Bart Ehrman on the Historical Jesus

[dejudge]

Unless you’re able to demonstrate that the Marcionites, Valentinians, Tatian and Apelles, did not make use of Paul’s epistles prior to the year 180, your theory not only does not fly, but doesn’t even make it off the ground, which seems to render further discussion thereof rather pointless.

Well, well, well!!! "Unless you are able to demonstrate that the Marcionites, Valentinians, Tatian and Apelles did make use of Paul's Epistles prior to the year 180 then your theory not only does not fly, but doesn't even make it off the ground".

You seem to have forgotten that you claimed Lost writings are of no consequence in the argument about the Pauline Corpus

....insofar much of their writings have been lost, are of no consequence where those of Paul’s are concerned.

Your argument does not even make it off the ground based on your own words.

 

[dejudge]

This is a very strange approach to the subject, as last time this subject came up during a discourse on paleographic comparison between Justin Martyr and Pauline texts, Dejudge wasn't able to read the Greek directly for either the Apologetic texts he was citing, nor the Pauline texts that were in question at the time - instead (like most folks) referring to translated copies of both into English.

What an irrelevant statement. You conveniently fail to comprehend that Brainache and most posters here do NOT claim to read Greek.

I

It doesn't really seem to be a relevant point to suggest that Brainache cannot read the DSS, when they are published in English; thereby making the only sensible meaning of the charge that Brainache is not able to read them in Hebrew...but then again, how is this any different from Dejudge not being able to read Apologetic, Pauline, and Gospel texts in their Greek form?

Again, you seem to have no idea that it was Brainache who is implying that he has read the DSS so why don't you ask him if he understands Greek, Hebrew and all the languages in the DSS or was he just repeating what others write about them.

If that is somehow a limiting obfuscation being cited, then I don't see how it is a valid comparison since both parties are rather equal on that ability and using English translations by others just as equally as each other; for as far as I'm aware, Dedjuge cannot read either Hebrew nor Greek any more than Brainache...I'm not really sure what the value of this was supposed to be.

You now admit that you are confused.

Your own confusion has no negative effect on my position that Jesus the Rabbi is an un-evidenced Crackpot theory.

 

[DougW]

This last bolded part is striking to me as well - it's as if the two 'streams' are completely ignorant of one another. This argues, in my opinion, to the possibility that there were many different communities or cults churning out faith literature that could be in complete ignorance of one another - even if they were contemporaries. Such groups speculating about a savior could spring up anywhere there was a copy of the Septuagint and need not have its origin in the story of one man in Palestine.

Thank you for the Vridar link, proudfootz, I hadn’t read it before.

Interesting that he too points the finger at Simon Magus, or his followers, as possibly being the original initiator of some of the Paul’s works.

From what I’ve read about Marcion, he doesn’t strike me either as one who, unlike vaunted church fathers, would resort to false assertions.

I don’t think the two strands, Paul’s writings and the Gospel’s, were ignorant of one another so much (Irenaeus, Tertullian, and Clement of Alexandria all mention the letters), as that the Epistles were only belatedly adopted by the church as their own through the Gospel of the Apostles - and here with Paul placed necessarily subordinate to Peter, in that the authority of the Church of Rome derived from the latter.

Adoption of the four gospels as the final inspired word, and then of Paul’s epistles as well, occurred also around the same time that the Church of Rome was extending its authority over all of the Empire’s Christian churches. Politics, in part at least, played its part?

 

[HghrSymmetry]

I'm well past the point of trying to make dejudge see reason.

I'm just exposing his fallacies for the lurkers...

Ah, well done then.

 

[pakeha]

Plausibility is a concern for fiction, because if you simply tell the truth you have no need to be concerned over whether it fits people's expectations.

Carrier does a masterful job of showing why the gospel tales are sophisticated works of literature rather than simply the record of oral histories in this video already linked:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MclBbZUFSag

Interesting that about 14:30 Carrier describes how we can see the process of a 'gospel narrative' being fashioned from an earlier text from the Nag Hammadi library - how the words of Eugnostos are transformed into a narrative about Jesus in the Sophia of Jesus Christ. It's like finding a transitional species preserved in amber.


The Sophia of Jesus Christ is clearly dependent on Eugnostos the Blessed, both of which were unearthed at Nag Hammadi (in two differing copies for each). The Sophia of Jesus Christ transforms Eugnostos into a dialogue with Jesus. Douglas M. Parrott places the two side by side in his translation for the book The Nag Hammadi Library in English edited by Robinson.

Thanks for the introduction to Sofia.
Off to read more.

Egyptian religious thought also appears to have influenced its picture of the supercelestial realm. The probable place of origin for Eugnostos, then, is Egypt. A very early date is suggested by the fact that Stoics, Epicureans and astrologers are called "all the philosophers." That characterization would have been appropriate in the first century B.C.E., but not later.

http://www.earlychristianwritings.com/sophia.html

This fits rather well with hypotheses that christians cannibalized all sorts of texts when creating their syncretic religion, being like Paul 'all things to all men'. Thus the philosophic musings of Eugnostos suddenly become the reported words of Jesus to His Disciples. All with the flourish of a pen.



Much the same way that for Paul, Jesus seems to have taken human form only to defeat Death through dying-and-rising. It's like watching a film or other drama and being able to predict what will happen - some characters only exist to serve certain plot functions. ...

Thanks for the link.
About comparing the Jesus story to watching a film- I recall a poster in the monster thread at Ratskep developed the idea that some of the earliest evangelisation took the form of 'passion plays', perhaps related to Greek drama and were acted out to the public. The gospels as we know them were more or less scripts including stage directions.
Speculation?
Of course. But even today, passion plays are enacted and shown to be enduringly popular.

Off to read more.

...John is a good writer, and knew better than to have an unnecessary functional character. He seems to dislike Judas, but his Judas has some three-dimensionality, and not just villainy. (Although villains can be the best characters in a piece, even if you never like them.)

It is a literary flaw to have too many functional characters, but I don't see that the skill-level of the storyteller has any relevance to historical reality of the characters. If Judas became a scapegoat for what all of his colleagues did, then I would sooner suspect that a historical person missed a post-game team meeting before I would believe the character was fictional, unless all the rest of them are fictions, too. That's about 40% for me. I don't see anything that actually distinguishes Judas from anybody else who is not mentioned by name or nickname(s) in Paul's letters but who shows up in the later Gospels.

At the end of the day, that hilited bit sums up the crux of the question to me.
How do we distinguish between propaganda, history and hagiography?

I largely agree David, and I’d much rather have addressed this page’s first couple of posts instead.

“The sole question important at this moment is: Is it possible to establish some original content of the Pauline epistles and to date it?”

Many have tried, with Marcion’s version as their starting point, but even this hardly accounts for the pre-Marcion material.

On the other hand, Bart Erhman’s claims, this topic’s real concern, are mainly based on fallacious circular reasoning, which I’m sure he realizes himself.

Welcome to the forum, DougW.

...I retract my earlier statement about our conversation being pleasant. You are deliberately misrepresenting me, and then denying even doing it. Around here we call that lying.

I'm here to learn and if I've expressed myself badly, I deeply apologise for it.

...Instead of submitting the author of the Paulines to psychological or tactical analysis to explain his contradictions, I think consideration should be given first to the earliest explanation, that of Marcion: someone has tampered with the letters; they were originally gnostic but were subsequently Judaized. I know that playing the interpolation card looks like an “easy-out.” But surely it counts for something that from the first moment the Pauline collection of letters turns up in the early record a prominent Christian, Marcion, was already screaming: “Interpolated!”[/I]

http://vridar.org/2012/01/23/was-marcion-right-about-pauls-letters/

[ . . . ]

Thanks for the link. It's interesting to see how quickly the early church was to punish those who thought differently than the consensus, isn't it.

...Have you ever heard of the Apocritus attributed to Macarius Magnes? ...

I hadn't, til your post.
Off to read more of the 4th century writers, including Macarius Magnes.

 

[dejudge]

Thank you for the Vridar link, proudfootz, I hadn’t read it before.

Interesting that he too points the finger at Simon Magus, or his followers, as possibly being the original initiator of some of the Paul’s works.

Simon Magus wrote some of the Pauline letters??

Please, where do people get those Crackpot ideas from? Their imagination?

You claim Marcion published 10 Pauline Epistles which he did NOT write but now it is claimed Simon Magus may have written some of the Epistles.

It is obvious that there is no known established evidence for the Pauline Corpus.

 

[David Mo]

I largely agree David, and I’d much rather have addressed this page’s first couple of posts instead.

“The sole question important at this moment is: Is it possible to establish some original content of the Pauline epistles and to date it?”

Many have tried, with Marcion’s version as their starting point, but even this hardly accounts for the pre-Marcion material.

On the other hand, Bart Erhman’s claims, this topic’s real concern, are mainly based on fallacious circular reasoning, which I’m sure he realizes himself.

I have read two Ehrman's books only. I have found them interesting and less illusory than usual in the subject of historical Jesus. I was a little surprised with his aggressiveness against the mythicism in his last book. I think this was not in the line of his previous work that was moderately sceptical. Perhaps the passionate context of American religion is to blame.

 

[David Mo]

Re the highlight, which is the central issue you are disputing - I think we discussed exactly that point before, when I said to you and/or CraigB that if you want to chuck out Paul’s letters entirely on the basis that the copies we have are unreliable, then that’s fine by me. Do you want rule out the extant translations of Paul’s letters as evidence of Jesus?

I think I have never suggested we ought “to chuck out Paul’s letters entirely on the basis that the copies we have are unreliable”.
I entered on the Paul's epistles theme by the problem of meaning of "brother of Lord" only, that is interesting but secondary for my main line of reasoning about the existence of Jesus ("historical Jesus" is the name of a different problem between experts of Early Christianity).
But once set the discussion out about Paul's epistles the dating problem is prioritary because you have applied an extreme criterion of dating.

About your question: “Do you want rule out the extant translations of Paul’s letters as evidence of Jesus?”

I'm against to rule out "as evidence" any ancient text on the basis of the date of its first known manuscript and our ignorance of its authorship.
I'm in favour of applying the same criteria to Paul's epistles than to Plato's writings and specially his letters. Don't you agree?

 

[JaysonR]

Dejudge,

Brainache . ask . you read DSS?
You . state . he no read DSS.

Brainache . read . DSS in English.
You . read . Apologetics and Bible in English.

You . state . he no read DSS = pointless.

You . read . Brainache . read . in English.

 

[HghrSymmetry]

There you go Jason, now you're getting the hang of it!

 

[DougW]

I have read two Ehrman's books only. I have found them interesting and less illusory than usual in the subject of historical Jesus. I was a little surprised with his aggressiveness against the mythicism in his last book. I think this was not in the line of his previous work that was moderately sceptical. Perhaps the passionate context of American religion is to blame.

I take your point, David, especially the last sentiment.

Thanks. Pakeha.

 

[proudfootz]

Thank you for the Vridar link, proudfootz, I hadn’t read it before.

It is a great blog full of useful information.

Interesting that he too points the finger at Simon Magus, or his followers, as possibly being the original initiator of some of the Paul’s works.

From what I’ve read about Marcion, he doesn’t strike me either as one who, unlike vaunted church fathers, would resort to false assertions.

Someone who tells it like it is is bound to fall afoul of an orthodoxy.

I don’t think the two strands, Paul’s writings and the Gospel’s, were ignorant of one another so much (Irenaeus, Tertullian, and Clement of Alexandria all mention the letters), as that the Epistles were only belatedly adopted by the church as their own through the Gospel of the Apostles - and here with Paul placed necessarily subordinate to Peter, in that the authority of the Church of Rome derived from the latter.

I'm thinking in terms of origins - obviously the epistolic Jesuses and the narrative Jesuses were eventually absorbed and harmonized by the emerging orthodox hegemony. And I agree, the book of Acts is where the bridge is invented between the two.

Adoption of the four gospels as the final inspired word, and then of Paul’s epistles as well, occurred also around the same time that the Church of Rome was extending its authority over all of the Empire’s Christian churches. Politics, in part at least, played its part?

Yes, I think there was quite a bit of work trying to coopt various independent savior cults, which perhaps explains why we end up with four gospel narratives instead of one. Various constituencies had to be placated.

 

[IanS]

I think I have never suggested we ought “to chuck out Paul’s letters entirely on the basis that the copies we have are unreliable”.
I entered on the Paul's epistles theme by the problem of meaning of "brother of Lord" only, that is interesting but secondary for my main line of reasoning about the existence of Jesus ("historical Jesus" is the name of a different problem between experts of Early Christianity).
But once set the discussion out about Paul's epistles the dating problem is prioritary because you have applied an extreme criterion of dating.

About your question: “Do you want rule out the extant translations of Paul’s letters as evidence of Jesus?”

I'm against to rule out "as evidence" any ancient text on the basis of the date of its first known manuscript and our ignorance of its authorship.
I'm in favour of applying the same criteria to Paul's epistles than to Plato's writings and specially his letters. Don't you agree?

Why are you still arguing about anything? Are you just here to create disputes? What is there left to argue about?

You want to talk about the dates of all these documents? Well we do not have good estimates for any of these dates obtained by palaeographic arguments. That’s too subjective and imprecise for anything other than a very rough estimate. And those are estimates all of which concern devotional Christian copying of non-existent originals … so we cannot know what any original authors such as Paul ever really wrote or what date that really was.

You don’t want to chuck out Paul as evidence? I don’t suppose you do! Because as I said to you before, that would only leave the completely discredited miracle writing of the gospels.

You want to talk about Plato? What criteria do you think have been applied to letters of Plato that are not being honourably and objectively applied in the case of Paul or any of the NT Jesus writing?

 

[proudfootz]

It's interesting to see how quickly the early church was to punish those who thought differently than the consensus, isn't it.

Today's orthodoxies are just as quick to try and stamp out heresies.

 

[DougW]

I'm thinking in terms of origins - obviously the epistolic Jesuses and the narrative Jesuses were eventually absorbed and harmonized by the emerging orthodox hegemony. And I agree, the book of Acts is where the bridge is invented between the two.

I see what you mean, proudfootz - before Marcion.

True enough, the writings culminating in the four gospels seem to have spun their merry way without any interaction with Paul’s works.

 

[eight bits]

pakeha

At the end of the day, that hilited bit sums up the crux of the question to me.
How do we distinguish between propaganda, history and hagiography?

There is no history, there is only primary source propaganda (Paul's business letters, which are early, but not early enough, and have been corrupted) and hagiography, the Gospels.

I am fond of the proverb "If what you have are lemons, then make lemonade." Hagiography alone isn't a good source of information about its subjects, who may not even exist, but it should tell us something about the hagiographers. And this hagiography seems interestingly placed in time - all the major First Generation propagandists are apparently dead, and it is their successors that are duking it out, possibly over the next two generations.

The most prominent feature of the synoptics as hagiography, IMO, is that they are joint hagiography. Their subject is not so much Jesus, as Jesus' relationship with his disciples, especially Rocky and the Thunder Brothers (Simon Peter, James and John). And who's writing this stuff? Presumably people "taught by," or "continuing in the tradition of" the now-dead Rocky and the Thunder Brothers. If they look good, then the authors look good.

Enter John, who tosses a Hail Mary pass. He's Third Generation - and "his" last chapter says in black letters that Jesus-lore transmission through Rocky is unreliable. But what if there were a time capsule, some writing from the First Generation, that John happened to have discovered? And who wrote this time capsule? Why, one of Jesus' favorite boytoys back then, a witness to the Crucifixion (no other male disciple can say that), who eventually becomes the guardian of Mary, Jesus' mother. Imagine what convesrations they must have had.

And then there's our mutual friend Mary Mgadalene, who is put in play by John as having a special relationship with Jesus, and becomes in the never-canonical Gnostic literature yet another route of inheritance for Jesus lore.

There's plenty to do here, in Generations Two and Three. Put it together with the propaganda from Generation One, and you might just make out one or two features of Patient Zero - neither with high resolution nor with high confidence, but better than some other approaches, I think.

 

[dejudge]

I see what you mean, proudfootz - before Marcion.

True enough, the writings culminating in the four gospels seem to have spun their merry way without any interaction with Paul’s works.

That means the four gospels were most likely composed BEFORE the Entire Pauline Corpus.

1. There are multiple Apologetics who wrote about the stories of Jesus and never mentioned Paul, the Pauline Revealed Gospel or the Pauline Corpus.

2. The author of the short gMark did NOT know of the Pauline post resurrection narratives.

3. All post-resurrection narratives were composed AFTER the short gMark version of the Jesus story.

4. The Pauline post resurrection narratives that over 500 persons was seen of the resurrected Jesus are UNKNOWN to the authors of the Four Gospels.

5. The Pauline Revealed Gospel that there is NO remission of Sins without the Resurrection is UNKNOWN to the authors of the Four Gospels.

6. The Pauline Revealed Gospel and the Entire Pauline Corpus was UNKNOWN to the author of Acts.

7. The author of Revelation did NOT know of Paul, the Pauline Revealed Gospel and the Pauline Corpus.

8. The Ritual of the Eucharist in the Pauline Corpus was invented AFTER the short gMark was composed. There is no command to carry out the ritual of the Eucharist in the short gMark.

9. 2nd century Apologetics and non-Apologetics did NOT acknowledge Paul as the one who evangelized the Roman Empire. They claimed it was the 12 disciples of Jesus.

10. There is virtually NO reference to a single Pauline verse in the ENTIRE NT by the other authors.

11. The Jesus character in the Synoptic Gospels did NOT know of the Pauline Revealed Gospel--remission of sins by the resurrection.

12. The Jesus character in the Synoptics preached the Gospel in the Revelation of John--that the Kingdom of God was at hand.

13. The Pauline 2nd coming narrative was UNKNOWN to Justin. The Kingdom of God would come down from heaven and the resurrected dead in Christ would reign with Jesus for 1000 years.

The Pauline writer claimed the dead in Christ would meet Jesus in the AIR.

14. Apologetic writers, Origen and Eusebius, admitted Paul knew of gLuke.

15. The author of the Muratorian Canon admitted the Pauline letters were composed AFTER Revelation by John.

16. No Pauline writings have been found and dated pre 70 CE.

The evidence is overwhelming.

The ENTIRE Pauline Corpus was fabricated AFTER the Jesus story and Revelation of John were already composed and circulated within the Roman Empire.

 

[pakeha]

pakeha


There is no history, there is only primary source propaganda (Paul's business letters, which are early, but not early enough, and have been corrupted) and hagiography, the Gospels.

I am fond of the proverb "If what you have are lemons, then make lemonade." Hagiography alone isn't a good source of information about its subjects, who may not even exist, but it should tell us something about the hagiographers. And this hagiography seems interestingly placed in time - all the major First Generation propagandists are apparently dead, and it is their successors that are duking it out, possibly over the next two generations.

The most prominent feature of the synoptics as hagiography, IMO, is that they are joint hagiography. Their subject is not so much Jesus, as Jesus' relationship with his disciples, especially Rocky and the Thunder Brothers (Simon Peter, James and John). And who's writing this stuff? Presumably people "taught by," or "continuing in the tradition of" the now-dead Rocky and the Thunder Brothers. If they look good, then the authors look good.

Enter John, who tosses a Hail Mary pass. He's Third Generation - and "his" last chapter says in black letters that Jesus-lore transmission through Rocky is unreliable. But what if there were a time capsule, some writing from the First Generation, that John happened to have discovered? And who wrote this time capsule? Why, one of Jesus' favorite boytoys back then, a witness to the Crucifixion (no other male disciple can say that), who eventually becomes the guardian of Mary, Jesus' mother. Imagine what convesrations they must have had.

And then there's our mutual friend Mary Mgadalene, who is put in play by John as having a special relationship with Jesus, and becomes in the never-canonical Gnostic literature yet another route of inheritance for Jesus lore.

There's plenty to do here, in Generations Two and Three. Put it together with the propaganda from Generation One, and you might just make out one or two features of Patient Zero - neither with high resolution nor with high confidence, but better than some other approaches, I think.

You could be right there, in that "If what you have are lemons, then make lemonade."
Still, the more I read biblical scholars on the subject*, the more circular their reasoning seems.
Anyway.
Off to contemplate the frescos of the Dura-Europos church for a bit before starting round two of the work day.


* Oh, yes, I read biblical scholars.
Not on a daily basis, but frequently, to see what's being thought and written about from as many angles as I can.

 

[dejudge]

pakeha


There is no history, there is only primary source propaganda (Paul's business letters, which are early, but not early enough, and have been corrupted) and hagiography, the Gospels.

Your statement is simply un-evidenced. The Pauline Corpus cannot be confirmed to be a 'primary source propaganda' when it is riddled with forgeries or false attribution and without corroboration in the very NT itself.

No writer of the ENTIRE NT used the so-called primary propaganda in the ENTIRE Pauline Corpus.

The Entire Pauline Corpus is an extremely late propaganda and was unknown at least up to c 180 CE.

The primary propaganda in the NT was the version of the Jesus story in the short gMark.

Multiple authors copied passages word for word from the short gMark. The author of gMatthew copied hundreds of verses from gMark--sometimes word for word. The author of gMatthew also made use of a similar chronology for the acts of Jesus as found in gMark.

The author of gLuke also used gMark word for word.

The author of the Long gMark copied WORD for WORD the ENTIRE short gMark, over 600 verses and added only a mere 12 verses.

The evidence is overwhelming.

The short gMark is the PRIMARY propaganda source for the Jesus story in the Entire NT.

 

[proudfootz]

You could be right there, in that "If what you have are lemons, then make lemonade."

Still, the more I read biblical scholars on the subject*, the more circular their reasoning seems.

The problem is they haven't got lemons, but they're still calling what they produce lemonade...