very minor detail, and who knows where
Tertullian
might have taken it from? We can tell from the Christian record that
all sorts
of different versions and embellishments on basic Gospel themes were
rife from
the later 2nd
century on, a flood of enlargements and sheer
invention, not all of which have survived. An apocryphal Gospel that
built on
John may have added something like it, or some preacher whom Tertullian
heard may have
stuck in
the lettuce when giving a sermon, and Tertullian put his own twist on
it, who knows? The idea that he picked it
up from
Jews is only one option among many feasible ones. One might even ask
why Jews
would be particularly prone to introduce lettuce as a reason for moving
the
body.
Going back to Justin, what is his source,
if
any? Is he,
like Tertullian, taking his cue from Matthew and imagining Jewish
activities
out of Matthew’s remark, activities in which Jews were claiming the
disciples
had stolen the body? To that, as noted above, he may have added
what we might
surmise
was general Jewish condemnation of Christianity by the mid 2nd
century as a “godless and lawless heresy,” one which had begun to make
ridiculous claims
about a
man risen from the dead. (If we can judge by Minucius Felix, even some
Christians were calling them ridiculous.)
The one curiosity in Justin is the phrase
“whom we
crucified,” as the voice of the Jews. That, of course, is not, strictly
speaking, the way any Gospel portrayed it. Is Justin simply putting a
Christian
spin on the Jewish role in accusing Jesus before Pilate and thus
opening the
way to his crucifixion? Moreover, can we really believe that Jews
familiar with
the Gospel story were going about claiming that they
had crucified Jesus, in contradiction to that account? It is
difficult to conceive that Jews would have taken on themselves,
willingly and
without qualification, the entire responsibility for Jesus’ death. That
would
be extreme masochism, considering the attacks that were being mounted
against
them by the Christians right across the board for failing to respond to
Jesus.
Besides, if the Gospel story were in any way history, everyone would
know it
was the Romans who performed the act. In the face of this, we can
hardly think
that the
Jews would still be proclaiming, “Yeah, we did it. We killed the
bugger!” Talk
about a death wish—one that was granted them for much of the next two
millennia.
In the later Talmud, it is true that the
rabbis seem to
assume sole Jewish responsibility for Jesus death, but this only makes
sense if
the Gospel story is not history, and
their statements lacked any basis in remembered traditions of their
own.
Instead, they have garbled what they gradually took out of Christian
historicist developments which they only started to absorb in the later
2nd
century. While their incompetence in so doing is certainly bizarre, the
explanation may lie in how Frank Zindler presents the development of
alleged
Jesus references in the rabbinic writings, beginning in the 3rd
century with references which were not actually to Jesus at all, but
were only
in subsequent centuries interpreted as such by later rabbis. (Again,
see my
review of the Zindler book.)
Having noted that, judging by the Talmuds
and the Toledoth,
the Jews were
notorious at getting the Gospel elements wrong or distorted,
one might
expect
that people like Tertullian would have felt compelled to deal with
such errors
and distortions in their own day, and yet they do not. In fact, if we
were to take his De Spectaculis 30 as repeating the
Jews’
ridicule of the Gospels, they would have been amazingly accurate, down
to
quite small details!
One final point about Justin and
Tertullian.
If they were
relying on Matthew to refer to Jewish claims that the body had been
stolen, why
did they not at the same time offer his explanation of the guards at
the tomb
to discredit those claims? But Justin’s remark about the stolen body is
made as
part of his enumeration of broader activities by Jewish
anti-Christian
missionaries. To digress to offer Matthew’s elaborate scene to explain
how this
particular accusation could be countered might well have been felt
unnecessary.
In Tertullian, such a digression would be even more out of place.
Tertullian is
exulting on how his faith gives him the anticipation of seeing the
wretched
Jews confined to Hell at the Judgment, the Jews who had visited such
suffering
and deceit upon Christ, who had made such irresponsible accusations
against the
Christians, one of which was that the disciples had secretly stolen
away his
body. Such
an apologetic as Matthew’s guards scene would have been an unwieldy
digression
as well as irrelevant to this passage.
Finally, we need to take a look at the Toledoth Yeshu. Does this provide relatively early
evidence, as some
suggest, to a Jewish spin about the disciples stealing the body? It is
indeed
the only extant Jewish source which comes anywhere near to making such
a
reference. This work, as Robert Price describes it (The
Pre-Nicene New Testament, p.239), “is the title of various
related anti-gospel texts which present Jesus as a false prophet and
magician.
They often contain nasty parodies of the Christian gospels, probably as
a safe
way to let off some of the steam of hostility Jews felt over their
hideous
treatment by Christians.” In fact, it is far from clear exactly what
the
earliest version, or versions, of the Toledoth
contained, how far back it goes, and who
were
the authors. In fact, it cannot even be spoken of as “a” book, since it
is more
a tradition of Jewish satirical response to Christianity with extremely
obscure
roots. As an organized work, all manuscripts come from the medieval
period and
were actually first published by Christians (leading to the contention
that
Christians had written it to foment hatred of the Jews). While the
latter is quite unlikely, only certain elements and themes that later
became the
complete Toledoth can be traced earlier, with
much variation and uncertainty. Some of those themes can be found
alluded to in
Christian writers of the second
and later centuries, but nothing that
could identify an actual “book” in circulation, or even a
source in
an ur-collection common to the Toledoth.
In the surviving manuscripts incorporating those traditions (and they
run into
the scores) there are great numbers of variants, including basic things
like
the circumstances of Jesus’ death and what happened to his body
afterwards.
There is no way to trace any of these elements back beyond the later
Talmudic
period, let alone say with any confidence that “the disciples stole
Jesus’
body” was something in circulation in some form of Toledoth
during the 2nd
or 3rd
centuries.
In any case, the Toledoth
as we generally have it does not conform to Matthew’s scenario and
cannot
therefore be taken as confirmation of Matthew’s statement in 28:15b. In
chapter 7, the body is found
to be missing from the grave where it was buried (not in an
above-ground tomb).
After a fruitless search for it, a gardener informs the authorities
that he had
taken it upon himself to remove the body from its grave lest the
disciples
steal it, and to bury it in a pit in his garden, diverting a stream to
do so
and then restoring the flow over the new grave. The Jews then recover
the
corpse and drag it behind a horse through the streets of Jerusalem.
(Frank Zindler’s The Jesus the Jews
Never Knew devotes about a third of its length to a study of the
Toledoth.)
The Toledoth
scenario hardly supports Matthew’s
apologetic
explanation, since the disciples do not steal the body and the body has
only temporarily disappeared. Matthew could
make no use of such a Jewish spin, nor would his scene counter such a
thing. He
is dependent on the body disappearing permanently,
as the only thing that could support resurrection. Turning it around,
the
temporary disappearance of the body in the Toledoth
would bear no relationship to the Matthean scenario and could
not be
used to explain a permanent disappearance of the body (although it
could be a
denial of the latter). Thus, the Toledoth
cannot serve as evidence that an actual Jewish claim of the Matthean
sort
lies behind his scene of the guards at the tomb, let alone its
concluding line.
At best, the Toledoth
scene represents a new spin, turning
the Gospel picture of the empty tomb on its head and claiming that in
fact
there was no permanent disappearance of the body. It necessarily
postdates the
Gospels, even John, since the gardener, as a motif, may have been
inspired by
the figure mentioned in the Fourth Gospel. This passage in the Toledoth as we have it may well date
only to the later Talmudic period, and not necessarily be based on a
close
study of the Gospels but on more general exposure to Christian
traditions
which Jews during that period show signs of garbling quite extensively.
The bottom line for mythicism in all this,
of
course, is
that Matthew’s guards at the tomb scene and its concluding statement
cannot be
used as an argument in favor of an historical Jesus, or that from early
on, the
Jews were addressing themselves to an historical situation involving
claims of
the disappearance of a man’s body from an earthly tomb.
Warwick writes:
What would you have to say in reply to the quote below:
"Michael Grant
stated that the view of the Jesus myth is derived from a lack of
application of historical methods:
...if we apply to
the New Testament, as we should, the same sort of criteria as we should
apply to other ancient writings containing historical material, we can
no more reject Jesus' existence than we can reject the eixstence of a
mass of pagan personages whose reality as historical figures is never
questioned....To sum up, modern critical methods fail to support the
Christ myth theory. It has "again and again been answered and
annihilated by first rank scholars." In recent years, "no serious
scholar has ventured to postulate the non historicity of Jesus"—or at any rate
very few, and they have not succeeded in disposing of the much
stronger, indeed very abundant, evidence to the contrary. Overall, the
unhistoricity theory is regarded as effectively refuted by almost all
biblical scholars and historians."
Response to Warwick:
Michael Grant and the “annihilation” of
Mythicism
I don’t know the source of
Warwick’s overall quote, but the quote within it is
from
Grant’s 1977 book Jesus:
An Historian's
Review of the Gospels, p.199-200. I have discussed these views
of Grant at the beginning of my website article Alleged Scholarly Refutations of Jesus
Mythicism which addresses a century of so-called refutations of
the Christ Myth theory. One will note in Grant’s quote above that the
remarks about “annihilation” and “no serious scholar” are quotations by
Grant from other writers who, as I point out, have not themselves
undertaken to demonstrate this annihilation, just as Grant has not. As
to the specific question of “historical methods,” Grant seems not to
take into account that methods applying to non-religious figures in
history
are not the same as those we need to apply to religious figures who are
witnessed to only by religious writings like the Gospels and not by
general historical writings. (What all these ‘annihilations’ constitute
generally turns out to be arguments at the level of “Josephus and
Tacitus.” If one perseveres throughout the
entire three parts of my above article, I think it will be seen that
the claim at the heart of Grant’s remark, “the unhistoricity theory
is regarded as effectively refuted by almost all biblical scholars and
historians,” is simply poppycock.)
Grant was writing before the era
(since around 1980) when it has been increasingly recognized by
critical New Testament scholarship that there is little if anything
that is reliably identifiable as
historical in the Gospels, that virtually everything can be seen as
midrash on Old
Testament themes and passages. If he were writing today, he would no
doubt realize that the “criteria” used for “other ancient writings containing historical material” (my
emphasis) simply doesn’t apply to the Gospels.
Grant himself, in his book, shows
that he has the means to recognize the true nature of the Gospels and
the so-called history contained in them, but is unable to follow these
insights to their logical conclusion. The following is a telling passage—for mythicist purposes—from page 38. Grant, drawing on ideas from
various scholars, from J. Jeremias to D. B. Macdonald, is examining the
reputed miracles of Jesus and asking if those ‘impossible’ acts
really took place:
It would have been difficult to elicit an answer to this type of
question from an ancient Jew. To him, the natural and supernatural
spheres, the visible and invisible, were one and inseparable and
equally real, both manifesting in their different ways the divine will.
But the supernatural and invisible realm was hard to describe. Abstract
argument was no use; this extra-logical, extra-historical dimension
could be expressed only figuratively, by means of metaphor and imagery.
For what had to be conveyed was not mere statistics but a higher, more
elusive sort of truth: dry literalness was of no avail when people’s
imaginations had to be kindled. And these considerations were
particularly relevant to Palestine, ‘where words have never been
regarded as necessarily a reflection of fact’, but possess a life and
vigour of their own. It was a world in which stories were used as
freely as we use metaphors—a world in which possibility or
impossibility, prosaic truth or untruth often seem to be beside the
point. C. J. Ball writes,
...The rabbi embodies his lesson in a story, whether parable or
allegory or seeming historical narrative; and the last thing he and his
disciples would think of is to ask whether the selected persons, events
and circumstances which so vividly suggest the doctrine are in
themselves real or fictitious.
The doctrine is everything; the mode of presentation
has no independent value. To make the story the first consideration,
and the doctrine it was intended to convey an afterthought as we, with
our dry Western literalness, are predisposed to do, is to reverse the
Jewish order of thinking, and to do unconscious injustice to the
authors of many edifying narratives of antiquity.
Here, ironically, Grant has
summed
up a central pillar of the mythicist case. The Gospels are “edifying
narratives” that may “seem” to be historical, but are really “metaphor
and imagery” in the service of conveying “a higher, more elusive sort
of truth.” Such “stories were used as freely as we use
metaphors.”
Grant is willing to apply such principles to the question of
Jesus’ miracles, but not to the story as a whole,
not to the character
himself. He can speak critically of the dry literalness of the Western
mind in the interpretation of traditions attached to Jesus, but he
cannot bring himself to question that same dry literalness in regard to
the Gospels as a whole. He also recognizes the ancient mindset
regarding the natural
and supernatural spheres and the connections and continuity between
them, the “reality” of the invisible realm, but he fails to
see that
this is indeed the reality envisioned by Paul, and the reality which
the Gospels serve to reflect in “metaphor and imagery.”
So near, yet so far.