Goodacre and Mythicism

I apologise for another post on Jesus mythicism, but for those of you that don't follow Dr Mark Goodacre's NT Podcasts he has a new podcast on the subject: NT Pod 47 discusses the question "Did Jesus exist?"

He also references his November NT Pod 44, "What did Paul know about Jesus?"

Craig A. Evans reviews Robert Price

I have had quite a few search hits recently looking for a review of the work of Robert M. Price (i.e. Jesus did not exist guy) by Craig A. Evans. Evans provides a paragraph long review of Price's The Incredible Shrinking Son of Man in the IBR's Bulletin of Biblical Research 14/2 Spring, 2004 which is available in pdf, word and html. I believe Evans also discusses Price in Fabricating Jesus: How Modern Scholars Distort the Gospels although I have not read it.

More detailed reviews of Price are available. A wide array of good historical Jesus scholars including John Dominic Crossan, Luke Timothy Johnson, James D.G. Dunn and Darrell Bock reviewed his hypothesis that it is unlikely that Jesus existed in The Historical Jesus: Five Views (well worth $16 if you are interested in historical Jesus studies!).  Tony Costa has also reviewed Price's Jesus is Dead for the Review of Biblical Literature and it is available here. Gregory Boyd and Paul Rhodes Eddy discuss Price and a range of surrounding areas of scholarship with regard to a minimalistic view of the historical Jesus in Jesus Legend, The: A Case for the Historical Reliability of the Synoptic Jesus Tradition.

Cynic Jesus - rantish

In light of some feedback I have revisited my article A Historical Critique of the Cynic Jesus (working title) which is a critical engagement with the works of F.G. Downing, Burton Mack, and to a lesser extent Leif E. Vaage and John Dominic Crossan. The draft at this time is quite sizeable yet there is just so much more that needs to be said. The real purpose of this update is some reflections on the process since it began in January. Many people have had to deal with my real life rants regarding my frustration at the thesis (hi Rob and Nic!) - from abuse of redaction criticism to simply bad analogies. I tried to blame Americans, but Dr McGrath assured me that not all of them are to blame. I could not get over the myth making of Mack and even ranted about the irony of liberal scholars being too believing at the most inappropriate times.  At the end of May Dr Michael Barber was reading whatever I was reading and word-for-word (in terms of quotes) noted the The Uncritical Use of Redaction Criticism, including the warnings those drawing on Kloppenborg's stratification of Q managed to forget. To repeat them here:

 “to say that the wisdom components were formative for Q and that the prophetic judgment oracles and apophthegms describing Jesus' conflict with "this generation" are secondary is not to imply anything about the ultimate tradition-historical provenance of any of the sayings. It is indeed possible, indeed probable, that some of the materials from the secondary compositional phase are dominical or at least very old, and that some of the formative elements are, from the standpoint of authenticity or tradition-history, relatively young. Tradition-history is not convertible with literary history, and it is the latter which we are treating here.”

Most recently I made light of this sort of thinking in my satirical International Project for Q discovers Non-Apocalyptic Qumran Community (featured in July's Biblical studies blog carnival hosted by Dr Jim West).

But things changed...the cynic thesis stopped sounding so ridiculous. Could it be that:

• “As remembered by the Jesus people, Jesus was much more like the Cynic-teacher than either a Christ-savior or a messiah with a program for the reformation of second-temple Jewish society and religion.” (Burton Mack)
• “the wealth of at least apparent ‘parallels’ between the Jesus tradition and popular Cynicism suggest that some kind of Cynic influence may well have been accepted by Jesus of Nazareth himself.”  (F.G. Downing)

The Implications of the "Jewishness" of Jesus within the Third Quest

Sorry to those of you who were expecting something serious. Click here if you cannot be bothered to wait for the show to start again.

The Lost Gospel - Prologue

I just really like the prologue. I disagree with it up and down, but that doesn't change the amazement I have at the surreal eccentricity of it:

Once upon a time, before there were gospels of the kind familiar to readers of the New Testament, the first followers of Jesus wrote another kind of book. Instead of telling a dramatic story about Jesus' life, their book contained only his teachings. They lived with these teachings ringing in their ears and thought of Jesus as the founder of their movement. But their focus was not on the person of Jesus or his life and destiny. They were engrossed with the social program that was called for by his teachings. Thus their book was not a gospel of the Christian kind, namely a narrative of the life of Jesus as the Christ. Rather it was a gospel of Jesus' sayings, a "sayings gospel." His first followers arranged these sayings in a way that offered instruction for living creatively in the midst of a most confusing time, and their book served them well as a handbook and guide for most of the first Christian century.

Then the book was lost. Perhaps the circumstances changed, or the people changed, or their memories and imagination of Jesus changed. In any case, the book was lost to history somewhere in the course of the late first century when stories of Jesus' life began to be written and became the more popular form of charter document for early Christian circles.  (Burton L. Mack, The Lost Gospel: The Book of Q and Christian Origins.)

It's just so a matter of fact. The once upon a time, this is what really happened line. Always makes for a good book!

In related news, on the Cynic thesis I have finally started with F. Gerald Downing (see books such as Cynics and Christian Origins). I must say, he is far more convincing a proponent than Crossan and Mack!

The great thing about not studying in North America is....

...that I can tell the world how ridiculous I find the cynic and non-apocalyptic Jesus hypotheses and have academic faculty agree with me. Just as I was about to post this I remembered that Australia's most popular 'historical' Jesus scholar is most likely Barbara Thiering so I guess the joke really is on me.

*Hangs my head in shame*

Edit: For those of you who are not aware of Barbara Thiering, this is her in a nutshell according to Geza Vermes:

Professor Barbara Thiering's reinterpretation of the New Testament, in which the married, divorced, and remarried Jesus, father of four, becomes the "Wicked Priest" of the Dead Sea Scrolls, has made no impact on learned opinion. Scroll scholars and New Testament experts alike have found the basis of the new theory, Thiering's use of the so-called "pesher technique," without substance. The Qumran pesher—the word itself means "interpretation"—is a form of Bible exegesis which seeks to determine the significance of an already existing prophetic text by pointing to its fulfillment in persons and events belonging to the age of the interpreter. Professor Thiering, by contrast, turns the sequence upside down, and claims that the authors of the New Testament composed the Gospel story so that pesher technique could subsequently be fastened to it. If so, the clue must have been quickly lost, but now for the first time after nineteen centuries of universal misunderstanding it is revealed afresh in Jesus and the Riddle of the Dead Sea Scrolls. 

One of my past lecturers was actually taught by Thiering back in the day. In fact he now teaches both Historical Jesus and the Dead Sea Scrolls and I am glad to say he doesn't follow her...unique...ideas.

A Book to look out for - 'The Historical Jesus: Five Views'

The Historical Jesus: Five Views is a collaborative discussion by a number of scholars on their specific approach to historical Jesus methodology. Well, when I say scholars that is not the correct word. See, we have the big names of historical Jesus scholarship such as John Dominic Crossan (The Historical Jesus; The Essential Jesus and many more); James D.G. Dunn author of the massive and influential volume Jesus Remembered; Luke Timothy Johnson, a Catholic scholar and author of The Real Jesus; and Darrell L. Bock, an influential Evangelical New Testament scholar, author of Studying the Historical Jesus and Jesus According to Scripture. Then, finally we have another scholar - one who does not fit into the category of above. We find, for some reason or another - maybe to set up a strawman for slaughter - Robert M. Price. Price is a controversial scholar who spends his time trying to collect a following on the internet as his recycling of dead Jesus-Myth hypotheses don't fly with any other scholar.

Anyway, I am sure the table of contents of this book expected to be released in November this year will actually say something (and something more than myself having never seen the book):

Table of Contents

The Historical Jesus: An Introduction
Paul Rhodes Eddy and James K. Beilby

1. Jesus at the Vanishing Point
Robert M. Price
Responses:
John Dominic Crossan
Luke Timothy Johnson
James D. G. Dunn
Darrell L. Bock

2. Jesus and the Challenge of Collaborative Eschatology
John Dominic Crossan
Responses:
Robert M. Price
Luke Timothy Johnson
James D. G. Dunn
Darrell L. Bock

3. Learning the Human Jesus: Historical Criticism and Literary Criticism
Luke Timothy Johnson
Responses:
Robert M. Price
John Dominic Crossan
James D. G. Dunn
Darrell L. Bock

4. Remembering Jesus: How the Quest of the Historical Jesus Lost Its Way
James D. G. Dunn
Responses:
Robert M. Price
John Dominic Crossan
Luke Timothy Johnson
Darrell L. Bock

5. The Historical Jesus: An Evangelical View
Darrell L. Bock
Responses:
Robert M. Price
John Dominic Crossan
Luke Timothy Johnson
James D. G. Dunn

A primer on this book for anyone who is interested would be Ben Witherington's The Jesus Quest: The Third Quest for the Jew of Nazareth as it overviews the work of Crossan - among others from all sides of the debate. Dunn's far shorter work A New Perspectiveon Jesus: What the Quest for the Historical Jesus Missed as well as N.T. Wright's 100 or so page Contemporary Quest for Jesus. Finally, for a bit of details on methedology as opposed to an overview of portraits try Bock's Studying the Historical Jesus: A Guide to Sources and Methods. There is no need to direct anything with regard to Price's work as I am sure all the criteria of the other respective scholars will demonstrate how unfeasable Price's position is. The only person who would have problems against it- or at least give it some wiggle room - would be Crossan and his reading of myth into the Gospels.

Anyway, that is me for now!

So I went on a long walk...

So, I went on a long walk today through the mean streets of WPH and came back with a book by Australian author John Dickson. The book titled Jesus: A Short Life acts as a primer for the layman with regard to a historical approach to the life of Jesus (which seems to be what Dr Dickson focuses on in much of his work.)

So far it seems like what I myself would write on the topic. I will probably finish it tonight and start on a review.

Quote of the Day - was Jesus Crucified?

Today's quote of the day has something to do with the most absurd historical claim made with in the Qur'an. The Qur'an, the Muslim holy scripture, makes an interesting claim - that is, Jesus was not crucified.

The problem with this view would have to be the ancient sources. Clearly, the death of Jesus was a primitive Christian belief (1 Cor 15) which is multiply attested to throughout the New Testament documents including the Gospels. Even the 2nd century apocryphal texts are certain of this historical fact such as the Gospel of Peter (early 2nd) and the Epistle of the Apostles (mid 2nd century).

So to today's quote:

"The fact of the death of Jesus as a consequence of crucifixion is indisputable, despite hypotheses of a pseudo-death or a deception which are sometimes put forward."
Gerd Ludemann, What Really Happened to Jesus: A Historical Approach to the Resurrection. p.17

For an audio interaction between myself and a Muslim making the claim that the early Christians did not believe Jesus to be crucified:

Constantine and Christianity

Dr Greg Clarke of the Centre for Public Christianity discusses Constantine and early Christianity with Emeritus Professor Edwin Judge. This is just one of a number of interviews with Professor Judge on a number of historical issues and their relation to Christianity which can be found here.

Importance of the Historicity of Jesus (Quote)

"...despite numerous attempts in this century to turn Christianity into a philosophy of life, it is and has always been a historical religion - one that depends on certain foundational events, particularly the death and resurrection of Jesus, as having happened in space and time.

A faith that does not ground the Christ of personal experience in the Jesus of history is a form of docetic or gnostic heresy, for it implies that what actually happened in and during Jesus' life is inconsequential to Christian faith."

Ben Witherington III, 'The Jesus Quest: The Third Search for the Jew of Nazareth' p.11

First Thoughts on Barbara Thiering and 'Jesus the Man'

I will base this review on simply examining the unsound suppositions on which Thiering relies on building her fantastical thesis found on one single page of her book Jesus the Man. By no means will I attempt to deconstruct her entire thesis or delve into her gritty use and abuse of 'pesher'/'pesharim'[1].

The page to be examined is p.136 (which in actual fact is half a page of text as the chapter title takes up most of it). Page 136 is the first page of Chapter 30: 'Saul the Indignant Student'.[2]

1: In late AD 37, a young member of the order of Benjamin, by the name of Saul, was spending part of his prenovitiate year at Qumran.
2: Born in September, AD 17, he was just twenty years old.

Thiering makes a bold assertion. She adamantly claims that Saul (Paul of Tarsus) was spending time in Qumran near the Dead Sea. No footnote is provided and within the Pauline corpus of texts or the Dead Sea Scrolls (where Thiering's eisegetical approach is not employed) there is no evidence to backup this claim. She is using her own conjectural history as the starting point for the rest of her thesis on Paul.

We jump a head a few lines.

9. But it was not before Saul had taken part in the composition of a pesher on the prophet Habakkuk, a work that survived and has come to us in the Dead Sea Scrolls.

Here, we find that Paul was not just at Qumran according to Thiering, but he also took part in composing the pesher of Habakkuk.[3] This assertion of Thiering is important in the framework of here thesis - however, does it stand up to scrutiny?

At the peripheral level, it is improbable that a man (whom by using Thiering's date was in their teens/early twenties at the time of composition) would be that "to whom God made known all mysteries of the words of His servants the prophets" (1QpHab 7:4-5; Vermes) and charged as the inspired interpreter of a couple of hundred year old community. One would also be left wondering why Paul would identify himself as a Pharisee (Acts 23:6; Philippians 3:5) while showing such contempt and distaste for the Pharisees in the pesher branding them defilers of the temple, seekers of smooth things, etc.

However, and more importantly, is the dating of the text 1QpHab that Thiering claims that Paul had a hand in composing. If we turn to the palaeographical findings as well as the AMS/C14 dating of the scrolls - there is no evidence to suggest a date as late as that which Thiering places the text.

If we turn to Geza Vermes in The Complete Dead Sea Scrolls in English:

[T]he Habakkuk Commentary, chief source of the history of the Qumran sect, is definitely put in the pre-Christian era between 120 and 5 BCE. (p.13)

The palaeographical dating of the manuscript (30-1 BCE) has been confirmed by radiocarbon tests (120-5 BCE...) (p.509)

Timothy H. Lim in Pesharim (2002) explains the results of an Accelerator Mass Spectrometry (AMS) test that took place in Arizona:

The results showed that 1QpHab has a calibrated age of 104-43 BCE in the one standard deviation range of confidence and of 120-125BCE (97%) in the two sigma range. These radiocarbon dates match the palaeographical date of 30-31 BCE of the early Herodian hand.(p. 21)

We find that the the bedrock for Thiering's hypothesis in regard to Paul, which can be tested, does not stand up to scrutiny. At the very least, there is a 60 year gap between the the dating of the text and when Thiering claims Paul composed it.


---------
1. Pesher/Pesharim is a method used by the Sectarian community of Qumran in exegeting and contemporising biblical texts. Although the scholarly consensus (as indicated by all evidence found within the Dead Sea Scroll corpus) on this sort of Midrash is just that - Thiering claims that these communities also constructed cryptic histories that she, using her own method of pesher, can uncover. Ironically enough, she claims these communities constructed the New Testament. For a discussion of Pesher see my post here.

3. The pesher of Habakkuk is a Qumran Sectarian commentary on the minor prophetic book of Habakkuk found within the Hebrew Bible.

For a deeper look at the idea of Pesher and its use in the Dead Sea Scrolls see a fuller treatment in: Pesher and the Dead Sea Sectarians

The Myth: The Early Church did not Believe Christ to be Divine

This is one of those myths riding the legacy of The Da Vinci Code. Historically, it is one of little value - however, among many critics of Christianity it is played up as a historically accurate and viable criticism. In actual fact, the earliest witness of Christianity testify to the divinity of Christ whether they be Biblical, pre-scriptural hymns and creeds or non-Christian hostile witness.

One example I like to use occurs in Philippians 2 where Paul makes reference to what scholars believe to be a pre-Philippian creed and hymn.

Your attitude should be the same as that of Christ Jesus:
⁶Who, being in very nature God,
did not consider equality with God something to be grasped,
⁷but made himself nothing,
taking the very nature of a servant,
being made in human likeness.
⁸And being found in appearance as a man,
he humbled himself
and became obedient to death—
even death on a cross!
⁹Therefore God exalted him to the highest place
and gave him the name that is above every name,
¹⁰that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow,
in heaven and on earth and under the earth,
¹¹and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord,
to the glory of God the Father.

This exert of Philippians 2:5-11 is very clear in who Jesus is. It affirms the Apostle Thomas' understanding of Christ as "My Lord and my God!" (John 20:28).

While responding to this claim I shared an exert by a scholar I am a fan of - Professor Darell L. Bock. Professor Bock, who has a blog here, is highly respected and renowned in his field and currently serves as Research Professor of New Testament Studies and Professor of Spiritual Development and Culture at Dallas Theological Seminary. He authored a New York Times Bestseller which addresses this claim (as presented in the Da Vinci Code) rather well. I have provided an exert from Breaking the Da Vinci Code:

1. The First-Century Evidence from Paul and Early Traditional Materials

Our investigative search takes us not only to the Gospels but also to the apostle Paul, a Jew who in his own words had persecuted Christians and approved of their arrest and execution until he saw the risen Jesus (Gal. 1:11–24). This event produced a personal revolution in his theological view. The writings from Paul date between A.D. 50 and 68, almost three hundred years before Nicea. Paul used traditional materials showing that others shared and confessed his core theological beliefs. No one knew who Constantine was when Paul wrote. Two key classes of texts permit us to see Paul's theology and the theology of others who shared his views: those that involve a confessional statement of the church, and places where he referred to Jesus using language from the Old Testament that pertained to God.

The first class of texts involves confessional statements like 1 Corinthians 8:5–6 (RSV). Paul noted that while those in the world around him worshiped many gods, he and the Christians worshiped one God and one Lord Jesus Christ: "Although there may be so-called gods in heaven or on earth—as indeed there are many `gods' and many `lords'—yet for us there is one God, the Father, from whom are all things and for whom we exist, and one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom are all things and through whom we exist."

The title "Lord" often referred to God. In the Greek Bible of the Jews, a work known as the Septuagint, the title "Lord" often substituted for "God." To call Jesus Christ Lord was to refer to His deity, especially in a passage that mentioned other gods of the religious faith of others. According to Paul, Jesus was involved in the Creation as Creator. For a person of Jewish background, that would be the declaration of an activity of God the Creator. Centuries before Nicea, a major Christian leader was affirming the divinity of Jesus not by the mere use of a title, but by a description of activity.

A second class of texts in Paul involves substitution texts like Philippians 2:9–11 (RSV). Without embarrassment, Paul applied to Jesus language that the prophet Isaiah applied to God in the Hebrew Bible. This text reads, "God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name which is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father." In this passage, Jesus is the object of worship as every knee bows before Him, even as He bears the title of Lord. The language comes from Isaiah 45:23 where the prophet cited God as speaking ("By myself I have sworn, from my mouth has gone forth in righteousness a word that shall not return: `To me every knee shall bow, every tongue shall swear"' [RSV] ). Jesus is placed in the same position as God. Jesus receives homage as God does. These are not the only texts where this occurs in Paul. And it occurs in other writings from other authors of what became the New Testament (for example, Ps. 102:25–27 in Heb. 1:1—13). Jesus is not a mere prophet in these texts. He shares equal glory and honor with God.

Darell L. Bock, 'Breaking the Da Vinci Code', p.49

2. The first-Century Evidence from the Rest of the New Testament

Paul was not alone. The gospel of John, probably written in the nineties of the first century, contains an unambiguous statement of Jesus' divinity in its first chapter (RSV):

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and all that God was, the Word was [NET; alternatively, and the Word was God, RSV]. (v. 1)

He was in the beginning with God; all things were made through him. (vv. 2—3)

And the Word became flesh. (v. 14)

John made it clear in this opening to his gospel that the Word became flesh is Jesus, the actual and full incarnation of deity. Once again, participation in the Creation pointed to deity, just as Paul argued.

Some suggest that what Paul and John affirmed about Jesus stands in contrast to the other three gospels. This would be misleading. Mark, Matthew, and Luke were written, probably in this order, sometime between the sixties and eighties. These dates are debated among scholars, and I use the least conservative range. These are also first-century documents, and they tell the story of Jesus in a more restrained manner than is found in John, by which I mean they are less overt in attributing deity to Jesus. They tell Jesus' story "from the earth up." I document this point in my study of Jesus called Jesus According to Scripture, where I examine every passage on Jesus in Matthew through John. In other words, the first three gospels tell the story like a narrative or even a mystery working up to their final confession of who Jesus is. But make no mistake, all three ultimately declare Jesus to be God.

In these gospels, when Jesus is taken to be crucified, He is put to death for being blasphemous. Jesus claimed that God would indicate that Jesus was Son of man, One who was seated at the right hand of God and rode the clouds (something only deity does in the Bible). This is the same divine honor and glory shared with God that Paul and John referred to in their writings. All of these writings agree that Jesus is divine.

In the background of this Son of man statement were two ideas, both of which suggested a unique status for Jesus. One was the imagery of the Son of man, a human figure in Daniel 7:9–13 who will be given divine authority to judge at the end and will be brought into God's presence. The other was that this figure will sit with God in heaven, not just visit God in heaven. These ideas pointed to a unique vindication of Jesus.

The Jews who heard this utterance believed that Jesus blasphemed, which meant He insulted the unique dignity of God by His claim. To understand the Jewish background of the scene is to appreciate the exalted self-claim that Jesus was making.

The details of this view of Jesus and its background are treated in a full study of two hundred pages I wrote years ago while doing research at the University of Tubingen in Germany. In Blasphemy and Exaltation in Judaism and the Final Examination of Jesus I consider the Jewish view of who gets to sit with God in heaven and under what circumstances. At the examination before the Jewish leaders Jesus' claims were either a unique and legitimate exaltation or remarks that offended the unique glory of God.

The Gospels recorded the event to make clear their view. In light of Jesus' subsequent resurrection, Jesus is a divine figure worthy to sit in God's presence because He is capable of sharing God's unique glory. We shall come back to this later. For now, understand that these Gospels and Paul's writings, first-century documents, portrayed Jesus as a fully human figure and as One who uniquely bears the full marks and honor of deity. These beliefs were widespread in Christianity almost three full centuries before Nicea.

I am not alone in holding this view and in arguing for it in detail. Larry Hurtado, professor of New Testament at the University of Edinburgh, has produced a recent study that traces the history of this understanding of Jesus through the early centuries, even beyond the period of the earliest texts. It reinforces what is argued here. His book, Lord Jesus Christ: Devotion to Jesus in Earliest Christianity (2003), raises questions about aspects of this "new" reading of the history that argues Jesus was not believed to be divine until the fourth century.

Darell L. Bock, 'Breaking the Da Vinci Code', pp. 50-51

I hope these texts are useful.
Please note, if you wish to copy the quotations from above or are interested in the text I exhort you to purchase the book if it is a financial reality. Professor Bock has put work into his books and he is one of the great scholars out there who brings scholarship to the lay person responsibly and honestly.

With this in mind, I plan to do a little Professor Bock promo and adverstise some of his book and their uses.

Some of his notable texts:

• Breaking the Da Vinci Code - Darell L. Bock (as cited in this post)
• The Missing Gospels - Darell L. Bock
  
• Dethroning Jesus - Darell L.Bock and Daniel B. Wallace
• And more...