Jesus as a Failed Eschatological Prophet

[bskeptic]

An Inference to the Best Explanation: Jesus as a Failed Eschatological Prophet

exapologist.blogspot.co.uk/2007/10/one-of-main-reasons-why-i-think.html

I agree with mainstream scholarship on the historical Jesus (e.g., E.P. Sanders, Geza Vermes, Bart Ehrman, Dale Allison, Paula Fredriksen, et al.) that Jesus was a failed apocalyptic prophet. Such a hypothesis, if true, would be a simple one that would make sense of a wide range of data, including the following fourteen (or so):

D1. John the Baptist preached a message of repentance to escape the imminent judgment of the eschaton. Jesus was his baptized disciple, and thus accepted his message -- and in fact preached basically the same message.
D2. Many (most?) of Jesus’ “Son of Man” passages are most naturally interpreted as allusions to the Son of Man figure in Daniel. This figure was an end of the world arbiter of God’s justice, and Jesus kept preaching that he was on his way (e.g., “From now on, you will see the Son of Man sitting at the right hand of Power, and coming on the clouds of heaven.” Matt. 26:64). Jesus seems to identify himself with this apocalyptic figure in Daniel, but I'm not confident whether this identification is a later redaction. Either way, it doesn't bode well for orthodox Christianity.
D3. The earliest canonical writing (I Thess): Paul taught of an imminent eschaton, and it mirrors in wording the end-time passages in the synoptics (especially the so-called "Little Apocalypse" in Mark, and the subsequently-written parallels in Matthew and Luke).
D4. Many passages attributed to Jesus have him predicting the end within his generation (“the time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of heaven is at hand. Repent and believe the good news” (Mark 1:15); “this generation will not pass away until all these things take place” (Mark 13:30); “truly I say to you, you will not finish going through the cities of Israel until the Son of Man comes” (Matthew 10:23); “Truly I say to you, there are some of those who are standing here who will not taste death until they see the kingdom of God after it has come with power.” (Mark 9:1); "From now on, you shall see the Son of Man coming in the clouds..." (Matthew 26:64)).
D5. A sense of urgency permeates the gospels and the other NT writings: e.g., the disciples must hurry to send the message to the cities of Israel before Daniel’s “Son of Man” comes; Jesus' command to leave all to follow him; Jesus' statement that even burying one’s parents has a lower priority; Paul telling the Corinthians not to change their current state, since it’s all about to end (e.g., don’t seek marriage, or to leave one's slave condition, etc., since the end of all things is at hand; and on and on, all the way through the NT corpus).
D6. Jesus and Paul taught a radical "interim ethic". This makes sense if they believed that the eschaton would occur within their generation.
D7. Jesus had his disciples leave everything and follow him around. This makes sense if Jesus believed that he and they were to be God’s final messengers before the eschaton.
D8. There is a clear pattern of a successive watering down of Jesus’ prediction of the eschaton within the generation of his disciples, starting with Mark (widely believed among NT scholars to be the first gospel written), and continuing through the rest of the synoptic gospels. By the time we get to John, the last gospel written, the eschatological "kingdom of God" talk is dropped (except for one passage, and it no longer has clear eschatological connotations), along with the end-time predictions, and is replaced with "eternal life" talk. Further, the epistles presuppose that the early church thought Jesus really predicted the end within their lifetimes. Finally, this successive backpedaling continues beyond the NT writings and into those of the apocrypha and the early church leaders, even to the point where some writings attribute an anti-apocalyptic message to Jesus. All of these things make perfect sense if Jesus really did make such a prediction, and the church needed to reinterpret his message in light of the fact that his generation passed away, yet the eschaton never came.
D9. The fact that not just Paul, but also all the other NT authors believed the end would occur in their generation makes perfect sense if Jesus really did make such claims
D10. The fact that the early church believed the end would occur in their lifetime makes perfect sense if Jesus really did make such claims
D11. Consider also E.P. Sanders’ argument: the passages that attribute these predictions to Jesus and Paul satisfy the historical criteria of multiple attestation (and forms), embarrassment, earliest strata (Mark, Q, M, L, Paul’s earliest letters, the ancient “Maranatha” creed/hymn) etc., thus strongly indicating that these words go back to the lips of Jesus....

[bskeptic]

Glenn Miller has an apologist response to this kind of thing for anyone interested.

Quote:

Part one (this part) contains the following entries:



·Introduction
·Argument form "Inference to the Best Explanation"
·Did John the Baptist teach an imminent judgment?
·So the only 'imminent' aspect his teaching (as in 'within the first century') was the 'at hand' word (as used in Matthew)?
·And how was the phrase 'kingdom of heaven' (or 'kingdom of God') likely understood at the time?
·But didn't apocalyptic thought include an 'interim kingdom' (e.g. of the Messiah) prior to the great-and-ultimate Kingdom?
·Would John the Baptist's teaching be considered 'apocalyptic' by today's standards?
·Would John the Baptist's understanding of himself as the role of the forerunner to the Messiah imply a belief that all end-time events would happen within his generation?
·Did John the Baptist teach that this judgment would happen within his lifetime (or within the first-century generation)?
·Was Jesus a baptized disciple of John?
·Did Jesus teach the same thing as John the Baptist concerning the eschaton?
·Did Jesus consider the Son of Man terminology to be a reference to the Danielic eschatological figure? Did Jesus identify himself with this figure?
·Did Jesus teach that this Son of Man figure was 'on the way'?
·Does the Matthew 26:64 passage show that Jesus believed that this Son of Man figure (being Jesus via self-identification) was 'on the way'?
·One last question about this passage: is there any way to use this passage as evidence of some 'watering down' of the apocalyptic message of Jesus by the church?
·Did Paul teach an imminent eschaton in I Thess?
·Does this teaching mirror the wording of end-time passages in the Synoptics?
·Are there many passages in which Jesus is predicting the end (of the world?) within his generation?
·What actually did Jesus MEAN by 'generation' in such apocalyptic passages?
·Which are the main passages which some understand to be Jesus' failed prophecy of his return? (Mark 1.15? Mark 13.30? Matt 10.23? Matt 26.64)?


http://www.christianthinktank.com/spinmequick1.html

[bskeptic]

William Lane Craig defends Jesus' parousia prediction:

http://www.rfmedia.org/RF_audio_video/R ... Wrong_.mp3

(from about the 12 minute point.)

[bskeptic]

Quoting Gary DeMar:

...Following the biblical evidence, many Bible commentators have interpreted Jesus’ use of “this generation” in the Olivet Discourse as the generation of Jesus’ day. Here are some examples:

Henry Hammond (1653): “I now assure you, that in the age of some that are now alive, shall all that has been said in this chapter [Matt. 24] be certainly fulfilled.”[4]

John Lightfoot (1658): “Hence it appears plain enough, that the foregoing verses [Matt. 24:1–34] are not to be understood of the last judgment, but, as we said, of the destruction of Jerusalem. There were some among the disciples (particularly John), who lived to see these things come to pass. With Matt. xvi. 28, compare John xxi. 22. And there were some Rabbins alive at the time when Christ spoke these things, that lived until the city was destroyed.”

Philip Doddridge (1750): “And verily I say unto you; and urge you to observe it, as absolutely necessary in order to understand what I have been saying, That this generation of men now living shall not pass away until all these things be fulfilled, for what I have foretold concerning the destruction of the Jewish state is so near at hand, that some of you shall live to see it all accomplished with a dreadful exactness.”[6]

Thomas Newton (1755): “It is to me a wonder how any man can refer part of the foregoing discourse to the destruction of Jerusalem, and part to the end of the world, or any other distant event, when it is said so positively here in the conclusion, All these things shall be fulfilled in this generation.”[7]

John Gill (1766): “This is a full and clear proof, that not any thing that is said before [v. 34], relates to the second coming of Christ, the day of judgment, and the end of the world; but that all belongs to the coming of the son of man in the destruction of Jerusalem, and to the end of the Jewish state.”[8]

Thomas Scott (1817): “This absolutely restricts our primary interpretation of the prophecy to the destruction of Jerusalem, which took place within forty years.”[9]

Henry Cowles (1881) : “Some interpreters have construed the words—‘this generation’—to mean this sort of people, i.e., the Jews, or the wicked, etc., seeking to set aside its only legitimate sense, viz., the men then living. Such wresting of Christ’s words cannot be reprobated too severely.”[10]

Milton Terry (1898): “Is it not strange that any careful student of our Lord’s teaching should fail to understand his answer to this very question? The disciples asked, definitely, WHEN shall it be [Matt. 24:3]? And Jesus proceeded to foretell a variety of things which they would live to see — all preliminary to the end. He foretold the horrors of the siege of Jerusalem, and an intelligible sign by which they might know the imminence of the final catastrophe of Judaism. And having told them of all these things, and of his own coming in the clouds and its glorious significance, he added: ‘When ye see these things coming to pass, know that it is nigh, at the door. Verily I say unto you, this generation shall not pass away until all these things be accomplished.’ The ruin of the temple was, accordingly, the crisis which marked the end of the pre-Messianic age.”[11]

John Broadas (1886): “Verily, I say unto you (see on 5:18), calling attention to something of special importance. This generation, as in 23:36, also 11:16 12:41f.; and compare Luke 17:25 with 21:32. The word cannot have any other meaning here than the obvious one. The attempts to establish for it the sense of race or nation have failed. There are some examples in which it might have such a meaning, but none in which it must, for in every case the recognized meaning will answer, and so another sense is not admissible. (Comp. on 3:6) Some of the Fathers took it to mean the generation of believers, i. e., the Christians, etc., after the loose manner of interpreting into which many of them so often fell. We now commonly make the rough estimate of three generations to a century. The year in which our Lord said this was most probably A.D. 30, and if so, it was forty years to the destruction of Jerusalem. The thought is thus the same as in 16:28; and comp. John 21:22f. Till all these things be fulfilled, or, more exactly, take place, ‘come to pass,’ see on 5:18. The emphasis is on ‘all.’ All the things predicted in v. 4–31 would occur before or in immediate connection with the destruction of Jerusalem.”[12]

G. R. Beasley-Murray (1957): “Despite all the attempts to establish the contrary, there seems to be no escape from the admission that here [in Mark 13:30] ἡ γενεὰ αὕτη is to be taken in its natural sense of the generation contemporary with Jesus.”[13]

Robert G. Bratcher and Eugene A. Nida (1961): “[T]he obvious meaning of the words ‘this generation’ is the people contemporary with Jesus. Nothing can be gained by trying to take the word in any sense other than its normal one: in Mark (elsewhere in 8:12, 9:19) the word always has this meaning.”[14]

William L. Lane (1974): “The significance of the temporal reference has been debated, but in Mark ‘this generation’ clearly designates the contemporaries of Jesus (see on Chs. 8:12, 38; 9:19) and there is no consideration from the context which lends support to any other proposal. Jesus solemnly affirms that the generation contemporary with his disciples will witness the fulfillment of his prophetic word, culminating in the destruction of Jerusalem and the dismantling of the Temple.”[15]

D. A. Carson (1984): “[This generation] can only with the greatest difficulty be made to mean anything other than the generation living when Jesus spoke.”[16]

William Sanford LaSor (1987): “If ‘this generation’ is taken literally, all of the predictions were to take place within the life-span of those living at that time.”[17]

Jack P. Lewis (1976): “The meaning of generation (genea) is crucial to the interpretation of the entire chapter. While Scofield, following Jerome, contended that it meant the Jewish race, there is only one possible case in the New Testament (Luke 16:8) where the lexicon suggests that genea means race.[18] There is a distinction between genos (race) and genea (generation). Others have argued that genea means the final generation; that is, once the signs have started, all these happenings would transpire in one generation (cf. 23:36). But elsewhere in Matthew genea means the people alive at one time and usually at the time of Jesus (1:17; 11:16; 12:39,41,45; 23:36; Mark 8:38; Luke 11:50f.; 17:25), and it doubtlessly means the same here.”[19]

“Christ’s use of the words ‘immediately after’ [in Matthew 24:30] does not leave room for a long delay (2,000 years or more before his literal second coming occurs), neither does the explicit time-scale given in Matthew 24:34. The word ‘parousia’ does not occur in this section but is prominently reintroduced in the new paragraph which begins at Matthew 24:36, where its unknown time is contrasted with the clear statement that the events of this paragraph will take place within ‘this generation” (Matthew 24:36). This section is therefore in direct continuity with what has gone before, the account of the siege of Jerusalem. Here we reach its climax.” (P. 936) “The language … is drawn from Daniel 7:13–14, which points to the vindication and enthronement of Jesus (rather than his second coming [‘parousia’]). … In this context, therefore, this poetic language appropriately refers to the great changes which were about to take place in the world, when Jerusalem and its temple were destroyed. It speaks of the ‘Son of Man’ entering into his kingship, and ‘his angels’ gathering in his new people from all the earth. The fall of the temple is thus presented, in highly allusive language, as the end of the old order, to be replaced by the new regime of Jesus, the Son of Man, and the international growth of his church, the new people of God. . . . The NIV margin offers ‘race’ as an alternative to ‘generation.’ This suggestion is prompted more by embarrassment on the part of those who think Matthew 24:30 refers to the ‘parousia’ (second coming) rather than by any natural sense of the word ‘genea’!”[20]

F. F. Bruce (1983): “The phrase ‘this generation’ is found too often on Jesus’ lips in this literal sense for us to suppose that it suddenly takes on a different meaning in the saying we are now examining. Moreover, if the generation of the end-time had been intended, ‘that generation’ would have been a more natural way of referring to it than ‘this generation.[21]

John Nolland (2005): “Matthew uses genea here for the tenth time. Though his use of the term has a range of emphases, it consistently refers to (the time span of) a single human generation. All the alternative senses proposed here [in 24:34] (the Jewish people; humanity; the generation of the end-time signs; wicked people) are artificial and based on the need to protect Jesus from error. ‘This generation’ is the generation of Jesus’ contemporaries.”[22]

R. T. France (2007): “‘This generation’ has been used frequently in this gospel for Jesus’ contemporaries, especially in a context of God’s impending judgment; see 11:16; 12:39, 41–42, 45; 16:4; 17:17, and especially 23:36, where God’s judgment on ‘this generation’ leads up to Jesus’ first prediction of the devastation of the temple in 23:38. It may safely be concluded that if it had not been for the embarrassment caused by supposing that Jesus was here talking about his parousia, no one would have thought of suggesting any other meaning for ‘this generation,’ such as ‘the Jewish race’ or ‘human beings in general’ or ‘all the generations of Judaism that reject him’ or even ‘this kind’ (meaning scribes, Pharisees, and Sadducees). Such broad senses, even if they were lexically possible, would offer no help in response to the disciples’ question ‘When?’”[23]

Paul Copan (2008): “In these passages, the ‘coming’ (the Greek verb is erchomai = “ come”) is expected within Jesus’ own ‘adulterous and sinful generation.’ Something dramatic will apparently take place in the near future.”[24]

Grant R. Osborne (2010): “‘[T]his generation’ (ἡ γενεὰ αὕτη) in the gospels always means the people of Jesus’ own time (11:16; 12:41–42; 23:36) not, as some have proposed, the generation of the last days in history, the Jewish people, the human race in general, or the sinful people.”[25]

http://americanvision.org/7618/exegetic ... 40lHT.dpbs

[beowulf]

Despairing societies are prone to believe that profound changes for the better are within their reach if only....
The French Revolution, the Bolshevik Revolution and the Reformation were some of those people caught in the teeth of hope.


Jesus (to make it personal) was one of the leaders of a society inventing hope to overcome the inertial mass of the past and he succeeded in transforming society.
Hope is a force for change, but the result never replicates the utopia of the blueprint.
Did Jesus fail?

[Blood]

First we need to establish what kind of literary work the gospels are. Then we can talk about whether Jesus was an "apocalyptic prophet."

I don't see a good reason to believe that the gospels are based on oral history. If that cannot be established, then assumptions about Jesus's ideas or actions are baseless.

[Blood]

D11. Consider also E.P. Sanders’ argument: the passages that attribute these predictions to Jesus and Paul satisfy the historical criteria of multiple attestation (and forms), embarrassment, earliest strata (Mark, Q, M, L, Paul’s earliest letters, the ancient “Maranatha” creed/hymn) etc., thus strongly indicating that these words go back to the lips of Jesus....

No. Sanders is in error. Religious writers copying other religious writers in their circle is not "multiple attestation" of anything. Four different versions of the Book of Tobit is not "multiple attestation" of the historical Tobit.

Q, M, and L do not exist. Non-existent documents cannot be used as evidence of anything.

[Eric]

D11. Consider also E.P. Sanders’ argument: the passages that attribute these predictions to Jesus and Paul satisfy the historical criteria of multiple attestation (and forms), embarrassment, earliest strata (Mark, Q, M, L, Paul’s earliest letters, the ancient “Maranatha” creed/hymn) etc., thus strongly indicating that these words go back to the lips of Jesus....

No. Sanders is in error. Religious writers copying other religious writers in their circle is not "multiple attestation" of anything. Four different versions of the Book of Tobit is not "multiple attestation" of the historical Tobit.

Q, M, and L do not exist. Non-existent documents cannot be used as evidence of anything.

...Nor are there any 'authentic' words of Jesus. Jesus was not a writer. He shared stories and teachings in his native language - Aramaic, that were passed down. So the big question is - IF and When Jesus said his teachings and stories, how would it have been said in his original tongue? How many ways could that have been interpreted in Greek when written accounts started to be used? Who interpreted the sayings? What were the motives? etc.

[ApostateAbe]

D11. Consider also E.P. Sanders’ argument: the passages that attribute these predictions to Jesus and Paul satisfy the historical criteria of multiple attestation (and forms), embarrassment, earliest strata (Mark, Q, M, L, Paul’s earliest letters, the ancient “Maranatha” creed/hymn) etc., thus strongly indicating that these words go back to the lips of Jesus....

No. Sanders is in error. Religious writers copying other religious writers in their circle is not "multiple attestation" of anything. Four different versions of the Book of Tobit is not "multiple attestation" of the historical Tobit.

Q, M, and L do not exist. Non-existent documents cannot be used as evidence of anything.

Mark, Matthew and Luke exist, and the only way to make sense of them is to posit that Matthew and Luke each had many prior sources, and those prior sources are designated Mark, Q, M and L. We can estimate the contents of those sources even if they do not exist, because the existing literature used them as sources. Matthew, Mark and Luke are certainly not mere copies of each other.

[Blood]

D11. Consider also E.P. Sanders’ argument: the passages that attribute these predictions to Jesus and Paul satisfy the historical criteria of multiple attestation (and forms), embarrassment, earliest strata (Mark, Q, M, L, Paul’s earliest letters, the ancient “Maranatha” creed/hymn) etc., thus strongly indicating that these words go back to the lips of Jesus....

No. Sanders is in error. Religious writers copying other religious writers in their circle is not "multiple attestation" of anything. Four different versions of the Book of Tobit is not "multiple attestation" of the historical Tobit.

Q, M, and L do not exist. Non-existent documents cannot be used as evidence of anything.

Mark, Matthew and Luke exist, and the only way to make sense of them is to posit that Matthew and Luke each had many prior sources, and those prior sources are designated Mark, Q, M and L. We can estimate the contents of those sources even if they do not exist, because the existing literature used them as sources. Matthew, Mark and Luke are certainly not mere copies of each other.

No, that's not "the only way to make sense of them." The only "sources" they needed were (a) the LXX and (b) their imaginations, i.e. the same sources Mark had.