TUESDAY, APRIL 07, 2009

Bart Interrupted--- A detailed Analysis of 'Jesus Interrupted' Part

One
http://benwitherington.blogspot.com/2009/04/bart-interrupted-detailed-analysis-of.html

Bart D. Ehrman, Jesus, Interrupted, (San Francisco: Harper One, 2009), xii +292 pages. Part
One ( the first 60 pages)

Bart Ehrman is both a gifted writer and a gifted lecturer. Perhaps his best gift is the ability to
distill difficult and complex material down to a level that undergraduates and ordinary lay folk
can understand. It is thus understandable that his popular level books on the New Testament
and cognate subjects have been well and widely read, and in age disposed to „dis‟ the Bible
anyway, which is to say, in a generally Biblically illiterate age, Bart‟s work has been seen as
confirming suspicions already long held by the skeptical or those prone to be skeptical about the
Bible and Christianity.

One of the problems however with some of Bart‟s popular work, including this book, is that it
does not follow the age old adage--- “before you boil down, you need to have first boiled it up”.
By this I mean Bart Ehrman, so far as I can see, and I would be glad to be proved wrong about
this fact, has never done the necessary laboring in the scholarly vineyard to be in a position to
write a book like Jesus, Interrupted from a position of long study and knowledge of New
Testament Studies. He has never written a scholarly monograph on NT theology or exegesis. He
has never written a scholarly commentary on any New Testament book whatsoever! His area of
expertise is in textual criticism, and he has certainly written works like The Orthodox
Corruption of Scripture, which have been variously reviewed, not to mention severely critiqued
by other textual critics such as Gordon D. Fee, and his own mentor Bruce Metzger (whom I also
did some study with). He is thus, in the guild of the Society of Biblical Literature a specialist in
text criticism, but even in this realm he does not represent what might be called a majority view
on such matters.

It is understandable how a textual critic might write a book like Misquoting Jesus, on the basis
of long study of the underpinnings of textual criticism and its history and praxis. It is mystifying
however why he would attempt to write a book like Jesus, Interrupted which frankly reflect no
in-depth interaction at all with exegetes, theologians, and even most historians of the NT period
of whatever faith or no faith at all. A quick perusal of the footnotes to this book, reveal mostly
cross-references to Ehrman‟s earlier popular works, with a few exceptions sprinkled in—for
example Raymond Brown and E.P Sanders, the former long dead, the latter long retired. What is
especially telling and odd about this is Bart does not much reflect a knowledge of the exegetical
or historical study of the text in the last thirty years. It‟s as if he is basing his judgments on
things he read whilst in Princeton Seminary. And that was a long time ago frankly.

It is not sufficient to reply that Bart is writing for a popular audience and thus we would not
expect much scholarly discussion even in the footnotes. Even in a work of this sort, we would
expect some good up to date bibliography for those disposed to do further study, not merely
copious cross-references to one‟s other popular level books. Contrast for example, my last
Harper book What Have They Done with Jesus? The impression is left, even if untrue, that
Ehrman‟s actual knowledge of and interaction with NT historians, exegetes, and theologians has
been and is superficial and this has led to overly tendentious and superficial analysis. Again, I
would be glad to be proved wrong about this, but it would certainly appear I am not. This book
could have been written by an intelligent skeptical person who had no more than a seminary
level acquaintance and expertise in the field of NT studies itself. And I do not say this lightly, for

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this book manifests problems in all areas, if one critiques it on the basis of NT scholarship of the
last thirty or so years. There are methodological problems, historical problems, exegetical
problems, theological problems, and epistemological problems with this book, to mention but a
few areas.

My grandmother used to say, “if you can‟t say anything nice about a person, then don‟t say
anything at all.” So let me start the more detailed part of this discussion by saying something
positive--- I believe Bart Ehrman is an honest person, who really has been a truth seeker when it
comes to the Bible and Christianity. His preface to this latest volume reflects that, and I applaud
his honesty and forthrightness, while at the same time pointing out that I was a person who
went through the same process of deep study and inquiry whilst in college and seminary and
came to very different conclusions than Bart, and it wasn‟t because I checked my brain at the
door or ceased being a critical thinker on these subjects along the way. Bart and I are different in
that I did not come out of a fundamentalist past at all, but we do share not only UNC and Bruce
Metzger in common, we also both did English literature degrees in college, which explains to
some degree the ability to write and the tendency to do it frequently.

Let me start then with a general criticism about Bart‟s entire approach. He begins in his first
chapter by bemoaning the fact that the general populus including the church, has been left in the
dark about what “scholars have been saying” for lo these many years (over a hundred actually)
about the Bible. He puts it this way “the perspectives that I present in the following chapters are
not my own idiosyncratic views of the Bible. They are the views that have held sway for many,
many years among the majority of serious critical scholars teaching in universities and
seminaries of North America and Europe”(p.2).

Now it is always a danger to over generalize when we are dealing with as important a matter as
the „truth about the Bible‟. And frankly it is simply untrue to say that most scholars or the
majority of Bible scholars or the majority of serious critical scholars would agree with Bart
Ehrman in his conclusions about this or that NT matter. NT scholarship is a many splintered
thing, and Ehrman‟s position certainly does not represent a majority view, or the critical
consensus about such matters. At best, one has to say yes and no repeatedly to what Bart takes
as the critical consensus about such matters. Bart Ehrman, like the more radical members of the
Jesus Seminar (e.g. Robert Funk cf. Robert Price) represents a minority position which has
indeed been very vocal in proselytizing for their point of view. So this book should have come
with a caveat emptor--- “Buyer Beware: Hyperbolic claims about what most or the majority of
critical scholars of the NT think will be frequent in this tome”. The appeal to authority or
expertise in any case does not really settle much. The issue is—what is the evidence and why
should we draw this or that conclusion? The other issue is--- why mislead the general public
about what “the majority of serious critical scholars” have been saying? Perhaps an end run has
been done from the outset--- you define a small circle of scholars as the serious ones, the critical
ones, the real scholarly thinkers, the real historians, and then having defined your own group
narrowly enough, you then say—“the majority of such people think…” Evangelicals are
sometimes just as guilty of this ploy as others, but in any case, it does not help when one
misrepresents the actual state of play of things among scholars to the general public.

Bart reminds us early on that the method of studying the Bible taught in most mainline
seminaries is “the historical critical method”. It is also, in fact perhaps the main method of
teaching the Bible in evangelical seminaries today as well. And two of the major things one is
taught, quite correctly in the study of this method are: 1) ancient historical texts must be studied
in their original historical contexts to be properly understood; and 2) modern post-
Enlightenment historiography is at odds with the historiography of most ancients, particularly

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when it comes to the issue of God‟s involvement in human history.

There is a further corollary—in order to understand the Gospels or Acts, or Paul‟s letters, or
Revelation, one needs to understand the features and characteristics of such ancient literature—
in short their respective genres. The Gospels are written like ancient biographies, not modern
ones, or in the case of Luke-Acts like an ancient work of Hellenistic (and Septuagintal)
historiography. Unless one knows the conventions and limitations that apply to such literature,
one is in no position at all to evaluate whether there are “inconsistencies” “errors” or other
problematic features of such literature. Error can only be assessed on the basis of what an
author is attempting to do and what literary conventions he is following. Let us take an example
Bart uses from p. 7 of his book—the fact that in John the cleansing of the temple comes early in
the Gospel account, whereas in the Synoptics it is found in the Passion narrative. He is right of
course that some modern conservative Christians have attempted to reconcile these differences
by suggesting Jesus did the deed twice--- once at the beginning and once at the end of the
ministry. The problem is, that this conclusion is just as anachronistic (and genre ignoring) as the
conclusion that the Gospels contradict each other on this point. What do I mean?

If you actually bother to read ancient biographies (see e.g. Tacitus‟s Life of Agricola, or
Plutarch‟s famous parallel lives) you will discover that the ancients were not pedants when it
comes to the issue of strict chronology as we are today. The ancient biographical or
historiographical work operated with the freedom to arrange there material in several different
ways, including topically, geographically, chronologically, to mention but three. Yes they had a
secondary interest in chronology in broad strokes, but only a secondary interest in that.
If one studies the Fourth Gospel in detail and closely in the Greek, comparing it to other ancient
biographies what one learns is that it is a highly schematized and edited product, and the sign
narratives are arranged theologically not primarily chronologically. And whilst this might cause
a modern person some consternation, it is not a reason to say that John contradicts the
Synoptics on this Temple cleansing matter. The Fourth Gospel begins by showing that Jesus
replaces the institutions of Judaism with himself—a theological message (he is the Passover
lamb, he is the Temple where God‟s presence dwells etc.). The Synoptic writers are likely
presenting a more chronologically apt picture of when this event actually happened. But strict
chronology was not the major purpose of the Fourth Evangelist, we should not fault him for not
giving us information we might want to have, or for focusing on the theological import of the
event, rather than its timing. Such was the freedom, within limits, of ancient biographies and
histories. I must disagree with the conclusion then when Bart says “Historically speaking, then,
the accounts are not reconcilable.” (p. 7). False. This is only so if one insists on a flat modern
anachronistic reading of the text which pays no attention to what the authors are attempting.

The Gospel of John probably tells us nothing about this chronological issue, the Synoptics
probably do, and judged on their own terms and on the basis of their ancient genre, one cannot
draw the conclusion Bart does. Period. And unfortunately, this is a mistake Bart makes over, and
over again, judging ancient texts on the basis of modern presuppositions about history writing,
and what counts as truth or error. In fact, it is not entirely erroneous to say that Bart reads the
Bible with the same sort of flat literalistic hermeneutic that he would have used before he did his
scholarly study of the text. And I find this passing strange.
Let‟s take his next pet example--- the three denials of Christ by Peter, and the cock crows. I quite
agree with his critique of those who come up with six denials of Christ by Peter. No Gospel says
that, any more than any Gospel mentions two cleansing of the Temple. Bart points to the
difference between Matthew and Mark, the latter saying Peter will deny Christ before the cock
crows twice, whilst in Matthew it says „before the cock crows”. He then asks--- “which is it?” The
assumption is: 1) these Gospel writers were trying to be very precise; and 2) these two options

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are mutually contradictory; and 3) we should ask these sorts of detail questions of ancient
historical documents because we have a right to assume that modern historical ways of
analyzing this material will help us to get to the bottom of such matters and find the historical
truth.

In the first place let‟s consider point 2). In fact, if Peter denied Christ three times before the cock
crowed at all, then he certainly denied Christ three times before the cock crowed twice!!! But
suppose the Gospels writer were not much concerned to give us precise information about the
intricate relationship and intercalation between denials and cock crows. Suppose, in terms of
historical information they just wanted to make clear that there were three denials and there
were cock crows? Of course this is maddening to those who think that we must have precision
on such matters, but in fact if an author wants to be general let him be general, and if he wants
to be more specific, let him be more specific. Mark may simply have wanted to be more general
in his account. And since I think, with most scholars that the First Evangelist is using Mark‟s
account, he probably knew far more about the Markan intent than we do, and decided to be
more specific. He edits his Markan account according to his own presentation of things. I could
go through Bart‟s examples one by one explaining how insufficient attention has been paid by
him to the ancient conventions of such genre of literature, but I agree with him that over-
harmonizing on the basis of modern anachronistic considerations is wrong, just as wrong as
claiming there are obvious contradictions based on a modern literalist reading of the same texts.
And herein lies a very fundamental problem with the ex-fundamentalist readings of Bart
Ehrman.

The Gospels are not, and never were intended to be inspected as if they were ancient
photographs of Jesus taken with a high resolution, all seeing lens. On the contrary these
documents are much more like portraits, and portraits always are selective, tendentious,
perspectival. Let me illustrate this point.

One of my favorite Impressionist painters is Claude Monet, and I really love his series of
painting done of Rouen Cathedral. These paintings were done in the late 1890s and they depict
the front face of the Cathedral from slightly different angles of incidence, and in different
lighting. But in each case it is recognizably the same cathedral with the same basic shape, from
the same basic frame of reference. Let us suppose for a minute then that the Gospels are like
these paintings. Now it would be totally pedantic to have an argument that went as follows: “In
this painting Monet depicts the color of the front façade of the cathedral as being gray, but in
this picture he paints it as being a yellowish shade, and in this picture a pinkish shade.” Which is
it? Surely one must be right and the other depictions wrong.” Of course the proper response to
this silly discourse is that they are all right, because they attempt to depict the appearance of the
building at different times of day from slightly different angles. And no art critic in their right
mind would think of suggesting that one painting was in error compared to the other. My point
is simple. The Gospels are not works of modern biography or historiography and they should not
be evaluated by such canons.

Nor for that matter are we much helped by evaluating the Gospel traditions on the basis of the
canons of modern German form criticism which is grounded in notions about the passing on of
oral traditions which simply do not apply to the first century A.D. and in the Jewish setting of
the Gospels and Acts (on this point see Richard Bauckham‟s fine study Jesus and the
Eyewitnesses). Various of Bart‟s comments presuppose that most NT exegetes and historians
assume that the Bultmannian conclusions about oral history and oral tradition are correct. This
is certainly not true now in the way it might have been said to be true specifically in mainline
schools in the 70s. On the contrary, there is now a lively discussion about oral history that

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makes clear that the notion that there was likely a long gap between the events and their being
written down, or between eyewitness testimony and their being written down is probably false.

Equally pedantic and unhelpful is Bart‟s analysis of Genesis 1 and 2(pp. 9-10), which are
generally agreed to be two different ways of telling the story of creation, one more general, and
one more focused on the creation of humankind. Besides the fact that Genesis 1 falls into the
category of poetry or poetic prose and should not be analyzed on the basis of it being some sort
of scientific account of creation, it is frankly not fair game to compare and contrast these two
chapters as if they were attempting to say the same thing in the same way writing like modern
historians. They are not. Ancient narratological conventions come into play (see now Bill
Arnold‟s fine commentary on Genesis in the Cambridge series I edit). And now we begin to see
why Biblically illiterate folk who are skeptical about the Bible are drawn to the Ehrman analysis.
It appears to take the text at face value, and evaluate it by comparison and contrast, without
taking into consideration at all issues of literary context or conventions. In other words, it
approaches the matter as if one could simply read the English translation of the text without any
knowledge of ancient writing conventions and come to important conclusions about historical
truth and error. But in fact, this is not only not proper, in most cases it is not possible. The real
truth seeker knows that a text without a context is just a pretext for whatever you would like it to
mean.

Let‟s take another example--- Bart‟s treatment on pp. 10-11 of Psalm 137. In the first place this is
a song, and so should not be treated like a theological or ethical treatise. In the second place,
what this song is a revelation of is what is on the heart of the psalmist. In the psalms, human
beings speak to, pray to, implore their God in various ways. It is a very truthful and accurate
reflection of various things on and in the human heart, including the desire for vengeance. What
the psalms are generally not is a revelation of what is in God‟s heart or character. But Bart seems
oblivious to this point which is commonly enough recognized by commentators on the Psalms.
More in depth study of the psalms could have led to the avoidance of this sort of error.

Let‟s take now an example from the second chapter (pp. 24ff). Here Bart is comparing and
contrasting the relationship between the events that lead up to Jesus‟ death as told in Mark and
as told in John, and trying to synch that up with the Jewish liturgical calendar in regard to the
celebration of Passover, and the Day of Preparation.

A few historical remarks are in order. 1) despite what Bart says, no Gospel suggests Jesus was
crucified on Passover, which is to say between sundown Friday and sundown Saturday on April
7 A.D. 30 (or less possibly in A.D. 33); 2) the meal described in John 13 is definitely not the
same meal as that described in Mark 14 and the other Synoptics. John 13 is very clear about this-
-- John 13.1 reads literally “But before the festival of the Passover…” The text does not say how
long before. This could easily be a meal at the beginning of the week when the feast of Passover
transpired, rather than near its end. And nothing whatsoever is said in John‟s story about
sharing the Passover elements. This is a striking difference from the accounts in the Synoptics,
and I would say the differences are great enough that we must take them to indicate we are
dealing with different stories here. 3) Most scholars who have written commentaries on the
Synoptics do indeed think that Jesus celebrated his last supper with his disciples on Thursday
night, which is to say, on the beginning of the Day of Preparation rather than on Passover day.
There was precedent for this in early Judaism in some cases, and some scholars have even
argued that Jesus was following the Galilean rather than the Judean liturgical calendar, which is
certainly possible and believable. Whether this is so or not, it is notable that there is no mention
at all about Jesus and his disciples eating lamb….in any of the accounts. This has led some to
conclude, wrongly in my judgment, that even the Thursday night meal was not a Passover meal.

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4) one of the major issues in determining when Jesus actually died is the question of which clock
an Evangelist is running on--- is it the Roman way of keeping time, or a Jewish and Oriental
one? Which hour is the third, sixth and ninth hours, according to the respective Evangelists?
Mark‟s seems to be based on the Roman way of time keeping, but this may not be the case in
John. In any case, all the Gospels in fact are in agreement that Jesus died before sundown on
Friday, which is to say, before Passover actually begun, which is to say on the Day of
Preparation. 5) in A.D. 30 the day of preparation for the Sabbath was in fact the day of
preparation for Passover. It was one and the same day. Therefore, Mk. 15.42 does not in any way
disagree with John when it says that Jesus died on the day of Preparation. Correct— and this
was Friday before sundown when both Passover and Sabbath began that year. John did not need
to change a historical datum to make a theological point that Jesus was the Passover lamb. The
point is inherent in a theological interpretation of the actual day Jesus died. In this case, Bart is
busily finding contradictions in the text which are a chimera. They are not really in evidence.

Bart carries on in much the same vein in his analysis of the birth narratives. What is of concern
to us is not where he sees differences in Matthew and Luke‟s accounts, but rather where he finds
what he deems to be actual discrepancies. The first of these is that Bart claims that what Luke
says in Lk.2.1-3 is clearly historically in error (pp. 34-35). What however does the Greek text of
Lk.2.2 actually say--- “this registration happened first/prior to the governing of Syria by
Quirinius.” The issue here is the function of the word prote. What it seems to indicate is that the
census in question took place prior to when Quirinius was governor of Syria. There was indeed a
famous and indeed notorious census which led to the rebellion of Judas the Galilean in A.D. 6,
and so Luke would be distinguishing that census from the earlier one when Mary and Joseph
were enrolled. Bart also deems the notion of such enrollments as historically improbable, at
least in the way Luke tells the story. There are however very clear examples from the province of
Egypt of such census taking done for the purpose of taxation. And in fact, the evidence suggests
a link with one‟s ancestral home. I see no reason why the Romans would do it any differently
with the province of Judea. Furthermore, when Augustus decide to go for the full blown Empire
deal, he needed much more money for many more troops and armaments.

While Luke may be using rhetorical hyperbole when he says all the oikomene was being
enrolled, a rhetorical usage common in Hellenistic historiography influenced by rhetoric, what
Luke is referring to is the inhabited Roman empire, outside of Rome itself. In other words, his
audience would likely have understood the reference quite easily and naturally. Bart also takes
exception to the story of the wise men following the star. He says nothing of the fact that
ancients often thought stars were living beings, the heavenly hosts, and it is more than likely
that what Matthew is describing is the leading of the heavenly host or angels, of these persons to
the birth place. Here again however some latitude must be allowed for ancient story tellers to
present their narrative in ways that their audience would understand. While Matthew‟s account
does not tell us that Nazareth was Mary and Joseph‟s hometown, his account is compatible with
this fact, which Luke does tell us. The absence of an explanation does not a discrepancy make
nor should it lead one to conclude the author thought something different, especially when
Matthew tells us that eventually the holy family did go to Nazareth, and why would they pick
that wide place in the road out of the blue if they had no prior associations with it? No good
reason. The scripture fulfillment text in Matthew is a midrashic attempt to explain the fact that
Nazareth was their home. It did not generate such an idea.
Lastly, Bart wants to argue that both Matthew and Luke made up the notion of a trip to
Bethlehem independently of one another based on Micah‟s prophecy, in order to indicate Jesus‟
messianic origins, rather than suggesting he was born in a one horse town in Galilee. The
problem with this is that Bethlehem itself was also a one horse town in Jesus‟ day, and among
other things, the slaughter of the innocents is perfectly in character with Herod‟s paranoia as

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described in Josephus. It was hardly necessary for a messianic figure to come from Bethlehem
unless one wanted to insist he was a descendant of David, but as we know from Qumran, there
were other Jewish traditions that did not associate messiah with the Davidic line. In regard to
the oft parodied story of the slaughter of the innocents, we are only talking about a handful of
infants at most in such a tiny village anyway, perhaps 6-8. There is nothing improbable about a
birth in Bethlehem at all or a slaughter of a few infants. Jesus was called Jesus of Nazareth
because he grew up there from infancy.

Differences there are indeed in the accounts of the birth of Jesus in Matthew and Luke. And they
are not explained by denying their existence, or resorting to false harmonizing tactics and
exegetical gymnastics. We are not however talking about direct contradictions at all here. These
narratives are quite compatible in all their essential details, and it is remarkable that two such
independent accounts would in fact emphasize the same crucial points--- a virginal conception
and a birth in Bethlehem. This did not happen because they were both creative exegetes. It
happened because they both relied on historical sources of information about these events.
Ehrman‟s conclusion that “there are historical implausibilities and discrepancies that can
scarcely be reconciled” (p. 34) is saying far more than he knows or the evidence suggests. Had
Luke said Jesus was born in Nazareth and Matthew said no he was born in Bethlehem, then we
would have a contradiction. But we find nothing like a contradiction in these two accounts—
differences do not necessarily equal discrepancies much less equal disagreements. One has to
come up with much better examples than this if one wants to claim the accounts can‟t be
explained or reconciled.

It is the task of a historian, which Bart Ehrman says he is, to get his facts straight. When he takes
on the differences in the genealogies there are a few crucial facts he either ignores or is ignorant
of. The first of these crucial points is that in Jewish law, if a man adopted a son, that son was
entitled to be considered a descendant of his adoptive father, including being a descendant of his
step-father‟s ancestors. The genealogies in both Matthew and Luke are strange in part precisely
because of this legal issue, and more to the point they are strange because both writers want to
include the notion of the virginal conception in their accounts, indeed Matthew includes it right
in his geneaology, and this may be the only known genealogy where the wife is included in the
husband‟s geneaology like this!

Bart is right about various of the differences in these genealogies. But he does not correctly
explain some of the reasons for the differences. In the first place ancient royal genealogies often
were prone to leaving the skeletons out of the list, and so offering an edited version of the
ancestry. Something like this is happening in Matthew who wants to suggest Jesus is the seventh
son of a seventh son of David, namely the perfect descendant of David. In other words, the form
of the genealogy reflects not just historical but also theological interests. The same can be said
for Luke‟s genealogy and his concern to show that Jesus is not merely son of David son of
Abraham, but also son of Adam, and more crucially, son of God. The issues here are not purely
historical and it is a form of reductionism to treat them in a purely historical manner. But they
were not intended to answer purely historical questions. One needs to read them in light of the
conventions of such ancient genealogies, not in the light of modern historical conventions.

Scholars have long debated why these two genealogies differ, and Bart may be right that they
both are genealogies connected to Joseph, rather than Luke‟s being connected to Mary‟s family.
But even if this is true, one of them could offer some part of Joseph‟s paternal ancestry and the
other some part of Joseph‟s maternal ancestry. We honestly cannot say. What we can say is
there is no basis for the confidence that Bart shows that we have clear contradictions here. More
would need to be known about ancient genealogy composition to come to that conclusion. We

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could carry on with this sort of dialogue with Bart‟s list of complaints but we have already dealt
with what he takes to be some of the more famous parade examples of clear contradictions.
Some of his other examples are much weaker, and can be explained on the basis of the differing
editorial tendencies different Gospel writers had, or in Luke‟s Acts accounts on the basis of what
were the conventions of rhetorical history writing in the first place. About such things Bart says
little or nothing, because he seeks to read the text on the basis of modern historiographical
conventions, a signal mistake. Ancient texts must be evaluated on their own terms and without
demanding of them a precision they never were intended to have.

It is interesting that as the book moves along, Bart stresses here (and later in this study) that he
does not think that historical critical study of the Bible should necessarily or will necessarily lead
to a loss of Christian faith. I quite agree with this. In fact, I would say in my case that it is
precisely the historical, contextual study of the Bible that has strengthened my faith in its truth
telling on various subjects of import, not the least of which is the need for and possibility of
human salvation. I also quite agree with Bart that teaching students to think and do critical
thinking about life and the Bible is a good thing. On these two conclusions we would simply
agree. What is interesting is that the more I studied the Bible the less I was prone to accuse the
Bible of obvious historical errors and stupid mistakes, including theological errors about a
matter as profound as human suffering and evil. To the contrary, I found the Bible rich,
complex, varied, and helpful and truthful in dealing with precisely such life and death matters. It
would be appropriate then to ask---why exactly did studying the Bible in the same way at
seminary and during doctoral work lead Bart Ehrman and myself to such different conclusions?
In my case, my faith in the Bible was strengthened, but the opposite seems to have been the case
with Bart. “This is a mystery and it calls for profound reflection”. Some of this clearly has to do
with presuppositions. Let‟s take a theological one that seems to be at the root of some of the
differences.

Bart seems to assume that a God who is both almighty and a God of love, would not allow the
hideous amount of suffering that goes on in this world. Now this is by no means an uncommon
objection to Biblical revelation, but what it seems to assume is a particular sort or deterministic
or even extreme Calvinistic view of God, God‟s sovereignty, and human life. I can see how
extreme suffering and evil is a major problem for such a view of God. It would seem to make
God the author of suffering and evil, or at least an uncaring deity in too many cases. Suppose
however that God has not pre-determined all things? Suppose God chose to create us in his
image with a measure of freedom of choice, the power of contrary choice? Suppose God relates
to us relationally and not on the basis of divine decrees? Suppose the vast majority of suffering
in the world is a result of human misbehavior or stupidity or sin? Suppose in addition that God
does repeatedly intervene in human history to aid and rescue us, without taking away our ability
to make viable choices that have moral consequences? It seems to me that part of the issue here
is that Bart and I have very different views of the Biblical God and how God actually operates.
Here‟s another quandary and quagmire. It appears to me that Bart and I disagree profoundly
about the import of textual variants. As Bruce Metzger who taught us both once said--- we know
what about 92% of the NT said in its original manuscripts with a rather high degree of certainty.
As for the other 8%, very little of theological or ethical consequence is at stake. For example, the
Trinity is not at stake if 1 John 5 did not mention it. The deity of Christ is not at stake just
because some NT documents do not mention it directly, and some unscrupulous scribes added
some clarity to this matter in other manuscripts in ways that distorted some NT manuscripts.

We also disagree rather strongly on the degree of flux in belief and in the handling of NT
documents early on. It is simply not true to say that many of the primary Christian doctrines
were not affirmed widely until centuries after the time of Christ. It is also not true that any such

8
doctrines hang on only late copies of this or that NT book. When it comes to the issue of textual
variants, the development of the textual tradition, and the theological import of such variants,
Bart simply over-reads the evidence, or as the British say, over-eggs the pudding.

Now I think I understand why he does this. He rightly gets peeved with those fundamentalists
who want to stick their heads in the sand and say, there are no such issues or problems even in
the least. But an over-reaction is just that--- an over-reaction. Throughout this book, the real
boogeyman that Bart is trying to refute is fundamentalists who hold to a certain wooden and
very literal view of inerrancy which hardly takes ancient historical considerations into account at
all. I would actually have as many problems with the same people as I have with Bart‟s views.

He also does not do justice to a reading of these texts in light of ancient genre, conventions,
purposes, history writing and the like, but for very different reasons. The reasons seem to
include that he is a ardent convert from fundamentalism to a very narrow and all too modern
form of historical critical analysis of these texts-- a form that starts with an inherent skepticism
about the supernatural among other things, and assumes that critical thinking equals the ability
to doubt this, that or the other ancient datum. I call this justification by doubt. It is no more a
valid starting point for evaluating the NT than blind fideism is. Indeed, I would argue that to
actually understand an ancient author you must start by giving them the benefit of the doubt
and hear them out, doing one‟s best to enter creatively into their own world and thought
processes before understanding can come to pass. To approach the text with a hermeneutic of
suspicion is to poison the well of inquiry before one even samples the water in the old well.

Bart and I furthermore disagree on the issue of pseudonymity in the canon. It is one thing to say
there are anonymous documents in the NT, which there are. Hebrews would be a good example.
It is another thing to say that there are pseudonymous documents in the NT, forgeries. I and
many other critical scholars think this is not so, but Bart is right that many scholars think
otherwise. My point is simply this--- there is a healthy debate about that issue amongst scholars.
It is not a “well assured result of the historical critical method” on analyzing the NT. I have
pointed out at length in my Letters and Homilies of the NT, series the problems that
pseudonymity raised in the first century A.D. for both Greek and Latin writers, never mind
writers of documents supposed to convey God‟s truth. The Gospels as we have them are formally
anonymous in terms of their internal evidence, though the Fourth Gospel tells is that the
Beloved Disciple (not specifically identified) is the source of the material in that Gospel. We can
discuss the merits of the attributes later appended to these Gospels (Mark, Matthew, Luke,
John), but in my view the testimony of Papias is important, and makes evident these
attributions already existed in the first century, and in some cases during the time when there
were still eyewitnesses. They cannot be dismissed with a wave of a hand, but at the same time
one needs to ask--- what were the conventions when it came to appending names to composite
documents? This deserves more discussion. In the second part of this post, we will pick up the
discussion with Chapter Three. Stay tuned.

9
WEDNESDAY, APRIL 08, 2009
Bart Interrupted--- A detailed Analysis of 'Jesus Interrupted' Part
Two
Bart D. Ehrman, Jesus, Interrupted, (San Francisco: Harper One, 2009), xii +212 pages. Part
Two ( pp. 61-75).

http://benwitherington.blogspot.com/2009/04/bart-interrupted-detailed-analysis-of_08.html

In his first rate analysis of Edward Gibbon‟s classic 18th century study, The Decline and Fall of
the Roman Empire, a work which set the pattern or paradigm for modern historiography with
its basic skepticism or agnosticism about all things non-empirical, Jaroslav Pelikan in his The
Excellent Empire brings to light some of the fundamental problems with Gibbon‟s way of
approaching history, which leads to flaws in his analysis of Constantine and the decline of the
Roman Empire. It will be worthwhile to listen to a few things that Pelikan points out.

Gibbon in explaining why he treated „ecclesiastical history‟ in the very same manner he treated
all history writing says the following “The theologian may indulge the pleasing task of describing
Religion as she descended from Heaven, arrayed in her native purity. A more melancholy duty is
imposed on the historian. He must discover the inevitable mixture of error and corruption
which she contracted in a long residence upon the earth, among a weak and degenerate race of
beings.” (cited by Pelikan p.36).

It is indeed the job of the historian to analyze history as it was, not as we might like it to be. And
it is fair to say that the NT does not shy away from displaying its own dirty laundry. Luke, in
Acts is perfectly candid about various of the problems the early church had (see e.g. the story of
Ananias and Sapphira), and Paul in his letters is constantly recounting the troubles he had with
his churches. These writers were not people likely to guild the lily or make things up out of
whole cloth, unless you believe that people are regularly prepared to be martyred for things they
know are lies.

The earliest Christians writers were, almost without exception, educated Jews, who passed on
early Christian traditions in a thoroughly Jewish manner and had a high regard for the truth of
things. As much as we might enjoy today a Dan Brown novel suggesting gigantic conspiracies
and cover-ups as an explanation for early Christian history, these sort of explanations do not do
justice to the actual historical data that we have, whether we are discussing the data within the
NT itself, or the story of the copying of its manuscripts and its later ecumenical councils and
canon. And justice is what must be done with historical data, otherwise what is written is a
travesty or a tragedy or both.

Evelyn Waugh, the novelist once commented on why Gibbon‟s history made such an impact on
subsequent treatments of the same subject of ancient Rome and early Christianity. He stressed
that it was Gibbon‟s style, his eloquence, memorable phrases, wry sense of humor, clarity that
led to his work having the impact it did—“that is what style does—it has the Egyptian secret of
the embalmers”. A person who has that gift of communication but is skeptical about the content
he is writing about “might make it his business to write down the martyrs and excuse the
persecutors.” (Pelikan, p. 40). In other words, he might well be guilty of revisionist history
writing, something we‟ve seen a lot of in recent years with the rising tide of Gnostic gospel
discussions.

There are then three dangers we learn of when reading and critically analyzing Gibbon‟s classic
work: 1) history writing that either dismisses or is dismissive of the role of God in human

10
history, claiming that that is not a part of the historian‟s task, even if there is considerable
evidence to the contrary, and 2) because of its skeptical bent, history writing that is prone to
revisionism of a sort that distorts rather than dissects and correctly analyzes what happened
back then and back there; 3) history writing that conveys 1) and 2) in a clear and eloquent and
understandable fashion such that the clarity of the explanation makes it appear that the
conclusions are obvious and should go without challenge. This of course is the power of good
rhetoric—it persuades without necessarily providing the detailed evidence and analysis
necessary to prove one‟s point.

It is of course true that any historian knows that one is dealing with probabilities and
possibilities. But it serves no good purpose to rule out some possibilities in advance of actually
doing the historical analysis. In other words, it is narrow-minded rather than open-minded to
start with a skepticism about the role of the divine in human history, and write one‟s history
guided by that skepticism. That, as it turns out, is bad historiography, not good critical
historiography.

On the other hand, it is equally a mistake to do historical analysis in a gullible manner, ascribing
all manner of things to the divine, when a sufficient human cause can be detected and described.
Writing the story of early Christian history should neither be an exercise that could be called
„Gullible‟s Travels‟ nor an exercise that could be called „the Skeptic‟s Revisionist Speculations‟.

There needs to be an openness to all the data as we have it, and a willingness to give the ancient
writers the benefit of the doubt in the same way one would do with an admired contemporary
colleague or friend in one‟s field. Without sufficient native sympathy for the material or its
author, the tendency to bend or distort is considerable, and the results unfortunate. The acid of
skepticism has a corrosive effect. It leads one to find contradictions and faults at every turn,
even when they aren‟t there. It leads to atomizing and vivisecting a group of texts in a manner
that prevents one from seeing the whole and its interconnectivity because one has divided it into
so many discrete parts.

This methodology leads to result rather like the familiar parable of the five blind me all feeling
different parts of the elephant. The first says “an elephant is like a horn” for he felt the tusk of
the elephant. The second says “an elephant is like a rope” for he felt the tail of the elephant. The
third says “the elephant is like a hose” for he felt the trunk of the elephant. The fourth says “the
elephant is like a giant leaf” for he felt the ear of the elephant. The fifth said “you‟re all wrong,
the elephant is like a wrinkled old man” for he felt the knee of the elephant. One needs to see the
parts in relationship to the whole in order to be able to assess the whole. The point is, while
there is some truth in what each person said in this case, without a vision of the whole, one
cannot properly analyze the significance of the parts and the differences in data and
interpretation.

As we turn to Ehrman‟s chapter entitled “A Mass of Variant Views” let is start with a statement
on p. 63--- “Paul wrote letters..he did not think he was writing the Bible….Only later did
someone put these letters together and consider them inspired.” Here we are dealing with a half
truth appended to which is a false conclusion. It is quite right to say Paul did not think he was
writing canonical books. He did however think that both his oral proclamation and his writing
were inspired by God‟s Spirit, and he says so repeatedly in these letters. The notion of
inspiration is not something that came later and after the fact. Indeed, Paul was convinced from
the outset that his preaching was the living word of God, and his writings likewise inspired. I
have dealt with this subject at length in my book The Living Word of God, but what will have to
suffice here is a simple quotation from one of Paul‟s earliest undisputed letters, 1 Thessalonians-

11
-- 1 Thess. 2.13 reads as follows: “And we also thank God continually because when you received
the word of God, which you heard from us, you accepted it not as a human word, but as it
actually is, the word of God, which is indeed at work in you who believe.”

Early Christianity, from Pentecost on (see Acts 2), was a pneumatic movement, a movement of
prophets and Spirit inspired teachers and preachers and apostles. It was a movement
profoundly convinced that it had a new and late word from God that the world needed to hear.
The leaders of this movement believed not only that the OT was inspired by God and so God-
breathed (see 2 Tim. 3.16), they believed that their own words and writings were likewise
inspired by God. This is precisely why in a text like 1 Cor. 7, Paul can quote the very words of
Jesus on divorce, and then put his own words right beside them as equally authoritative and
inspired and true. Now of course a secular historian can be skeptical about whether what Paul
says is true or not, but what is absolutely not historically true is the notion that only later
someone put these documents together and considered them inspired. That would be a false
analysis of the historical data.

Bart pleads in this chapter that each Biblical author be allowed to speak for himself. I quite
agree with this up to a point, But these Biblical authors did not think they were operating in a
social vacuum. They believed they were part of a movement, and they relied on traditions, oral
and written, from those who had come before or were their contemporaries. Bart‟s modern and
individualistic approach to each Gospel ignores the collective nature not merely of ancient
culture, but also the tight-knit nature of the early sectarian split off movement from Judaism,
called Christianity.

So when Bart says of Mark “he certainly did not think that his book should be interpreted in
light of what some other Christian would write thirty years later in a different country and a
different context” (p. 64), he is in fact going against the historical evidence we have which
suggests the earliest Christian leaders knew each other, and sought, despite difficulties, to
consult with one another, and work together. They wrote their documents as tools for
evangelism and discipleship with one eye on their source material and one eye on their
audience. Consider for example the preface to Luke‟s Gospel, Lk. 1.1-4---

“Inasmuch as many have undertaken to write an account of the things that have happened
among us [notice the „us‟], just as they were handed down to us by those who were from the
beginning eyewitnesses and servants of the Word (notice the sense of inspired speaking and
writing), I too, having carefully investigated everything from the beginning, decided to write an
orderly account for you noble Theophilus, so that you might know the certainty of the things you
have been taught”

This is the spirit, and character of the way Luke approaches his source material, recognizing he
is dealing with historical sources, and many have come before him compiling the eyewitness
data. Considering how similar Luke‟s Gospel is to Mark‟s and Matthew‟s in terms of the big
picture, it is hard to doubt that Mark had a similar approach to sacred tradition and the writing
of his Gospel. This is what we would expect from early Jews who had a reverence for their sacred
traditions oral and written.

Let us mention a point of congruence with Bart‟s analysis. Bart is right that the modern
synthetic approach to the Gospels, which blends all the accounts together in one‟s mental
blender leads to distortions or neglect of the particular perspectives this or that Evangelist is
highlighting. I quite agree with this point.

12
Each Gospel portrait of Jesus should be allowed to have its own flavor and character. The
question is whether these four portraits are compatible, or whether they provide us with such
divergent views of Jesus that we need to speak of one portrait contradicting or correcting the
other. Bart thinks we do need to speak in that way, and I disagree.

And again the problem is Bart is atomistically analyzing these accounts as if they were meant to
be photographs, not portraits and interpretive works of art. So for example Bart rightly points
out that the portrait of the death of Jesus in Mark is stark and dark. Jesus says nothing on the
cross except “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me”. We are dealing with theological
history writing here. Not theology written up as history, but theological interpretation of a
history that itself is inherently theological, involving the divine.

Does this account somehow contradict, say the Lukan account where Jesus speaks to his fellow
crucifixion victims? Well no, it does not. Why not? Two reasons. None of the Gospel writers is
pretending to present an exhaustive account of what happened. And all of the Gospel writers are
writing from a particular angle of incidence, a particular point of view. They have their own
themes and theses they wish to highlight and like other ancient biographers and historians they
assume a certain amount of literary license and freedom in editing and arranging their material.
In other words, they are not pretending to be neutral or „objective‟ in the modern sense of those
words. They are committed believers. The question then becomes do their „points of view‟ and
faith commitments lead to a distortion of the historical evidence, or to the contrary do they lead
to a profound and sympathetic understanding and interpretation of the evidence? I would
suggest the latter.

One of the key assumptions guiding the comparison of the Markan and Lukan crucifixion
accounts is revealed by Bart on p. 68—he assumes that the Gospel writers are portraying Jesus
at the exact same moment on the cross, or that each of them are portraying the whole crucifixion
experience. Frankly, neither of these assumptions are warranted. In each Gospel, only a precious
few verses is devoted to what happened and what was said when Jesus was on the cross. But in
fact these same accounts also tell us that Jesus was on the cross for three or more hours!

It is a classic error to mistake the part for the whole, or to assume that two different angled
interpretations are meant to represent the same instance. Neither of these assumptions are
warranted. Luke gives us more of what Jesus said on the cross, Mark, considerably less. It is
perfectly possible that Jesus went through a gamut of emotions on the cross, moving from God-
forsakenness to acceptance, to forgiving others etc. Any one who has done some counseling and
pastoral work with the dying knows that a dying person does indeed often go through a variety
of responses to his demise, even in a short period of time. None of these sort of dynamics are
taken into account in Bart‟s analysis. The Gospel writers are not suggesting Jesus was “all these
things at once”. They are presenting different portions or aspects of the crucifixion experience,
and nothing more.

If Bart had wanted to discuss the degree of freedom exercised with historical source materials,
he would have done better in comparing the differing words of the centurion at the cross. Did he
say “Surely this is the Son of God” (or perhaps „a son of the gods‟), or did he say “Surely this was
a righteous man” as in Luke? Conservative Christians most definitely need to come to grips with
these sorts of real differences in the account, and avoid explaining them by explaining them
away.

I take it that Luke‟s modification of his source is intended to convey the same thing as Mark‟s
original—namely that Jesus was a righteous person who died a noble death and did not deserve

13
to be crucified, unlike the bandit who was busy cursing his fate. The phrase „son of God‟ on the
lips of an actual centurion was a way of saying that someone had „pietas‟, piety, righteousness,
and probably did not deserve his fate. Crucifixion was considered the most shameful way to die,
and the centurion is suggesting that Jesus did not deserve to be shamed in this way. His noble
character was reflected in the way he died. In other words Luke, with his concern to show to
Theophilus that Jesus‟ crucifixion was a travesty of Roman justice (and that Christianity was not
at odds with Roman jurisprudence) has rephrased the original words of the centurion in a way
that makes plain Jesus‟ pietas and righteousness. These two ways of presenting the centurion‟s
utterance are compatible once one realizes that the centurion is probably not a Christian before
his time, nor is he doing a Christian theological analysis of Christ on the cross.

The art of historical analysis involves a judicious assessment not only of differences in an
account (and an explanation for those differences can be offered), but a judicious assessment of
the important similarities in the accounts. Only so is a balanced assessment possible. Bart, in
reacting to the homogenizing tendencies of conservative Christians dramatically over
emphasizes, and over interprets the differences in the accounts. The end result is not a fair
assessment of either the Gospels as individual iterations of the story of the crucifixion, nor does
it lead to a detailed enough assessment of the history behind the Gospel accounts. It is for
example, not enough to say—they all agree Jesus died on the cross. No, in fact they all agree he
died as a „king of the Jews‟ on the cross as the titulus says, and that is already a theological
matter, not merely a political or historical one. My point is this--- you cannot nicely separate or
parse out the history from the theology, precisely because the history is inherently theological in
character, and is not merely theological interpreted by the Evangelists.

He goes on to point out what he deems irreconcilable difference between the Easter morning
stories about the visit by the women to the tomb. For example he points out that Mark says the
women saw “a man” at the tomb, whereas the other accounts say that one or more angels were
seen. He takes the reference to “a man” to be a contradiction to the references to angels.

This conclusion I find very odd, since he ought to know that with regularity in the OT and in
Intertestamental literature, angels are called and described as men (see e.g. Dan. 9.21; 10.5;
12.6-7). This sort of descriptor is particularly common in Jewish apocalyptic texts like Daniel
and like Mark‟s Gospel itself. And again, one has to ask the question—when Matthew or Luke
read the Markan account, are we really to suppose that they thought they were significantly
changing the account by calling those figures angels? I doubt it. Again we are dealing with a
wooden sort of literalism on Bart‟s part that does not take into account the larger context of such
„angelic‟ material in early Judaism.

With regularity in this book, Bart continues to ask the question--- why have pastors trained in
seminary in the historical critical method regularly deprived their congregations of such
information as he presents in this book? He suggest perhaps a failure of nerve or a “when in
doubt chicken out approach”. I cannot speak for all such pastors, but since I do a myriad of
church events all over the country every year in United Methodist and other sorts of churches
which have pastors trained in such things, I must say the reason they are not telling their
congregations the sort of things Bart is saying in Jesus, Interrupted is precisely because for the
most part they do not believe in his radical interpretation of the data. Even those who are very
keen on the historical critical method, would not agree with many things Bart says in this book.

No, there is not a conspiracy to suppress the actual truth about the NT in the contemporary
church. Rather, there is an exercising of good and balanced judgment to allow the more radical
interpretations of the data to go in one ear and out the other, because it is not true to the

14
character of the data as a whole. In fact, I cannot tell you how many pastors who have gone to
more liberal seminaries have told me this very thing. They don‟t intend to convey conclusions
they either disagree with, or have serious doubts about. Good for them. This does not make
them cowards or uncritical thinkers.

One of Bart‟s larger points is that there are theological incompatibilities between the Gospel
accounts. The virginal conception and the incarnation ideas are not reconcilable, and anyway no
Gospel, or other NT sources seeks to reconcile them, in Bart‟s view. He insists (p. 74): “for the
writers of the Gospels, the idea of the virgin birth and the idea of an incarnation were very
different indeed.” Really?

The idea of a virginal conception has to do with how Jesus came into this world, by what means,
and the answer is by means of a miracle that took place in Mary‟s womb without the
involvement of a man. This idea says nothing for or against the idea of a pre-existent son of God,
and that in any case is not its purpose. John 1 on the other hand does speak of a pre-existent
logos, one later called only begotten son of God in this same chapter, who “took on flesh and
tabernacled amongst us”. Aha! The account of the incarnation does indeed speak about taking
on flesh. This is indeed what the virginal conception story is about—explaining the human and
also divine origins of Jesus.

Should we assume that a situation existed where a particular group of Christians knew only the
Gospel stories told in one particular Gospel? This is how Bart dogmatically puts it--- “If your
only Gospel was Mark--- and in the early church for some Christians it was the only Gospel—
you would have no idea that Jesus‟ birth was unusual in any way”. (p. 74). Really? Now when a
writer makes a dramatic claim like this it is always appropriate to ask- “How do you know this,
and if you don‟t have evidence to support the idea, why would you assume it is so?”

First of all, the evidence we have suggests that this assumption is simply false. Remember again
the preface to Luke‟s Gospel. He knows of many other such accounts. He also knows of
eyewitnesses and early preachers of the word and he has consulted him. I doubt it is in any way
a wise thing to assume that Mark was writing to a group of Christians hermetically sealed off
from the other Christians in the Roman Empire and without access to other Christian
documents and traditions. Secondly, the very solution to the Synoptic problem that both Bart
and I agree is likely, namely that Matthew and Luke used Mark, in itself gives the lie to the
assumption that this Christian community only had this one Gospel, and that one only had that
one, and so on. This is a myth, not good historical analysis.

But even leaving the Gospel out of account for a moment. Is it really true that only the Gospel of
John tells us about a pre-existent one who takes on flesh and dwells amongst us? Well no. In
fact we find this idea in some of our earliest Christian documents--- Paul‟s letters. Compare for
example 1 Cor. 8.4-6 to Phil. 2.5-11. Already in the 50s and 60s Christian writers believed that
there was a divine pre-existent son of God who came to earth and took on human form.

It is of course true that Paul does not directly mention „the virginal conception‟, but what he says
is not only compatible with the idea (see Gal 4.4—God sent his son, born of woman, born under
the law. Notice Paul does not say, born of a good Jewish man with proper paternity), Rom. 8.3
suggest knows of the virginal conception idea for he says that God sent his son “in the likeness of
sinful flesh”. Now what is the point of the word „likeness‟ in this verse? I would suggest Paul is
saying that Jesus really had flesh but it was not tainted with human fallenness the way all other
human flesh was (see Rom. 5.12-21). In other words, Paul already knows about the idea of Jesus
being conceived in a pure and sinless manner. The attempt to treat the NT writers as if they were

15
ignorant or ignored or were polemicizing against one another or lived in splendid isolation from
one another does not work.

The early Christian movement was a tiny sectarian movement dedicated to world evangelism,
and working together towards that end. Paul knew Peter and James and John, and others. He
knew Mark and Luke and Apollos and others. He is the bridge figure between the various local
Christian communities, and as he tells us in Galatians, he even went to Jerusalem to present his
own Gospel to the pillar apostles so they would all be in theological accord about the message---
and indeed they were, if by „they‟ we mean those who ended up writing the NT and apostolic
documents.

In fact all of the NT documents can be traced back to apostolic sources or were written by
apostles—all of them can be traced to about 9-10 persons who were eyewitnesses or apostles or
both. These persons include the Beloved Disciple, Mark, Luke, John of Patmos, Paul, probably
Apollos, Peter, James and Jude. 2 Peter is a later composite document made up of material from
Peter, Jude, and with a knowledge of the Pauline corpus, but you will notice it does not appear
to draw on non- apostolic source material. The claims that we do not know who wrote these
books, or that some of them are forged are greatly exaggerated claims, that many historians like
myself do not find convincing or compelling on the basis of the actual historical evidence itself.

We have no documents in the NT by the Judaizers, or by the super-apostles Paul combated. We

have no documents in the NT then by Paul‟s opponents, or James‟ opponents or the like. Were
there such people in early Christian communities--- yes there were, and their legacy was not
preserved except indirectly because it did not comport with the message of the apostles, about
which Peter, James, John, and Paul all shook hands on.

The attempt to present the NT writers as examples of dueling banjos does not pass muster when
one really analyzes early Christianity in its first century period. There was not the sort of radical
diversity amongst these earliest Jewish Christians, unlike some of what we find when the church
became largely dominated by Gentiles in the second and succeeding centuries, and major
heretics arose like Marcion and the Gnostics.

The attempt to trace radical diversity back into the NT period is doomed to failure, because it is
not grounded in a fair historical reading of the original source documents. Equally unfair and
historically inaccurate is the notion that high Christology or Trinitarian orthodoxy was
something only cooked up in centuries subsequent to the NT era, particularly in the 4th and 5th
centuries. To the contrary, we already see a proto-orthodox theology in the NT itself in Paul, in
John, in Hebrews, in Revelation. Christ is already view as deity by Paul and other NT writers,
and already in various places we hear about Father, Son and Spirit all being called God in the
NT. That this high Christology and Trinitarian theology is further developed after the NT era is
beyond dispute. But those developments were founded on and grounded in the orthodoxy that
already existed in the apostolic era.

Let me be clear. If you do not like these Christian ideas, that is fine. But what you cannot do is
say that the earliest Christians did not believe things like the deity of Christ or the virginal
conceptions. The attempt to make 4th century Christians the inventors of high Christology
imposes a myth of origins on Christianity that amounts to a rewriting of history in a false way.
Distaste for this or that theological idea should not be allowed to lead to a truly biased and
unhelpful interpretation of the historical facts about what the earliest Christian believed. The
transcript of their faith is found in the NT itself, a collection of apostolic and sub-apostolic
documents. One is free to disagree with their theological perspectives, but one is not free to say

16
they didn‟t hold such views or to suggest that there were widely divergent and contradictory
beliefs about such subjects amongst early orthodox Christians. This is simply not true. More
soon.

17
MONDAY, APRIL 13, 2009
Bart Interrupted--- A detailed Analysis of 'Jesus Interrupted' Part
Three
http://benwitherington.blogspot.com/2009/04/bart-interrupted-detailed-analysis-
of_13.html

One of the valid points made by Bart Ehrman at various junctures in this study is that each
Gospel needs to be allowed to have its own say. He is guarding against the tendencies to blend
all the accounts together, and I understand this. What we have in the NT is not the Diatesseron,
the account later created blending four Gospels into one. His concern is especially with a sort of
false harmonizing that vitiates some individual point a particular Gospel wants to make. Fair
enough.

But Bart himself is well aware that any historical reconstruction of the life of Jesus does indeed
involve comparing and compiling data from a variety of sources, after allowing each one to have
its say. The so-called historical Jesus that Bart presents us with in his book Jesus. Apocalyptic
Prophet involves precisely this sort of synthetic project. The trick is to do the combining without
undermining. When it comes to the issue of the virginal conception vs. the incarnation it seems
to me that something vital is missing in Bart‟s discussion—namely the recognition that these two
ideas are not rivals, nor do they contradict one another, for they speak really of two different
things. Incarnation tells us that a pre-existent person showed up in the flesh, without telling us
anything about how. The virginal conception tells us something about how the human being
Jesus came into this world. Thus while it is true that Luke, at least, is silent on the issue of pre-
existence, when he talks about the virginal conception (Matthew probably is not, since he tells
us that Jesus is Immanel, God with us), this does not make the virginal conception and the
notion of incarnation in any way incompatible. They are concepts which address two different,
though related issues—how, and what, when it comes to the origins of Jesus.

On p. 77 Bart makes a surprising statement--- “Jewish apocalypticism was a worldview that

came into existence about a century and a half before Jesus‟ birth…” Now perhaps Bart is
thinking solely of Daniel, and is really late dating the book, but even if so experts in apocalyptic
literature are clear enough that we see the beginning of this way of thinking much earlier--- in
the exilic period with Ezekiel and in Zechariah for example which certainly are not books that
date to the second century B.C. Why quibble over this point? Well because of course historically
it matters, and it calls into question Bart‟s historical judgment. For my part, I don‟t think, once
one has read the gamut of scholarship and commentaries on Daniel, that one can conclude that
even Daniel can safely be dated no earlier than the second century B.C. as a book.

In his succinct presentation of the teaching of Jesus in Mark, Bart is right that this Evangelist
takes an apocalyptic approach to presenting Jesus. This is quite true (see my Gospel of Mark
commentary), and he agrees that Jesus is presented as the Son of Man in Mark. He says nothing
however about the connection between these two facts, namely that Jesus presents himself as
the figure referred to in the apocalyptic vision in Dan. 7—the one „like a son of man‟ who
descends on a cloud from heaven, and is given a throne by the Ancient of Days and will judge the
world, and rule in a kingdom forever. This text—Dan. 7.13ff. is in fact echoed and alluded to in
various ways throughout this Gospel, and sometimes it is explicit (see e.g. Mk. 14.62). Now this
son of man concept is crucial to understanding Jesus‟ own self-presentation, and scholars of all
stripes, and many of no faith persuasion, agree on that point. So what should we make of Dan.
7.13ff. ? In the first place I would suggest we compare that text to 2 Sam. 7—the famous promise
to David to give him a kingdom for him and his offspring in perpetuity (with some provisos).
What stands out about 2 Sam. 7 is the promise is to David and his descendants, but the promise

18
to the Son of Man figure in Daniel 7 is that he himself will reign, judge, rule forever--- by
himself. You have to ask what kind of human and more than human figure could do that, and
the answer is--- a person who is both human and divine, which is exactly how the Son of Man
figure is portrayed in that chapter. This is why the same text says the Son of Man figure is to be
worshipped, again something reserved for God in the OT!

Now it is precisely this sort of analysis of Dan. 7 as a background to the Son of Man material in
Mark that is totally and absolutely missing from Bart‟s presentation, and it allows him to make a
dramatic contrast between the presentation of Jesus in Mark as a human, messianic, but non-
divine figure, and the presentation of Jesus in John. Unfortunately by making this contrast: 1)
Bart has overplayed his hand, and 2) under-read the data from Mark with its apocalyptic
background; and 3) as a result he has not done justice to a proper comparison and contrast
between Mark and John and their respective portraits of Jesus. Bart is of course right that John
presents the humanity and divinity of Jesus very differently than in Mark. The crucial point
however is that both Evangelists present Jesus as both human and much more than human as a
fair reading of both texts will show.

Besides this remarkable oversight, there are some other blunders along the way as well.
Consider for example the suggestion that the coming Kingdom of God is not part of Jesus‟
teaching and preaching in the Fourth Gospel (see p. 80). This frankly is not true. There are
seven Kingdom of God sayings in John‟s Gospel, and the Johannine Jesus certainly does make
this a topic of conversation--- for example in John 3 Jesus tells Nicodemus that unless he‟s born
again, he shall not enter or see the future Kingdom of God. Now it is true, that this subject is by
no means as emphasized in John as it is in Mark, but it is quite impossible to say you don‟t find
the subject in John. But there is more. Bart insists that what „kingdom of God‟ does mean in
John is “life in heaven above”--- really??? This makes no sense of even John 3.3 which speaks
about “seeing” the Kingdom of God. Jesus says nothing here about seeing or going to heaven.
The discussion is about the Kingdom come on earth, and the key to seeing that kingdom is being
born again here on earth.

One of the real caricatures of Johannine eschatology, is that there is no future eschatology in
John. I agree that the focus in John is not on future events on earth at the End, but they are
indeed mentioned in this Gospel. For example in John 5.28 Jesus says “a time is coming when
all who are in their graves will hear his (i.e. Jesus‟=the Son of Man‟s) voice and come out—those
who have done good will rise to life, and those who have done evil will rise to be condemned.”
There is no good reason for denying that this reveals some of how Jesus views the coming
kingdom of God in this Gospel. It involves future resurrection and final judgment on earth and
notice both are connected to the Son of Man language from Daniel 7.

But another caricature is involved in this analysis and contrast between Mark and John. On p.
81 Ehrman says “In Mark, Jesus predicts that the end will come right away, during his own
generation, while his disciples are still alive (Mk. 9.1; 13.30)” Really?? Actually that would be a
bad misrepresentation of what Jesus says in Mark. He says clearly enough at Mk. 13.32 that not
even the Son knows the timing of the second coming! Mk. 9.1 is not about the second coming it
is about seeing the Kingdom come with power which can refer to either the Transfiguration or
the Resurrection (take your pick), both of which events happen whilst the original disciples are
alive, but in any case this is not how Jesus in Mark refers to his return. Jesus is not the kingdom,
he is the Son of Man, and his coming with power on the clouds is referred to differently (contrast
Mk. 9.1 to Mk. 14.62).

But equally amazing is how Bart has simply amalgamated all the varied material in Mark 13

19
together to reach his conclusion. Mark says clearly enough that the events leading up to the
destruction of the temple, which involve various signs and events on earth, will take place within
a generation (= 40 years in the Bible). And sure enough, Jesus predicted this correctly in A.D.
30, for the Temple fell in A.D. 70. But what Mk. 13 also goes on to say is that after those days
(i.e. when the temple is already destroyed), then we can talk about cosmic signs and the return
of Christ at some unknown time.

In other words, Mk. 13 is perfectly clear that we don‟t know how long after the destruction of the
temple Jesus‟ return will be, and there will be no signs on earth presaging it. Rather he will come
like a thief in the night, at a surprising time.

In short, Jesus in Mk. 13 tells us that preliminary eschatological events leading to the
destruction of the Temple will happen in a generation. He also tells us that the second coming
will happen after that at an unknown time and without preliminary signs on the earth. You have
to really do a demolition job on Mk. 13 and ignore the full context to come to the conclusion that
Jesus said he was coming back within a generation in that chapter.

As always, much more can be said, but this is enough to show that Ehrman: 1) does not do
justice to what Mark actually says or John actually says, which allows him to 2) over play the
contrast between these two Gospels on various important matters. I am not suggesting that
there are not some important differences between these Gospels on various matters in the way
they present Jesus and the Gospel message. There are. But Bart has not adequately or accurately
represented what these differences are, or their significance either. More later.

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TUESDAY, APRIL 14, 2009
Bart Interrupted: Part Four
http://benwitherington.blogspot.com/2009/04/bart-interrupted-part-four.html

We live in a text bound age full of litigious people concerned about copyright, intellectual
property, and authorship in the modern sense. I have a friend in fact who is in fact a intellectual
property lawyer. You don‟t want to know all the permutations and combinations of that law. By
contrast, the first century world of the NT writers was a dramatically different world. For one
thing, it was largely a world of oral cultures. Perhaps 10-15% of the populus was literate, could
read and write, and even less actually owned „texts‟ or manuscripts. Furthermore, the
production of texts in antiquity was a tremendously laborious process, and expensive as well.
Scribes did not come cheap, papyrus and ink was not cheap, and the codex, or notebook form
compilation was just coming into existence in the first century A.D. Most documents were
written on a single sheet of papyrus which would be rolled up and tagged, with what I like to call
a toe tag—a small identifying marker. Scribes were not mere secretaries in antiquity, they were
in fact the intellectuals and scholars of their age. It you want to learn about their various roles
you can read several of the chapters in my forthcoming Baylor book What‟s in a Word.

Not surprisingly, ancient views about „authorship‟ are not quite the same as modern views which
assume „individual‟ authors for almost all documents that aren‟t collections of essays by some
group of scholars. However in ancient collectivistic cultures this was not the norm. Many, if not
most ancient documents were anthological in character--- a compilation of traditions from
various different persons and ages through time. This was true about collections of laws,
proverbs, songs, religious rituals, and stories as well. We should not be surprised in the least in
reading through the book of Proverbs that all of a sudden in a book ascribed to Solomon, we
have in Prov. 30 the sayings of Agur, or in Prov. 31 the sayings of King Lemuel, whoever he may
have been. Or again, the psalms are compilations from various different ages, some are probably
songs of David, but some are songs for or dedicated to David, some are composed by others still.
It is a mistake to evaluate ancient documents as if they were just like modern documents, and
this applies to NT documents as well, in various regards.

For example, the vast majority of scholars are in agreement that the Gospels we call Matthew
and Luke are compilations from a variety of sources, including Mark and a sayings collection,
and some unique material not found in other Gospels. Of course, this becomes puzzling to
modern readers of Matthew because they rightly ask the question--- why would an eyewitness
apostle like Matthew need to use secondary sources for events he was present to view? Why
indeed. Here is where I say to you that while we must properly answer this question, one also
needs to not do what Bart Ehrman does in his chapter on who wrote the Bible when it comes to
this issue—which is to suggest that these Gospels were originally anonymous, and labels were
added to them later for apologetical purposes, and that when we read of who they are attributed
to in an early source like Papias, we can with a wave of the hand simply dismiss such evidence. If
you want to read what a historian of merit has to say indetail about the Papias‟ traditions I
would point you to Richard Bauckham‟s book Jesus and the Eyewitnesses, which is mostly a
close reading and explanation of Papias and what he says. It does not in any way agree with
Ehrman‟s analysis of these early traditions. Indeed, most scholars today think there was a
collection of the four canonical Gospels together at some point early in the second century in
codex form which is when we get the official labels—according to Matthew etc. based on earlier
traditions about the sources of these documents (see e,g, the work of Graham Stanton).

When the Gospel documents were originally written, the audiences that received them knew
who the authors were and had a relationship with them. This is especially clear from a text like

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John 21 which informs us that while the final compiler of the Fourth Gospel is not the Beloved
Disciple, nevertheless, he is the source of the traditions in this Gospel, having written them
down, and “we know that his testimony is true”. The compiler of the Fourth Gospel knows the
man personally, and can vouch for his trustworthiness in telling the Gospel stories. So let‟s deal
now with some of the flimsy assumptions made which are the basis of Ehrman‟s conclusions.

1) Assumption One: The canonical Gospels were probably originally anonymous. This is wrong
on two counts. First, when these documents were written down, if there were not identifiers in
the document, the papyrus would have been tagged by the scribe to be able to distinguish it from
other documents, and these tags regularly had the names of the author or compiler and
sometimes a short title as well or instead. Second, we should not imagine that the Gospels were
written for general public consumption. Publishing in antiquity was almost always an in house,
small audience thing, unless we are talking about Emperor‟s publishing laws and propaganda.
The circles for which these Gospels were written in all likelihood knew who wrote these
documents. Papias is simply basing on to us the early traditions about Matthew, Mark, and John
that he heard personally from John the elder, who had know various of the eyewitnesses.

2) Assumption Two: In the case of a Gospel like Matthew which includes some 95% of Mark
within it, obviously this means that Matthew had nothing to do with the content of this Gospel
since it relies on earlier and even secondary sources. This sort of reasoning ignores the
anthological nature of most ancient documents. All it took for a document like Matthew to be
labeled „Matthew‟ is if he was the most famous source used in the document for some of its
material. And of course if the three sources used in that document are: 1) material from Mark,
not an eyewitness, 2) material from Q or a sayings collection; 3) material from some other
unique source scholars usually call special M material, then if either 2) or 3) came from
Matthew, his name would take precedent over Mark‟s in the document, especially if there very
first source material in this Gospel, the birth narratives, came from Matthew. What Papias says
is that Matthew had compiled some of the largely sayings material of Jesus in Aramaic or
Hebrew. This sounds more like 2) above, than 3), but Papias is general enough that it could be
3) since the Greek word logia need not mean just „sayings‟. It could mean teachings, for example
or even „words about the Lord‟.

3) Assumption Three: Jesus‟ disciples were “lower-class, illiterate, Aramaic speaking peasants
from Galilee.” (p. 106). First of all fisherman are not peasants. They often made a good living
from the sea of Galilee, as can be seen from the famous and large fisherman‟s house excavated in
Bethsaida. Secondly, fishermen were businessmen and they had to either have a scribe or be
able to read and write a bit to deal with tax collectors, toll collectors, and other business persons.
Thirdly, if indeed Jesus had a Matthew/ Levi and others who were tax collectors as disciples,
they were indeed literate, and again were not peasants. As the story of Zaccheus makes perfectly
clear, they could indeed have considerable wealth, sometimes from bilking people out of their
money. In other words, it is a caricature to suggest that all Jesus‟ disciples were illiterate
peasants. And Bart is absolutely wrong that Acts 4.13 says otherwise--- what Acts 4.13 says is
that the council is shocked at the theological capacity of Peter and John because they are
„unlettered‟. This is not the ancient word for illiterate, it is the word for not being learned, not
having done formal school training, say in a synagogue.

We need to move on now and consider what Bart says about forgeries and intellectual property
in antiquity, and yes indeed there was a concern about such matters in the first century A.D.
though certainly not to the same degree as we find today. Bart is also right that there were also
not only forgeries in antiquity, there were also pseudepigrapha of various sorts. Now the latter
has to be evaluated on a genre by genre basis. By this I mean that while there was a literary

22
convention when it came to apocalyptic works to ascribe those works to ancient luminaries or
worthies (e.g. the Testament of Abraham is not by Abraham, the Parables of Enoch are not
written by Enoch and so on), it was not an approved literary practice to write letters in the name
of other persons without their approval or dictation. This issue has to be evaluated according to
the literary type of document we are talking about. The parables of Enoch are not a forgery, they
are a pseudepigraphic apocalyptic document and the conventions were well known in early
Judaism about such documents.

Pseudonymous letters, sermons or speeches are a whole different ballgame. These, if they are
genuine letters or sermons, can be called forgeries if there is no connection between the putative
author and the actual author of a given document. Bart is absolutely right when he says “Ancient
sources took forgery seriously. They almost universally condemn it, often in strong terms.” (p.
115). He is also quite right that forgeries had the intent to deceive. And he is also equally right
that various of these sorts of documents were penned in the second century A.D. to add to the
corpus of Christian writings for various purpose. A good example of this would be the so-called
Acts of Paul and Thecla, or the Epistle to the Laodiceans. Our concern is not however with such
documents, but with those from the first century A.D. (and it is only first century documents in
the NT) that made it into the canon of the New Testament. Are their forgeries in the NT?

First of all, we need to bear in mind that anonymous documents are not pseudonymous
documents. Hebrews for example, has no attribution of authorship internally or externally, it is
an anonymous sermon. Perhaps Apollos wrote it, but in any case, the author of the document is
not trying to pass it off as written by some luminary. Secondly, there are documents which are
internally anonymous but had an external attribution. For example 1 John, in the content of the
document says nothing about the author at all. It is a sermon, and it appears that early Christian
sermons, like Hebrews, were frequently produced without internal attribution. And exception to
this is James. Bart wants to argue that this is by some otherwise unknown James. The problem
with this suggestion is shown by the many commentators on the book of James, and also by the
content of the book, which draws on no less than 20 sayings of James‟ brother Jesus. As
Bauckham has shown at length, there is no reason to doubt James is by the famous James the
brother of Jesus, any more than there is reason to doubt Jude, who identifies himself as James
brother is by Jude, the brother of Jesus. On the other hand, Bart is right that Revelation is by
one John of Patmos, who is probably not John Zebedee, nor is he the Beloved Disciple. This man
was a apocalyptic prophet whose Greek and theologizing is different from that found in the
other Johannine documents (see my Revelation commentary).

The real issue when it comes to pseudeigrapha in the canon is whether documents like 2
Thessalonians, Colossians, Ephesians, the Pastoral Epistles, 2 Peter are pseudepigrapha. Bart
thinks they are, and I think they are not. For the record, the commentators are about evenly
divided on most of these books with the exception of 2 Peter, which most take to be a
pseudepigrapha. In fact 2 Peter is a compilation document which draws on Jude in its second
chapter, and on a testimony of Peter in the first chapter, and perhaps some Pauline material as
well in 2 Pet. 3. As a compilation document it is attributed to its first and most famous source
Peter. There is a Petrine testimony about the Transfiguration in 2 Pet. 1, that likely goes back to
Peter himself. The compiler of the document does not see or present himself as an author. He
follows the ancient tradition of attributing the compilation to its most famous contributor, as we
saw was true for Proverbs, Psalms, Matthew as well.

But what about those Pauline letters? Let me remind the readers that Paul certainly used
scribes. We see this in various of the ways Paul ends documents. For example, in Gal. 6 he says
he is now taking up the pen and writing a bit in his own hand, which clearly implies he has been

23
using a scribe to compose the letter. Or in Rom. 16 we have a greeting from the scribe Tertius
whom Paul used for that document. In the Pastoral Epistles Paul tells us “Luke alone is with me”
which explains why the Pastorals reflect so much Lukan vocabulary and style. „Authorship‟ in
the ancient world was a term that basically meant „a document which comes from the mind of X
and faithfully reflects his views/message, whoever actually composed the document‟. If an
author had a faithful scribe who knew his mind on an issue, he could simply tell the scribe—
compose a document on X on wax, I will review it, then you may copy it out on a papyrus, with
possible changes. There was a sliding scale between on the one end using a new or hired scribe
to simply take dictation for most of the document and on the other end of the spectrum using a
trusted colleague who knew one‟s mind to compose a document. Paul and Peter (using Silas, see
1 Pet. 1) used such scribes to convey their thoughts for them. When one examines these NT
letters carefully, and takes into account the ancient conventions about composing such letters, I
see no reason to conclude any of these documents are forgeries, particularly on the basis of style,
which is a function of personality and personal preference if one is a skillful writer, and it
depends on the type of letter one is writing as well. Rhetorical style was chosen according to the
situation. Furthermore, a skillful scribe could choose to write in verbose Asiatic Greek rather
than Attic Greek if he chose (cf. e.g formal English English to American slang). When we take
these things into consideration, as we should there is no reason to come to the conclusions Bart
does about forgeries in the NT.

The early church, as we begin to see already in Papias, was confident that their ultimate source
documents went back to apostles, prophets, eyewitnesses and their co-workers, which is why
these 27 documents are in the NT. They were composed by Paul (with help of scribes and co-
workers), Peter (1 Peter with help of Silas probably), Mark, Luke (both co-workers of both Peter
and Paul), the 4th Evangelist (drawing on Beloved Disciple written sources. The Beloved
Disciple composed 1-3 John himself), the compiler of Matthew, James, Jude, perhaps Apollos in
the case of Hebrews, John of Patmos, and at the very end of the NT period, the compiler of 2
Peter, drawing on Petrine and other materials.

In short, the NT can be traced back to about 8 people, either eyewitness apostles, or co-workers
of such eyewitnesses and apostles. Early Christianity's leaders were largely literate, and some of
them, like Paul and the author of Hebrews, were first rate rhetoricians as well (see my little
primer NT Rhetoric).

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THURSDAY, APRIL 16, 2009
Bart Interrupted--- A detailed Analysis of 'Jesus Interrupted' Part
Five
http://benwitherington.blogspot.com/2009/04/bart-interrupted-detailed-analysis-
of_16.html

In chapter five of his book, Bart Ehrman sketches out a basic narrative of the historical process
which led to the production of the Gospels. I do not really disagree much with him about either
the dating of the Gospels, or the Synoptic problem (i.e. the relationship of Matthew, Mark and
Luke), but where I would have serious disagreements is with his analysis of the historical
process that led to the production of the Gospels. In essence the difference is this—he imagines a
long chain of oral tradition, involving the telling of these narratives by many people who were
not eyewitnesses, which eventually led to the writing down of these traditions by others who
were neither eyewitnesses nor in touch with eyewitnesses. By this means he seeks to explain
what he sees as the many discrepancies in the Gospels. Besides the fact that this analysis is
based on some enormous unproven assumptions, it in fact goes flatly against both the internal
and external evidence we have about the matter. Let me illustrate, starting with Lk. 1.1-4.

In Lk. 1.1-4, Luke tells us that he had observed, for a long time the “things which have happened
amongst us” and more crucially he says that many had compiled a written account of things
before he did. In addition, and most crucially he adds that he had consulted eyewitnesses and
the original preachers of the Gospel message. On the prima facie showing of this preface to his
Gospel what would it be reasonable to deduce about the gap between Luke and the original
Gospel events? Was he writing at a time or a place so far removed from the original events that
he could not consult those who were actually eyewitnesses of these things? Unless one wants to
claim Luke is simply telling a lie, which few scholars would do, Luke is telling us that while he
himself is not an eyewitness of the life of Jesus, nevertheless he knew and had consulted those
who were, and used them as sources in his work. We must also conclude that he had written
sources, which he calls „many‟. I suspect he means Mark, perhaps a written collection of Jesus‟
sayings („Q‟), and perhaps Matthew as well, and there may have been other sources as well. Now
it is the consensus of most scholars that Luke is the latest of the Synoptic writers, using Mark,
and possibly knowing Matthew as well, but in any case later than Matthew. He probably wrote
sometime in the 70s, or possibly even the 80s. This reminds us of an important point. There
were still eyewitnesses around to be consulted until the very end of the first century, as Papias
tells us, for he consulted a couple of them in the early second century.

Now if Luke indeed consulted eyewitnesses and written sources, then the myth of a long chain of
oral tradition with many weak links cannot stand close scrutiny. But there is in addition external
evidence as well on this matter from a reliable tradition in Papias. It says the following:

"And the presbyter said this. Mark having become the interpreter of Peter, wrote down
accurately whatsoever he [i.e. Peter] remembered. It was not, however, in exact order that he
related the sayings or deeds of Christ. For he [Mark] neither heard the Lord nor accompanied
Him. But afterwards, as I said, he accompanied Peter, and formed his [Peter‟s] instructions into
chreiae, but with no intention of giving a complete narrative of the Lord's sayings. Wherefore
Mark made no mistake in thus writing some things as he remembered them. For of one thing he
took especial care, not to omit anything he had heard, and not to put anything fictitious into the
statements."
Now the presbyter in this statement is the man Papias calls John the elder. This is not John
Zebedee, whom Papias had not met, but rather John of Patmos, who himself had been in touch
with the earlier eyewitnesses, including the Beloved Disciple. If you want this statement by

25
Papias properly unpacked at length, read Richard Bauckham‟s excellent treatment of it in Jesus
and the Eyewitnesses, and if you want a lengthy critique of Ehrman‟s myth about long and weak
chains of oral tradition see my critique of James Dunn‟s Jesus Remembered, forthcoming in my
What‟s in a Word?. Here it must be sufficient to say that Mark was the interpreter and translator
of Peter. What the Greek text of this passage suggests is that Peter often spoke in Aramaic, and
Mark translated for him, and this included translating various stories about Jesus and his words
and deeds into Greek. This explains a good deal about the Gospel of Mark (not least its various
parenthetical translations of Aramaic words). Jesus spoke in Aramaic and so did Peter. Mark
was more skilled in Greek than Peter.

Now Papias tells us that Mark had no intention to give a full or completely chronological account
of the life of Jesus, but simply to present some of the salient memoirs of Peter. He also tells us
that Mark formed these narratives into chreiae, the rhetorical form for a persuasive short story
that normally ended with a bang with either a notable saying of the hero, or a notable action of
the hero. What this tradition tells us of course is that there is no long oral tradition gap between
the events in the life of Jesus and Mark‟s Gospel--- Peter himself is the missing link. And here it
is worth adding that it is highly unlikely that the second century church, so enamoured with
apostolic and eyewitness testimony, would have made up the notion that two of our earliest
Gospels were written by non-apostles and non-eyewitnesses like Mark and Luke, who on the
very showing of the NT itself were minor figures in early Christianity, not major ones. To this of
course we could add the testimony about the Fourth Gospel from John 21 which says explicitly
that the Beloved Disciple was an eyewitness of some of the events in Jesus‟ life, that he wrote
down his own memoirs, and that later the community collected them and composed what we
call John‟s Gospel. I would suggest the reason it is called that is because it was in fact John of
Patmos who, having returned to Ephesus from exile, was the one who collected and edited the
Beloved Disciple‟s material. This is the same John who wrote Revelation and whom Papias had
met.

There are other points in Chapter Five that need to be challenged: 1) the notion that Paul tells us
nothing about Jesus or his words and deeds. In fact every Pauline scholar I know would say this
is false. Not only because he can recite the tradition passed down to him about the last supper (1
Cor., 11), or the death, burial and resurrection of Jesus (1 Cor 15), but also because with some
regularity he draws on the teaching of Jesus (see 1 Cor. 7, and Rom. 12 and Gal. 6 for example).
Furthermore, in his earliest letter, Galatians, Paul tells us he went to Jerusalem more than once
and consulted the three pillars of the Jerusalem church James, John, and Peter (Gal. 1-2). You
may be sure that the subject of the many conversations included Jesus and his words and deeds.
2) Amazingly, Bart Ehrman serves up warmed over Albert Schweitzer and his largely discredited
theories about Jesus, from over a century ago, not only in Bart‟s own book on Jesus as an
apocalyptic prophet, but again here in this book. Schweizter to his credit was right that Jesus‟
message and mindset was eschatological and prophetic, but he was quite wrong that Jesus
thought the world was definitely ending in his lifetime and completely wrong that Jesus
predicted the world would end within a generation. We have already dealt with this in a previous
post (see e.g. Mk. 13.32). The fact that Ehrman ignores the numerous critiques of Schweitzer‟s
theories in most other recent detailed scholarly works on Jesus (see e.g. Wright‟s Jesus and the
Victory of God, or Flusser‟s Jesus as Sage, or my Jesus the Sage, and Jesus the Seer, or John
Meir‟s massive multi-volumes on Jesus a Marginal Jew, or A.J. Levine‟s A Misunderstood Jew
and there are many more), is frankly just not responsible scholarship. Of course the masses who
read Ehrman‟s book don‟t realize that most Jesus scholars would disagree with him about this,
because of course their works have not appeared in such popular form as this easy to read book.
3) on p. 174 we come to a statement which explains much, historians are unable to discuss
miracles. He says this because he believes “there cannot be historical evidence for a miracle” (p.

26
175). This of course depends on what counts as evidence. I do not frankly see the evidence for
ancient or modern miracles as any different than the evidence for other sorts of events. We
should use the same criteria to evaluate all historical claims--- multiple attestation by reliable
witnesses, and the like, which criteria Bart lists. A miracle, like any other historical event is a
unique event. It does not differ from other historical events in this respect. This is of course why
any historical event differs from a repeatable laboratory chemical experiment.

And this brings me to the issue of the study of history as opposed to the study of nature. The
form is largely an analytical art, the latter is a science which involves empirical experimentation.
It is a mistake to see the study of any ancient historical event as a “science”. It isn‟t because
historical events are by definition unrepeatable one time occurrences. It is equally a mistake,
and this is where Bart‟s definition of a historian goes sadly awry, to assume either that: 1) we
know all the laws of nature, or 2) that they cannot be accelerated or transcended by the God of
nature. At a minimum, even a skeptical historian must allow that remarkable and inexplicable
things do happen in history, things not explicable by modern science. This is no knock on
science, but like any discipline of knowledge it has its limitations. Just as I would not use my
wife‟s knowledge of botany to study Napoleon, so we should not apply the rules for chemical
experiments or scientific testing of nature to study any historical event. Historians of course do
seek to establish what probably happened in the past, and since miracles by the millions have
been reported in all ages of history including the current one, it is quite impossible to say that
miracles are the least probable historical occurrences. How in the world could we know that?
Has anyone assessed all the occurrences of everything in all of human history and then weighed
the probabilities? Certainly not. No one has that sort of exhaustive knowledge, and no historian
should be so presumptious as to assume that he knows miracles have always been improbable.
Rather, in humility, he should be open to whatever is the most plausible historical explanation
of this, that or the other event, and then in addition admit, that sometimes we have to say „I
don‟t know or can‟t explain that. Maybe it really happened and really was a miracle.‟

Me personally, I am not merely open minded about this, I have been present when miracles of
healing happened, that the doctors were unable to explain. This doesn‟t mean it didn‟t happen
or a good historian should just ignore this kind of event in someone‟s life, though he may be led
to say „I don‟t know how that happened, it doesn‟t seem explicable in purely naturalistic terms‟.
But then there is no law that requires a good critical historian to be a naturalist in his
assumptions about all life. None whatsoever. Let me leave you with a true story.

Some time ago I was pastoring in Coleridge N.C. and had gone to Charlotte with my wife for a
few days to visit my folks. One of our most stalwart church members, Bertha Albright, suddenly
and unexpectedly became ill on a Saturday and was dead by the time we returned. This was in
an age before cell phones, and when I arrived back in Coleridge my neighbor was frantic and
asking me to come to his house. He was worried his mother had gone bonkers. You see, Mrs
Whitehead had been Bertha Albright‟s best friend, and about 4 or so that afternoon she had
received a phone call from Bertha, which her son Roger had overheard. The phone rang, they
talked for a while, and then Mrs. Whitehead hung up. She had been talking to Bertha. The
problem is, that Bertha was already dead some hours, and so a phone call of that sort was, on a
naturalistic set of assumptions, quite out of the question.
When I came across the street and was told all of this, because of course now Mrs. Whitehead
had learned Bertha was dead and was distraught, I tried to calm her down and ask her some
questions. I asked her was she sure it was Bertha? Oh yes, she had known this person for many
many years. How did Bertha sound? “She sounded far away.”

I remember saying “I guess so, it was truly a long distance call.” But when I asked her what

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Bertha said, one of her remarks struck home “She asked if Ben would be back to preach on
Sunday, and to tell him not to be discouraged but to keep giving those good sermons and doing
the ministerial work.” I was a pastor of four churches, and it was difficult. And indeed I was
discouraged, and wondered whether I belonged in the pastoral ministry. And that message was
precisely the word of hope and help I needed on that weekend.

I could tell many other stories like this from my life, but the bottom line is, anyone who rules out
God and the miraculous and calls that good historiography has indeed left out a large amount of
history from our purview. It is a sad, and stunted version of reality that is involved, and worst of
all, it‟s not really true to reality. Modern historians do not need to be theologians to do their
work, but when they step on holy ground, they ought to have the good sense to realize that they
don‟t know enough to rule God ought of the equation. They would do better to simple say
„something remarkable happened as the evidence we have suggests…. But I simply can‟t explain
it.”

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In the first part of Chapter Six Bart Ehrman rehearses for us some of his major conclusions to
his earlier work, Misquoting Jesus. Since I have responded to that elsewhere (see e.g. my Gospel
Code book, and earlier blogs) I will not repeat myself here. The point Bart wants to stress, to
which I do not object, is that some of the textual variants in our Greek NT manuscripts are
theologically significant. Again, he cites 1 John 5. 7-8, which if deleted, deletes one discussion of
the Trinity in the NT. He then goes on to add, that the response to his saying this is not in the
original text is that the notion of the Trinity can be found elsewhere in the NT (see e.g. Mt 28).
In my view, both the deity of Christ and the Trinity are notions that are clearly in various NT
texts, but these ideas are equally clearly only more fully developed later in church history, at
various ecumenical councils and elsewhere. Bart admits that “every single Christian doctrine”
(p. 186) can be found in Scripture without appealing to textually debated or dubious ideas. If
this is so, then it is of course right to ask the question--- What‟s the big deal about textual
variants if no essential Christian doctrine is at risk of being read out of the canon due to textual
uncertainty? Well, in this book I think Bart makes clearer that the issue is that some textual
variants are of theological significance, and as such we should not ignore this fact. I am fine with
this point, but what this means is that the “sky is falling” approach to textual variants does no
justice to the actual situation. I don‟t lose any sleep over whether Lk. 22.43-44 is canonical or
not, since of course the Passion of Christ can be found elsewhere in the Gospels. Bart is right
that it matters to getting an accurate assessment of Luke‟s portrayal of Christ as to whether
these verses are original or not, but that is the only way it really matters.

The bigger issue that Bart wants to raise is of course how one could think the Bible as we have it
is the inspired Word of God when, 1) this concept is limited to the original autographs of the
Bible, and 2) we don‟t have them any more, and anyway 3) the canon of Scripture was compiled
by fallible human beings, not by God. For him, the deeper theological problem here is why God
would allow us to lose the original manuscripts if it was so important to have the inspired Word
of God. This is a perfectly appropriate question, and it deserves a fair answer. If we wanted to
give a theological answer, we could immediately remind the reader of the problem with golden
calves… namely in the hands of fallen human beings they tend to get worshipped. It is entirely
believable to me that God allowed things to go as they did in regard to the original manuscripts
of the Bible to prevent mistaking the means for the end, and even worshipping the means, by
which I mean the original autographs of the Bible. In other words, bibliolatry, the worship of a
perfect book, was and is a real possibility for fallen human beings. But in fact a more historical
answer is possible. The Bible is not a book written by God (apart ostensibly e.g. from something
like the ten commandments), it is a book written by human beings inspired by God, and there is
a difference. More to the point the Bible, after the time of the original inspired authors, was
transcribed by non-inspired and often not very inspiring scribes! They made numerous mistakes
in copying, and sometimes they also made deliberate changes. Bart is right about this, but he is
also right that no essential Christian doctrine hangs on these variants at all. There is a difference
between a theologically significant textual variant, and a theologically crucial or world-changing
one. And there aren‟t really any of the latter out there to be worrying about. The Bible as we have
it is an ever more close approximation of what was originally given. The good news is today, as
Metzger says we know with a high degree of certainty what about 92% of the Greek NT originally
said, and no crucial doctrine hangs on the other 8%. Indeed we have over 5,000 mss. of the
Greek NT in whole or in part, and this is frankly far more and better evidence than we have for
any other document of comparable antiquity. And we keep finding more such fragments and
documents, which leads us closer and closer to the original text. It would be nearer to the truth
to say that textual criticism actually helps confirm our faith and understanding in the original
text and what it said, than deconstructs such a faith, because as it turns out in the vast majority
of cases of importance, the scribes faithfully represented what was originally written.

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So in the end, as it actually turns out, textual criticism is not in the main where I would disagree
with Bart about most things. It is rather his reading of early Christian history that is
fundamentally problematic. Consider for example the banner headline on p. 191—„The Wild
Diversity of the Early Christian Church‟. Which church are we referring to? The church of the
first century A.D. or thereafter? It doesn‟t much matter to the discussion of the NT canon if
there was considerably more diversity in the church in the second and subsequent centuries of
Christian history, when in fact no books in the NT canon were written in or came from the
period after A.D. 100. It is not really of much relevance to the discussion of the NT to talk about
the Marcionites or the Gnostics when no such groups existed in the first century A.D. and we
have no hard historical evidenced to suggest they did. Even in the case of the Ebionites, the NT
itself bears witness to no such extant group, and no NT document refers to them or seeks to
correct or rebut them. If they existed in the NT era, it would seem they were either so tiny or
insignificant that they did not call for mention or rebuttal even by notably argumentative types
like Paul who ran into all types of Christians in his travels. The problem for Bart is a
fundamental historical assumption that he has by no means demonstrated, namely that the
diversity one finds in the second century and subsequent centuries of the church already existed
in the first century A.D. even when it comes to radical theological and ethical diversity. What we
do find however in the NT documents is already a concept of heresy and its condemnation. This
is not a surprise when all the NT documents were written by conservative Jews or their co-
workers, such as Luke. So, again, it is not helpful nor is it convincing to chronicle heretical
movements from the 2nd and subsequent centuries and either assume: 1) they already existed in
the NT era, or 2) that the first century church must have been as diverse as that of subsequent
eras. In fact, the evidence suggests this was not so, and Bart‟s attempt to find dueling apostles
and apostolic movements evidenced in the NT is weak at best, and I have dealt with it in
previous posts in this series. So far as the first century church was concerned there was only two
groups--- the proto-orthodox ones, and the heretics who had not yet become full-fledged
movements like later Gnosticism. The proto-orthodox group does not begin in the second
century with Irenaeus or Tertullian and the like, it begins with Paul, and Peter and Mark and
others in the first century. Irenaeus and others are simply running with the ball the apostles and
their co-workers handed them. They are certainly not the inventors of Biblical orthodoxy, and
they would strongly protest any such suggestions were they here to do so.

Perhaps the most serious error in the discussion in Chapter Six is the assumption that „the
proto-orthodox‟ sat around and decided which books ought to be in their corpus of sacred texts
and which not. The historical truth is quite otherwise. There was never a time when any Gnostic
texts were ever included in a list of sacred texts, either a list like the Muratorian canon list in the
second century A.D., or even the list of the heretic Marcion. The notion that the situation was
open ended until the 4th century, or even that some heretical books were „in‟ until they were
excluded in the 4th century is historically false. There were indeed some extra books considered
for inclusion amongst the sacred texts—books like the Shepherd of Hermas, or even the
Apocalypse of Peter. What is notable about such books is that they were basically theologically
and ethically consonant with the books from the NT period. No books from any Gnostic
collection, or Ebionite collection were ever considered for inclusion in the NT, and with good
reason. The criteria for being considered a sacred text, as already manifested in the Bishop
Sarapion controversy in the second century over the Gospel of Peter were: 1) apostolicity (they
had to be written by apostles) and/or; 2) eyewitnesses or co-workers of eyewitnesses. This in
effect meant that the canon was closed of necessity by the end of the NT era, because no apostles
or eyewitnesses survived beyond that period or wrote any documents beyond that period of
time. I have dealt with this issue of canon and canon lists at great length in The Gospel Code,
and in my forthcoming book What‟s In a Word? (Baylor), so I will not belabor the point here.

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What happened in the 4th century was the recognition of the books which had already and
indeed always been considered apostolic with very little debate ( 2-3 John and Revelation are
partial exceptions, for there was some debate about them, especially about Revelation because
Eusebius and others did not like its eschatology). One of the mistakes Bart makes when it comes
to a manuscript like Codex Alexandrinus is the assumption that just because a book is included
in a codex, it must be assumed to be considered canonical. Wrong. Such codexes are mini-
libraries of collected and valuable books deemed to be orthodox. That 1 and 2 Clement is
included in this codex merely means that someone thought it was valuable Christian literature
that was not heretical. Codex Alexandrinus or Sinaiticus are not canon lists. They are approved
reading samples. Already in the second century we see with Bishop Serapion a difference
between what was approved for reading by Christians, and what would be read from the pulpit
and preached on. The former corpus of books is larger than the latter. The notion of a 4th
century power play, instigated in part by Constantine in order to determine the canon and what
was orthodox Christianity is a very poor reading of what actually happened at the Council of
Nicaea. The canon of 27 books was recognized later in the 4th century, not at Nicaea when
Constantine was present, and I use the word recognized advisably. The church in Africa, Asia
and in the West recognized these 27 books as our NT, which is pretty amazing since they
disagreed on other important issues such as church polity. But they did so because they
understood that the proper criteria for recognition was that these source books are either
apostolic or eyewitness in origins. And as such they had to come from the very beginnings of
Christianity, and could not include later fictions and forgeries. And in my view, the NT certainly
does not include such books, nor were heterodox books ever considered for inclusion in the
canon. And this rule thus applies—a book can not be said to be excluded from a canon that it was
never included in, in the first place. You will look in vain for lists that include any Gnostic texts
in early Christian canon lists.

At the end of the day, Bart Ehrman continues to do Christians a good service, as he makes them
examine their unexamined assumptions about early Christianity, the origins of the Bible, and
other related subjects. The fact that many of us would disagree with his historical analysis is not
because we are reading the Bible devotionally and he is reading it as a historian. No, the
difference is because we disagree about the history itself and what conclusions are warranted
from a critical analysis of the history. My point would be that Bart Ehrman is entitled to his
opinion but he does not speak for the majority of ancient historians when it comes to the New
Testament, though he certainly speaks for a growing and ever-more vocal group amongst those
historians. Bart Ehrman speaks for himself, and my concern would be to make clear that there
are thousands of good and critical NT scholars of some faith or no faith who would disagree with
his conclusions. The issue here is not faith vs. critical thinking, or devotional reading of the Bible
vs. scholarly reading of the Bible. The issue is what sort of critical reading of early Christian
history and its texts is warranted by the evidence, and indeed which view is more open minded
about what counts as evidence, and what does not. In my view, Bart unnecessarily brackets out
in advance too much of the data as „mythical‟ or „miraculous‟ which leads to skewed conclusions
on various fronts. And this is sad, because Bart Ehrman is a fine writer, and lecturer and debater
and an increasingly influential one. One can hope he will continue the conversation and his
mind may change on some of these matters.

In the meantime, it is important to stress in conclusion that Bart Ehrman is not the voice of the
critical consensus on the NT. He could be called the popular voice of one particular more liberal
or radical interpretation of the data.

Who is Ben Witherington III

http://www.beliefnet.com/Columnists/a-j/Ben-Witherington-III.aspx
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ben_Witherington_III

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