Biblical Criticism & History Forum - earlywritings.com

Chapter 3: "Did Jesus Think He Was God?"

Ostensibly about whether Jesus claimed he was God, but entails a lot of HJ 101 material and the chapter is largely a redux of DJE? We get all the usual criteria of authenticity - embarrassment, dissimilarity, multiple independent attestation, etc. Nobody would have made up Nazareth, he must have been baptized by John, he must have been betrayed by one of his own disciples. The same. He claims that the betrayal by Judas is "multiply attested all over the place," although I don't know where he finds anything independent of Mark. He also argues in favor of Jesus being an apocalyptic preacher and in support he repeats an argument from DJE? which I think has a major flaw. The argument is that Jesus was a follower of JBap, JBap was an apocalypticist. The movement post-Jesus was apocalyptic, therefore Jesus himself must have been an apocalyticist because the movement wouldn't change during Jesus' ministry, then change back again. The flaw with this is that Josephus does not say JBap was an apocalypticist. That's only the Gospels, which are worhless as historical evidence.

This is also the chapter containing the portion quoted above. Everyone around here has seen everything in this chapter already, but the crux is basically "Jesus never said he was God, but did secretly say he was the Messiah, and that's what Judas betrayed."

So did Ehrman explain why the Romans did not round up the members of this insurgent gang?

Did he produce any parallels of a preacher wandering around with a fixed number of disciples? Just how weird is it that Jesus had 12 disciples? OK, Snow White had seven dwarves, but what new religious movement has such a fixed structure? The story of 12 disciples is just plain fantasy.

A religious peripatetic teacher would want to pray .The minyan requires a minimum of ten.

http://www.myjewishlearning.com/practic ... nyan.shtml

Only in a group of ten or more is there sufficient sanctity to recite certain public prayers.

“What constitutes a congregation? The answer is a minyan, a minimum of ten adult Jews (an adult Jew is any Jewish male who has passed his thirteenth birthday). The number ten was derived from the first verse of Psalm 82, which reads: "God stands in the congregation of God."

Diogenes the Cynic wrote:Chapter 2 "Divine Humans in Ancient Judaism"

In this chapter, Ehrman talks about divine figures in ancient Judaism, both in the Tanakh and in apocrypha. He talks both about divine agents descending from Heaven and humans being exalted. Examples of the celestial descending include angels, Nephilim, the Watchers, 1 Enoch and the son of man in Daniel. Exultations and/or apotheoses of humans include Moses, kings of Israel in general (Ehrman cites examples from Psalms, 2 Samuel and Isaiah of kings being referred to as "God"). He then discusses hypostatic beliefs, particularly in Philonic Logos but also on Jewish hypostatic conceptions of wisdom.

Angels, Nephilim, the Watchers, 1 Enoch and the son of man in Daniel are all mythical beings who never existed. Does Ehrman really think this is helping his case?

Blood wrote:

Diogenes the Cynic wrote:Chapter 2 "Divine Humans in Ancient Judaism"

In this chapter, Ehrman talks about divine figures in ancient Judaism, both in the Tanakh and in apocrypha. He talks both about divine agents descending from Heaven and humans being exalted. Examples of the celestial descending include angels, Nephilim, the Watchers, 1 Enoch and the son of man in Daniel. Exultations and/or apotheoses of humans include Moses, kings of Israel in general (Ehrman cites examples from Psalms, 2 Samuel and Isaiah of kings being referred to as "God"). He then discusses hypostatic beliefs, particularly in Philonic Logos but also on Jewish hypostatic conceptions of wisdom.

Angels, Nephilim, the Watchers, 1 Enoch and the son of man in Daniel are all mythical beings who never existed. Does Ehrman really think this is helping his case?

This is true in the other direction too. Moses, Enoch, Elijah - all mythical characters. I agree, he's getting awfully close to mythicism without realizing it.

Diogenes the Cynic wrote:

Blood wrote:

Diogenes the Cynic wrote:Chapter 2 "Divine Humans in Ancient Judaism"

In this chapter, Ehrman talks about divine figures in ancient Judaism, both in the Tanakh and in apocrypha. He talks both about divine agents descending from Heaven and humans being exalted. Examples of the celestial descending include angels, Nephilim, the Watchers, 1 Enoch and the son of man in Daniel. Exultations and/or apotheoses of humans include Moses, kings of Israel in general (Ehrman cites examples from Psalms, 2 Samuel and Isaiah of kings being referred to as "God"). He then discusses hypostatic beliefs, particularly in Philonic Logos but also on Jewish hypostatic conceptions of wisdom.

Angels, Nephilim, the Watchers, 1 Enoch and the son of man in Daniel are all mythical beings who never existed. Does Ehrman really think this is helping his case?

This is true in the other direction too. Moses, Enoch, Elijah - all mythical characters. I agree, he's getting awfully close to mythicism without realizing it.

Look at this quote from Ehrman.......

Was Jesus divine? Publisher hedges bets with Bart Ehrman’s new book

Perhaps the biggest surprise for Ehrman was that Paul, the earliest New Testament author, had a very exalted view of Jesus, believing that Jesus existed in divine form before he was incarnate as a human being. Ehrman concludes that Paul must have believed Jesus was an angel who became human and afterward was exalted to godhood. “Before that,” Ehrman said, “I couldn’t figure Paul out"

http://www.religionnews.com/2014/03/25/ ... -new-book/

And this.....

“I’ve never, ever written a book that, in my opinion, is as important as this one, since the historical issues are of immense, almost incalculable importance,” Ehrman said. “The assertion that Jesus is God is arguably the single most important development in Western civilization.”

stevencarrwork wrote:So did Ehrman explain why the Romans did not round up the members of this insurgent gang?

He does not address this question at all. I think he presupposes that the disciples just fled.

Did he produce any parallels of a preacher wandering around with a fixed number of disciples? Just how weird is it that Jesus had 12 disciples? OK, Snow White had seven dwarves, but what new religious movement has such a fixed structure? The story of 12 disciples is just plain fantasy.

He doesn't say anything about other disciples with fixed number of disciples, no though he does mention examples like Apollonius who had disciples) , but the number 12 had a specific Jewish connotation (12 tribes of Israel) and the Qumran scrolls show that they had their own inner council of twelve (along with an inner core of three which is what Paul appears to describe with the Pillars), so there actually is historical evidence that a perceived prophet or "righteous teacher" type might plausibly, consciously choose that number for a specialized status.

That's me talking, though, not Ehrman. Ehrman supports the Twelve by reference to the Q saying where Jesus tells the disciples they'll sit on twelve thrones (MT. 19:28, Lk. 22:30). Ehrman says it passes the criterion of dissimilarity because Judas is included among the "twelve" that Jesus is talking too, so Ehrman's argument is that it would not have been made up after Judas had already betrayed Jesus. Of course, one has to accept the betrayal (and indeed the existence of a Judas in the first place) as historical or this argument doesn't work.

Diogenes the Cynic wrote: That's me talking, though, not Ehrman. Ehrman supports the Twelve by reference to the Q saying where Jesus tells the disciples they'll sit on twelve thrones (MT. 19:28, Lk. 22:30). Ehrman says it passes the criterion of dissimilarity because Judas is included among the "twelve" that Jesus is talking too, so Ehrman's argument is that it would not have been made up after Judas had already betrayed Jesus. Of course, one has to accept the betrayal (and indeed the existence of a Judas in the first place) as historical or this argument doesn't work.

Luke 22:30 is immediately after Jesus said one of the disciples would betray him.

I guess the author of Luke never noticed the glaring plot error in his story - Jesus saying one of the disciples would betray him and then immediately claiming the 12 disciples would sit on 12 thrones.

Clever of Ehrman to spot that mistake though.

Where does Luke 22:30 say there will be twelve thrones?

Of course, the fact that 12 has symbolic significance can't possibly mean it was chosen by the author of Mark for its symbolic significance.....

Chapter 4 "What We can't Know about the Resurrection"
Chapter 5 "What We can Know about the Resurrection.

Chapter 4 debunks the the empty tomb. It uses all the right arguments historical implausibility of a crucifixion victim being handed over for burial, lack of corroboration in Paul, lack of attestation before Mark, lack of independent attestation from Mark, Paul's expressed belief that physical bodies can't be resurrected, etc). Nothing to complain about here. It's fairly well done.

Chapter 5 is an argument that the disciples saw visions of Jesus and this is what convinced them of the resurrection. Again, standard stuff here. He backs it up with neurological, anecdotal and sociological data about hallucinations - in particular grief induced hallucinations of seeing dead loved ones (which is very common). He also cites incidents like Fatima to show that mass hallucinations can and do happen as well.

Ehrman argues that the disciples came to the belief that Jesus had been raised very quickly (though he does not say three days) citing the chestnut that Paul must have gotten his appearance chronology from them.

My only question for Ehrman on this chapter would be that of Paul could have claimed to have experienced only a celestial Jesus, and still been credited as an authority, then why couldn't Cephas and James have also only experienced a celestial Jesus?

Diogenes the Cynic wrote: My only question for Ehrman on this chapter would be that of Paul could have claimed to have experienced only a celestial Jesus, and still been credited as an authority, then why couldn't Cephas and James have also only experienced a celestial Jesus?

Because that's the crux of the matter is it not......Cephas and James are part of the gospel story and Paul is not. That Paul has a celestial Jesus story does not cancel out, as it were, the possibility that the gospel Jesus story reflects, in some way, Jewish history. Even if Cephas and James had a 101 visions of a resurrected Jesus - that still would not rule out the gospel story reflecting Jewish history.

That, re Ehrman's new book, the gospel Jesus was made into a god - again, that does not negate the possibility that the gospel Jesus story reflects, finds it's inspiration in, Jewish history. However much that gospel story can be shown to be a midrash on the OT etc - again, that does not rule out the possibility that Jewish history was the inspiration for that story.

The historicist v ahistoricist debate is not over a battle of the visions - whether these visions are Pauline or gospel/resurrection related. The historicist v ahistoricist debate is a historical debate. As such it runs straight into the Josephan writings and that writers problematic reconstructions of Jewish history.