Bart Ehrman on the Historical Jesus

[eight bits]

Craig B

See also Acts 21:17-26 in which "James and the elders" order Paul around.

That's interesting, but I missed the part where Paul was a member of the Jerusalem Church. I also gather from Paul that there may have been some diversity of opinion between the James Gang and himself about whether he had authority beyond their tolerance of him as a fundraiser. Acts is not Paul's, and so may reflect a different view of the command structure than Paul's.

Is that how you read the following passages?

Obviously yes. The passages are frequent topics of conversation hereabouts, not anything new or obscure.

With respect to the Galatians. Paul depicts a general accord having been reached in Jersualem, with no indication that Peter, James and John distinguished rank among themselves. Peter is next seen in Antioch. When in company with the diaspora Jew Paul, Peter is chummy with Gentiles. Fellow homeland Jews show up, not parties to the four-way agreement, and Peter becomes, according to Paul, less chummy with the same Gentiles. At the very least, it seems Peter would have had to choose between eating with his people and eating with Paul's people. He chooses to eat with his own.

Where in that personal choice does James exercise any authority over Peter?

The slapdown at Antioch is a Paul chest-beating puffpiece. I am morally certain that Paul is not telling his reader that he beat up on a flunky while making sure that he stayed nice-nice with the real and rightful head of God's church back in Jerusalem.

On a point arising, all parties would agree that James, whether he were a longtime fellow top disciple and companion of Peter, of if he were Jesus' kin instead, that he was a senior Jerusalem churchman. Either way, he would have had authority to send anonymous personnel to assist the mission to Antioch in Peter's absence. So what, then, that these men were sent by James?

As to Acts 15, James states a personal opinion which generally agrees with a view already espoused by Peter back in chapter 11. Agreement betwen two people is uninformative of their relative rank, if applicable. We might also recall that Paul takes that "no meat sacrificed to idols" business as negotiable - if, for any reason, James' possible authority over Paul is relevant to our problem, which I don't see how it is.

ETA

Ian

As I mentioned, I don't see the point of reruns. If you have anything new, then throw it out here, and we'll have a go at it. Your perennial question

Can you quote where in any of Paul's letters he says that?

isn't anything new.

What you quoted from me did not purport to be a quote from Paul's letters. It was described as

The above is a summary of my position in a conversation that you and I have already had at great length, and it is similar to the positions of other posters with whom you have also had lengthy discussions on the same general proposition.

 

[maximara]

Did the author claim to squabble with his predecessors ?

My questions amount to: do the Frum cults apply, here ?

Refresh our memory. Where exactly in Paul's writings (for simplicity with is only Romans, 1st Corinthians, 2nd Corinthians, Galatians, Philippians, 1st Thessalonians and Philemon) does Paul claim that he squabble with his predecessors?

Sure in 2 Corinthians 11:3-4 he gives a warning about being "corrupted from the simplicity that is in Christ" by "another Jesus, whom we have not preached," "another spirit, which ye have not received, or another gospel, which ye have not accepted" but that is a long way from squabbling with the 12 disciples.

My point is the John Frum cults shows that many of the points classic Christ Mythers at the beginning of the 20th century were not off the wall--a movement can form without a founder.

In fact, if you think about we don't know who founded most religions.

Who founded the idea that there was a god that threw lightning around and was called Zeus, for example? Don't know.

You can see evidence that Judaism evolved from a polytheistic religion not only in part of Genesis but int he very idea that there are all these angels around. To paraphrase a quote from a very bad movie "Why does God need an angel?"

 

[dejudge]

True to form, you repeat back to me what I write. These are interesting (even if a bit silly) questions, but since I don't admit to being the author of the Gospels, they're impossible to answer.

Well, isn't that a bit silly? You want to give the impression that you can answer the impossible question of an HJ when you don't know when any book of the Canon was composed, don't know if there was a person called Jesus and don't have any actual corroborative contemporary evidence.

Your HJ argument is a failure of logic.

Why do you believe the Bible is an historical source for your assumed HJ while you simultaneously REJECT almost all of the Bible stories of Jesus from conception to ascension?

It is impossible for you to answer.

Your assumed HJ, a known crucified dead criminal, is the very worst explanation for the start of the Jesus cult of Christians.

 

[Craig B]

In fact, if you think about we don't know who founded most religions.

Who founded the idea that there was a god that threw lightning around and was called Zeus, for example? Don't know.

Neither do I, but who has ever said that Jesus or Paul founded the idea that there was a god that threw lightning around and was called YHWH?

 

[proudfootz]

Or perhaps you could read up on the history of first century Judea to see the mess that place was in.

Start with Judas the Galilean and John The Baptist and see how you go...

There was no uniformity of belief, that you apparently think there was is only evidence that you don't really know much about this subject at all.

You have much to learn, if you seriously want to understand this subject.

Or, you can carry on pretending to be an expert if you like.

First you have no clue what scholars critical of HJ hypotheses are as you don't read.

Then you can't apparently understand what's written here by me.

That you can't understand something plainly written by your contemporary in English doesn't bode well for your interpretations of ancient cultures in dead languages.

Shoot me a PM when you get up to speed!

 

[proudfootz]

That's all very silly. Very very silly. Repetitive too. I know that having a Davidic title doesn't enable people to walk on the sea. That means one of two possible things:

He didn't have a Davidic title.
He didn't walk on the sea.

I'm going for no 2. You seem to favour no 1, for some reason.

There's also the likelihood that both are false, and that said person never existed at all.

 

[IanS]

Ian

As I mentioned, I don't see the point of reruns. If you have anything new, then throw it out here, and we'll have a go at it. Your perennial question


isn't anything new.

What you quoted from me did not purport to be a quote from Paul's letters. It was described as

OK, fine. But lets be clear - what you are saying is not merely something which you believe despite it being absent from any of Paul’s letters. You are actually in direct contradiction of what Paul very specifically does unarguably say.

You are saying the complete opposite of what the Letters do actually say. Whereas I am simply pointing out to you what his letters unarguably do say.

To repeat -

- the letters most definitely do say that what he “received” was something that he confirmed to be written in the scriptures, and that he absolutely did not receive it from any of the named people, nor in fact from any human origin at all.

What he received was the gospel he preached which claimed the messiah was a figure named Jesus who had died but since risen again to show how God would raise all the faithful to heaven on the day of final judgement. And that belief he says he “received” “from no man” ,and “not of human origin”, but by direct “revelation from Jesus Christ.”

If you want to say the opposite of that and say you believe Cephas, James and the twelve told him about Jesus, then you are simply presenting an idea which is in complete contradiction to what is actually said in the letters.

 

[proudfootz]

He wasn't a "regular Joe" after his death.

As God's own son this fellow doesn't sound like a 'regular joe' before he took on the appearance of a human.

"God did by sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh to be a sin offering"

http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Romans 8&version=NIV

See Romans 1, which reconciles the problem you have.

Any particular verse? It seems to just be a jeremiad at that section.

I have pointed out the progression before.

Do you mean a development in Paul's thinking over time? Or just the development of varieties of christianities?

It is important in understanding the development of Christology, and makes nonsense of "the Bible says" stuff spouted by the troublemakers who pretend they believe that HJ is a believers' doctrine.

Regardless of who might be deemed 'troublemakers' or whether they are sincere or not, for the moment let's focus on this idea of christology.

For Paul, Jesus became a special being at the Resurrection. For Mark, the baptism by John. For the later Synoptics, the conception. For John, the Creation of the Universe. Thus, only the later Synoptics have birth stories. They alone need them.

Thanks for that summary of your thinking!

However, I have my doubts about Paul, based on some of the things attributed to him in the epistles.

You need to give me evidence of the prevalence of this idea among Jews.

Perhaps you have read in the Jewish scriptures about Tammuz?

http://www.sacred-texts.com/ane/mba/mba11.htm

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tammuz_(deity)

As this sort of cult was active all around them it makes sense that the Jews would at least be aware of them.

They believed that he had risen from the dead. In what form is arguable, but as a resurrected man, not a god. See Acts 2:22.

For the time being I will refrain from trying to harmonize different scriptures from different times by different authors with different agendas.

Some of what we see in Paul appears to be a god sending his 'own son' on a mission disguised as a human, not adopting a human as a son.

But the original group were and remained Jews. So either they were dispersed in 70 AD, or became the Ebionites, or returned to normative Judaism.

I suppose that's a possibility. And that's all we are discussing.

The future of Christianity lay with Paul's gentile movement.

It definitely appears that the Pauline variety was one of the savior cults that was included in the creation of 'orthodox christianity'.

 

[proudfootz]

OK, fine. But lets be clear - what you are saying is not merely something which you believe despite it being absent from any of Paul’s letters. You are actually in direct contradiction of what Paul very specifically does unarguably say.

You are saying the complete opposite of what the Letters do actually say. Whereas I am simply pointing out to you what his letters unarguably do say.

To repeat -

- the letters most definitely do say that what he “received” was something that he confirmed to be written in the scriptures, and that he absolutely did not receive it from any of the named people, nor in fact from any human origin at all.

What he received was the gospel he preached which claimed the messiah was a figure named Jesus who had died but since risen again to show how God would raise all the faithful to heaven on the day of final judgement. And that belief he says he “received” “from no man” ,and “not of human origin”, but by direct “revelation from Jesus Christ.”

If you want to say the opposite of that and say you believe Cephas, James and the twelve told him about Jesus, then you are simply presenting an idea which is in complete contradiction to what is actually said in the letters.

It does appear necessary to get some of these theories to work new material must be generated to fill in the logical gaps for an HJ hypothesis.

 

[Belz...]

As a total atheist why is this belief in Jesus so important to you?

I think the problem here is that you are linking the conclusion with the belief: you are an atheist, therefore you shouldn't believe that Jesus was a real dude. Anyone who thinks that Jesus could have lived is a believer, by definition.

Of course this is silly. One can be an atheist and think a real person existed that was the origin of Christianity. I don't think the reverse is possible, though.

If I said I don't believe Pythagoras actually existed would anybody spend thousands of posts to argue the point?

You're doing it again: being an atheist doesn't mean you don't think Jesus was a real man. You are over-simplifying the issue.

I have expressed my opinion as to why this may be so and the vehemence of your and Brainache's response tends to validate that opinion.

Your opinions are laced with insults and innuendos, so you're simply reaping what you have sowed. Perhaps you should be more civil in your posts, if you want to avoid the backlash.

 

[Belz...]

Refresh our memory. Where exactly in Paul's writings (for simplicity with is only Romans, 1st Corinthians, 2nd Corinthians, Galatians, Philippians, 1st Thessalonians and Philemon) does Paul claim that he squabble with his predecessors?

Haven't we been through this over and over ?

Who founded the idea that there was a god that threw lightning around and was called Zeus, for example? Don't know.

That's a good point.

 

[proudfootz]

Yeah, you'd wish those authors would've concerted and agreed on the One Steve Limit.

It would have made things less confusing!

Jews of other creeds, not just "jews".

Yes, Jews who weren't apostates.

It makes no sense for pious Jews to get upset over someone who's a well known heretic, but if this James is the son of Damneus the story in Josephus makes perfect sense.

 

[proudfootz]

My impression is that even more related to the Jesus story are dying-and-rising heroes, rather than dying-and-rising gods.

Jesus's semi-divine parentage and self-sacrifice seem to find more parallels with Hercules, Orpheus or Theseus rather than Tammuz or other vegetation divinities.

Still, as I consider it, Apollo, the divinity who was obliged descend to Earth as a punishment by his divine father and then regained Olympus when his servitude to Admetus ended, would be a possible parallel to Jesus.

Like Jesus, Apollo has a birthplace and a human mum, too.
Know thyself!

This was just part of the cultural mix which permeated the area. Not only were Jews interested in other cultures, but other cultures were interested in the Jews. Obviously there's cross-cultural fertilization.

One blunder that people who do not understand how this kind of thing works commonly make is to reject the similarities if they are not identical in every particular.

Here's Historian Dr Richard Carrier with the latest Scholarship on the issues:

http://youtu.be/mwUZOZN-9dc

What eventually became the christianity we all love shares all the key features of a cross-cultural trend of that era.

 

[Craig B]

There's also the likelihood that both are false, and that said person never existed at all.

Or that they are false and he did exist. Anything is possible except he could walk on water etc without existing. I draw the line at that!

 

[eight bits]

Ian

OK, fine. But lets be clear - what you are saying is ...

What appears in my posts, which I notice often has little to do with your paraphrases of them.

Similarly, what Paul was saying about his sources of information is what appears in his letters, which I also notice has little to do with your paraphrases of them.

max

Paul claims here that he squabbled with his predecessors.

> buzz <

What are

1 Corinthians 15: 9

For I am the least of the apostles, not fit to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the church of God.

and Galatians 1: 22-24

And I was unknown personally to the churches of Judea that are in Christ; they only kept hearing that “the one who once was persecuting us is now preaching the faith he once tried to destroy.” So they glorified God because of me.

?

> ding <

Religious Rants for 100, please, max.

 

[proudfootz]

proudfootz


OK, but Paul is culturally Jewish. Paul doesn't carry the baggage of a surrounding Christian culture. Bart does. I don't bother to mention Islamic culture. Angels don't even have free will in Islam (Isa is directly created in that religion, as a human being).

I'm not really up on the whole angel scene. Was it part of the Jewish spectrum of belief that demons were fallen angels or that demons were created to be evil?

...and if Jesus was an angel without free will of his own, then he is simply a tool of God's will?

In any case, that isn't the chief feature that drives the "height" of christology. Creator versus created is the big cut, not bragging rights and jockeying for position among the created. Paul clearly has his Jesus made man, and stayed man.

That is not apparent in the material presented thus far.

If Paul's Jesus took a reduction in rank to do that, in Bart's reading, then so be it. John would still show much improvement upon that, over an interval of two generations or so.

Yes, traditionally gJohn is thought to be later.

(Even in orthodox Christian thought, resurrected human very well may be higher than angels, even if angels are higher than "fallen" humans for such thinkers.)

Apparently whatever God's own son did while disguised as a human would allow humans to be resurrected in bodies like the body of God's own son.

That's what we need - where is that stuff in Paul? It must be pretty good, though, since Paul himself has floated in the cosmos (and cannot exclude that that was bodily), did the signs and wonders appropriate to an apostle, and has some practical experience speaking in tongues. Whoever wrote that stuff, Paul or an impostor, is a mere mortal who taught and preached then died and stayed dead about whom legends and myths gradually accumulated. It's hard to imagine what this guy could have written about Jesus that would bar Jesus from being the same.

Exactly! Where is the material in Paul that shows any relationship to the materials like the gospels which are allegedly in circulation at this time (and which some imagine Paul might have learned of from other christians)?

Mostly after Jesus died, that is, after there was no longer any historical Jesus. Paul anticipated that Jesus would re-enter history, and that would have been very special, but it didn't happen.

It seems the epistolitry christians were anticipating their savior coming, not coming again. So it doesn't appear that Jesus would be 're-entering' but entering for the first time.

Perhaps so, but that doesn't put Paul on the hook for Jesus being God, even if Bart's reading is granted, since angels aren't God, either.

I guess it depends on what being 'God's own son' means - are angels thought to be God's own sons?

I like the question, but I missed who didn't rise from the dead, the believers or their Jesus?

Sorry if that was insufficiently clear. On the typical HJ hypothesis, Jesus was a mortal who died and did not rise from the grave.

If the former, that's why Paul needed a tune-up; if the latter, then there are modern cultural Jews with that opinion (Einstein, for example, who seems to have thought of Jesus like a proto-Spinoza). So, maybe nothing special happened to them.

If people since the Enlightenment came to conceive of the idea of Jesus as a human, that doesn't tell us much about the 1st century AD.

Yes, Jesus is the first, but not the last. Pharisees, like Paul, taught a general resurrection of the righteous (including Gentiles, hence the business opportunity) at the end of days. Paul's innovations seem to be that the GR is a process not an event (everybody doesn't rise together), and he seems to have improvised (received from God?) what to do with people who hadn't died when the balloon goes up (which Paul associated with the return of Jesus to Earth). The synoptics have a much gloomier outlook on all that than Paul does.

It's not clear to me Paul envisioned a 'return' - and whatever became of all those people resurrected before Jesus?

 

[proudfootz]

Refresh our memory. Where exactly in Paul's writings (for simplicity with is only Romans, 1st Corinthians, 2nd Corinthians, Galatians, Philippians, 1st Thessalonians and Philemon) does Paul claim that he squabble with his predecessors?

Sure in 2 Corinthians 11:3-4 he gives a warning about being "corrupted from the simplicity that is in Christ" by "another Jesus, whom we have not preached," "another spirit, which ye have not received, or another gospel, which ye have not accepted" but that is a long way from squabbling with the 12 disciples.

My point is the John Frum cults shows that many of the points classic Christ Mythers at the beginning of the 20th century were not off the wall--a movement can form without a founder.

In fact, if you think about we don't know who founded most religions.

Who founded the idea that there was a god that threw lightning around and was called Zeus, for example? Don't know.

You can see evidence that Judaism evolved from a polytheistic religion not only in part of Genesis but int he very idea that there are all these angels around. To paraphrase a quote from a very bad movie "Why does God need an angel?"

I don't think there is any indication of 'disciples' at all in the cult represented by the epistles.

Even epistles allegedly written by Jesus's supposed earthly followers and putative blood brothers have no reminiscence of spending time together.

It's all about the savior finally arriving, not returning.

The earthly ministry doesn't appear until later.

 

[proudfootz]

Or that they are false and he did exist. Anything is possible except he could walk on water etc without existing. I draw the line at that!

Agreed! We must have some sort of standards.

 

[Craig B]

As God's own son this fellow doesn't sound like a 'regular joe' before he took on the appearance of a human.

"God did by sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh to be a sin offering".

Yes but also

Romans 1:3 ... regarding his Son, who as to his earthly life was a descendant of David, 4 and who through the Spirit of holiness was appointed the Son of God in power by his resurrection from the dead: Jesus Christ our Lord.

I suppose these things can be harmonised by the equation descendant of David = Son of God. Solomon was described as both these things.

Do you mean a development in Paul's thinking over time? Or just the development of varieties of christianities?

The progressive elaboration of the supernatural element of the Jesus figure from one source to the next within the Gospels.

However, I have my doubts about Paul, based on some of the things attributed to him in the epistles.

Doubts regarding what?

Perhaps you have read in the Jewish scriptures about Tammuz?

As this sort of cult was active all around them it makes sense that the Jews would at least be aware of them.

Aware of them as an abomination perpetrated by idolaters no doubt. I mean not simply that the Jews knew about such things, but that they accepted them sufficiently to evolve a dying and rising Godman religion. I find that improbable for the Second Temple period.

For the time being I will refrain from trying to harmonize different scriptures from different times by different authors with different agendas.

As you please. But Acts 2:22 has Peter proclaiming Jesus as a man chosen by God and raised back to life by him; he doesn't depict Jesus as a dying and rising God, or as an aspect of the unique Jewish divinity.

Some of what we see in Paul appears to be a god sending his 'own son' on a mission disguised as a human, not adopting a human as a son.

Paul is not entirely consistent, I agree: we have both quoted from Romans two passages that are not easy to harmonise.

 

[IanS]

It does appear necessary to get some of these theories to work new material must be generated to fill in the logical gaps for an HJ hypothesis.

Apparently we have to deny the very thing that Paul actually says about his knowledge of Jesus, and instead invent the complete and entire opposite, even though that opposite belief is not claimed by anyone anywhere in the entire NT.

And I don’t say that as any kind of wish to dispute anything with what eight-Bits says, became I know he is sincere about this and also thoughtful and well informed. But if we are going to reject what is actually said in Paul’s letters and propose an entire and complete contradiction to what he actually says, then frankly we have to chuck out Paul entirely as a source for anything here.

I don’t mind doing that, if HJ people here want to chuck out Paul’s letters entirely. But then what are we left with? Just the late copyist versions of impossibly miraculous gospels from anonymous sources none of whom ever knew Jesus … what earthly use is that supposed to be?

And whilst we are talking of inventing stuff and erasing what is actually said in the NT, we ought to note that the entire idea of a HJ seems to be nothing more that a complete invention in response to the fact that by about 1800AD increasing understanding of science was beginning to show many educated people that the bible truths they had proclaimed for 1800 years just could not be true at all. So we do what? Just simply cross out all the miracles and other impossible claims? What is the justification for doing that?