When Ehrman states that Christianity began with the belief in the resurrection of Jesus, he sides with that portion of scholarship that believes there is a distinct discontinuity between the Jesus of history and the religion about him that believed Jesus was the Messiah (Christ), the Son of God, the savior of the world. Ehrman's view on this topic emphasizes that Jesus never used any of these titles to refer to himself, but rather the early Christians (as a result of the resurrection appearances) began to place these titles on Jesus, and then the Gospel writers then retroject these titles back into the story of Jesus.
But how we get from a Jesus who was all about proclaiming the end of the world as we know it to a religion that proclaimed him the universal savior of the world is the main business of historical critical scholarship as it pertains to development of the Jesus tradition that forms the Gospels. As I mentioned in the Historical Critical Method, Part 3, Bultmann's whole project was to devise a way to move back to the historical Jesus from the Gospels as we have them. So, after we have peeled away all the layers of Christian tradition that have been added to the sayings and actions of Jesus we find the true historical Jesus. But in so doing, we also discover how the Jesus tradition developed in the succeeding decades until it is finally placed in written form in the Gospels. As Bultmann liked to say about this process, the proclaimer became the proclaimed.
Now in making a connection between Jesus' resurrection appearances and apocalyptic Judaism, Ehrman is on solid ground. This is because it is only Jewish people who embraced apocalyptic views believed that a resurrection was even possible. Granted the expectation was that this would happen at the end of time. And granted the expectation was that there would be a general resurrection of all dead people at the end of time. This is why Ehrman claims that when the disciples of Jesus believed that he had been raised from the dead, they also (probably) believed that the end was at hand and that Jesus' resurrection marked the beginning of the general resurrection (see page 156, col. 1 top). At least this seems to make sense in light of the comment that Paul makes where he refers to Jesus' resurrection as "the first fruits of those who have died" (1 Corinthians 15:20). The "first fruits" is using Jewish language that refers to that which is offered to the Lord at the beginning of a harvest. So for Paul to use this word ("first fruits", one word in Greek) indicates that he sees the resurrection of Jesus as the beginning of the resurrection of all believers to eternal life.
Therefore, Ehrman's comment that in light of this reasoning about Jesus' resurrection and the beginning of the end, it seems plausible to assume that this might have been the event that spurred Jesus' disciples to think of him in much more elevated terms, such as Messiah (Christ), , Son of God, Son of Man, and savior of the world. Of course Ehrman's point only makes sense if you believe that Jesus never ever intended his disciples to think such of him in such elevated terms.
There is an assertion that Ehrman makes on this topic that puts him at odds with the majority of historical critical scholars. In box 10.2 Ehrman makes what seems to be a common sense suggestion that maybe Jesus' disciples thought he was the Messiah before he even was executed, so their belief in his resurrection only provided them with the confirmation of what they were already inclined to believe. In proposing this, Ehrman is grappling with a problem he sees in making such a connection, that is, there is nothing in the writings of apocalyptic Judaism to suppose anyone ever thought that the first one resurrected would be the Messiah. Most expectations of a divinely sent Messiah were that this being would arrive on earth and fulfill his mission, but never die. Most historical critical scholars are inclined to believe that Jesus' disciples would never have conceived of Jesus being more than a prophet to begin with, and that in general they were "slow of heart to believe" (to borrow a phrase from Luke 24:25).
What Ehrman offers in the section on Jesus' Death According to the Scriptures is very much mainstream scholarship among historical critical scholars. In other words, most such scholars believe that it was in reflecting on the scriptures, especially Psalm 22 and Isaiah 53 (both seen as prophetic material) that they made sense of Jesus' death as a positive event.
John Dominic Crossan would even go so far as to say that the disciples knew nothing of the particulars of the death of Jesus since they had all fled, but that they gleaned all their information of what happened at Jesus' trial and execution from the Bible's prophetic material (which includes the Psalms, since David was considered both a prophet and the author of most of the Psalms. Crossan refers to this process as prophecy historicized. Most scholars are not nearly so pessimistic concerning the historical information that can be gained from the accounts of Jesus' execution, but neither do they accept them as completely reliable accounts either, since they were obviously biased in favor of a positive evaluation of Jesus' claims about himself.
In the section titled The Emergence of Different Understandings of Jesus, Ehrman presents what became the mainstream interpretation of how Jesus became the pre-existent Son of God. In the middle of the 20th century historical critical scholars took up an evolutionary view of the development of the understanding of who Jesus was. From initially being a prophet, we find the step to God making him the Son of God at his resurrection (based on Psalm 2:7, "You are my Son, today I have begotten you") (see especially how this is used in Acts 13:33-34). Another example would be Romans 1:3-4 where scholars believe we find the remnant of an earlier stage of belief in which Jesus becomes the Son of God at his resurrection.
The next step in this progression of moving from viewing Jesus as a human prophet to viewing Jesus as eternally divine is reflected in the next step of moving the date of Jesus becoming the Son of God from his resurrection back to Jesus' baptism, where the Gospels record the heavenly words: "This is my beloved Son". And then when we get to the stage of the composition of the Gospels of Matthew and Luke this key event (Jesus becoming the Son of God) is moved back to his conception, with the conception of Jesus taking place by the agency of the Holy Spirit. Then in the letters of Paul we find that Jesus is the pre-existent Son of God ( Philippians 2:6-7). Then the culmination of this process if reflected in the Gospel of John 1:1-2, in which Jesus is not only the pre-existent Son of God but fully divine and equal with the Father. So in all this, using an evolutionary model, scholars perceive there was a development in the understanding of who Jesus was as the Son of God (as the years passed after Jesus' death) by progressively pushing back the time that he became the Son of God, from his resurrection, back to his baptism, then back to his conception and then back to his pre-existent state before his earthly incarnation. In his description of this process on pages 160-161, Ehrman seeks to explain how the apocalyptic prophet from Nazareth became the Messiah (Christ), Son of God, savior of the world depicted in the Gospels.
No comments:
Post a Comment