Thursday, May 19, 2011

Ehrman, Chapter 10

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.

The Parables of Jesus - Windows on the Kingdom

I offer you here my overview of the parables of Jesus. It is my belief that the parables of Jesus are at the core of his teaching on the kingdom of God, and arriving at an understanding of the parables we understand much of the core of Jesus message.

The Parables of Jesus: Windows on the Kingdom
Before the 20th century almost no one ever thought of interpreting the parables of Jesus in terms of what Jesus may have intended to say to his original audience when he first spoke them. The parables were routinely interpreted in terms of how they spoke to the life of Christians in whatever century the interpreter was writing. The parables were usually assumed to speak to life in the church and usually interpreted as allegories.

My favorite example of how this works is the history of the interpretation of the parable of the Good Samaritan (Luke 10). Going back to Augustine (early 400's, theologian whose importance in Catholic church history is second only to Thomas Aquinas, and Augustine was also the foundational theologian for the views of Protestant reformers Luther and Calvin, but no time for a lengthy church history lesson here), from Augustine on to the end of the 19th century, the parable of the Good Samaritan was interpreted allegorically. An allegorical interpretation means that the pieces of the story on the surface really point to a deeper hidden meaning. In Augustine's interpretation of this parable, the man beat up on the side of the road is fallen Adam. The robber is Satan. The priest and Levite who pass by on the other side represent the inability of Judaism to address Adam's fallen condition. The Good Samaritan is Christ. The wine and oil used to relieve the man's ailments are the church's sacraments. The inn is the Roman Catholic Church. The innkeeper is Saint Peter. Even Protestants kept up this allegorical interpretation until the latter half of the 19th century, as an allegory about salvation, without the references to the church, Peter, and sacraments.


All that changed when a German scholar by the name of Adolf Julicher published a book on the parables in 1899, in which he argued that Jesus was not at all interested in allegorical meanings, but that each parable had a single general moral point. Not all modern scholars are convinced about the "one general moral point only" theory of parable interpretation espoused by Julicher. But this did spell the end of people thinking that Jesus may have actually intended to teach in allegories, and it was the end of spinning out fanciful allegorical interpretations of the parables.

The key to the new direction in parable interpretation was the acceptance by most 20th century New Testament scholars that the central theme of Jesus ministry was the proclamation of the Kingdom of God. This does not mean they all agree on what exactly Jesus meant by the coming of the Kingdom, as you will find two very different interpretations of this between Ehrman and Borg. But even most conservative scholars today readily admit that the primary focus of Jesus' teaching was on the Kingdom of God, and this is no where more evident than in his parables.

Long before Borg and Ehrman, in the early 20th century, Jesus scholars were divided on to what degree Jesus believed the Kingdom of God was present in his ministry and how much was yet to come in the near or distant future. Scholars like Rudolf Bultmann and C. H. Dodd advocated a view they called "realized eschatology" meaning that they believed Jesus believed the Kingdom was fully present in his ministry and present in those who imitated his ministry. Borg tends in this direction. At the other extreme were scholars who believed that Jesus believed that he was announcing the Kingdom's arrival, very soon. They pointed to indications that this was already beginning to happen (such as Jesus exorcisms), but certainly the Kingdom of God was not present in its fullness. But such scholars believe that Jesus expected the Kingdom of God to soon become a dramatic reality where God will rule over all directly, some say an apocalyptic event, others say maybe a more peaceful arrival of the kingdom is what Jesus had in mind. These scholars advocate that Jesus held a "future eschatology" view of the Kingdom of God. The Kingdom was not fully here yet in Jesus' ministry, but it would be in the very near future. Obviously, Ehrman falls into this category.

There is no question that the parables of Jesus often address the question of the Kingdom ("the Kingdom of God (heaven) is like ... ). The more difficult question is what exactly was Jesus trying to teach with the parables? Many scholars thought he was simply making common sense observations using the imagery of everyday rural life. Other scholars doubt that it is quite that simple. But regardless, the common goal among historical critical scholars was to interpret the parables of Jesus within the historical context of Jesus' ministry.

After Julicher, the next important book on the parables to be published was C. H. Dodd's The Parables of the Kingdom, published in 1935. The importance of this book lay in the fact that it introduces the question of how the parables of Jesus fit into his proclamation of the Kingdom of God. Dodd rejects Julicher's idea that a parable contains one general moral lesson. Rather the focus becomes Jesus' proclamation that the Kingdom has arrived. In this book Dodd seeks to interpret the parables of Jesus within the larger context of Jesus' proclamation of the Kingdom, in which the parables are interpreted as expressions of Jesus message about the Kingdom of God. Of value still today (in my opinion) is Dodd's definition of a parable:
"At its simplest the parable is a metaphor or simile drawn from nature or common life, arresting the hearer by its vividness or strangeness, and leaving the mind in sufficient doubt about its precise application to tease it into active thought."
This definition has the dual value of noticing both the everyday setting of the parable and the fact that there is sometimes something rather odd about it. In practice, most scholars believed the parables were accurate depictions of everyday life. This is no where more true than with Joachim Jeremias who grew up in Palestine at the turn of the 20th century, living as a child of Christian missionaries in Palestine.

Perhaps the most influential book on the parables published in the 20th century was Joachim Jeremias' The Parables of Jesus published in 1947. Jeremias consciously builds upon the work of Dodd, but changes Dodd's "realized eschatology" to "eschatology in the process of realization", which means, Jeremias believes, Jesus believed the Kingdom was in the process of becoming a reality on earth, and his ministry was heralding and hastening that process.

The first observation Jeremias made was that the parables, in the form in which we find them in the Gospels, are a creation of the early church, and the parables have been adapted to fit the setting of the early church, not the setting of the life of Jesus. So the first step in interpreting Jesus' parables is to remove the additional material added by early Christians (this includes any interpretive material or statements that apply the parable to some particular situation). Thus, the interpretation of the parable of the Sower (Mark 4:13-20) is certainly an invention of the early church, likewise the application of the Good Samaritan in Luke 10:36-37.

Jeremias groups the parables of Jesus into various headings, seeking to highlight the central features of Jesus' message of the Kingdom as found in the parables. Here are the five most important categories: 1) Now is the day of salvation, 2) God's mercy for sinners, 3) the Imminence of catastrophe, 4) It may be too late, 5) the Challenge of the hour. In Jeremias' interpretation of Jesus' message we find something akin to an Old Testament prophetic message in which there is both God's offer of mercy and a warning of what may happen if that mercy is rejected. Not all scholars found Jeremias' conclusions about the message of the Kingdom to be satisfying. Scholars that came after Jeremias doubted gleaning static unchanging messages from the parables really did the parables justice as proclamations of God's Kingdom.

The next big move in parable scholarship (which also shifted the momentum in parable scholarship from Germany to the United States) happened when American New Testament scholars decided to view the parables as literary entities and interpret them employing literary theories that had been developed by American and French literary critics. In this approach to parable interpretation, Jesus is seen as the one who communicates as a poet employing metaphors. The whole issue of how a parable can function as an extended metaphor consumes American parable scholarship in the 1960's and 70's. This brings into question the whole notion that a parable has one particular meaning to it, and that the interpreter's purpose is to identify that one meaning.

It was John Dominic Crossan's first book on the parables that did the most to push scholarship in this direction (In Parables: The Challenge of the Historical Jesus, 1973). For Crossan, Jesus' parables do not express timeless truths or models of behavior but rather the parables are fundamental expressions of Jesus' personal experience of God. Crossan looks at the narrative structure of the parables and differentiates among the parables based on the how the narrative functions to make a point. Using this approach he comes up with three categories of parables: 1) parables of advent (that is, the coming of the Kingdom), 2) parables of reversal, and 3) parables of action. With parables of advent, the focus is on the hiddenness of the Kingdom in its current activity (as found in the example of a tiny mustard seed or leaven (yeast in dough) (Matthew 13:31-33), but with the expectation that there will be a great manifestation of the Kingdom in the near future, just as when yeast make dough rise or when a seed grows into a great plant. With parables of reversal, the story does not turn out as one might suspect. An example of a parable of reversal is the Good Samaritan (Luke 10:25-37). This might seem like an odd choice of label for the Good Samaritan except when we think of how it might have been received in its original telling. The Samaritan is the good guy. But to the ordinary Palestinian Jews to whom Jesus is telling this (fictional) story, a Samaritan is a despised ostracized half-breed. How dare Jesus make such a person the hero of his story. (For an incident when Jesus actually provokes a strong reaction with a similar story see Luke 4:16-30). Thus, Crossan uses this as an example of how Jesus' parables often end up meaning the opposite of what the original hearers might have expected. Another good example of this is the parable of the Great Dinner where the outcasts of society become the honored guests (Luke 14:15-24). As an example of a parable of action, Crossan spends much time discussing the Worker in the Vineyard (Matthew 20:1-13). But while calling it a parable of action, Crossan treats it as a parable of reversal, as the main point of the parable is the reversal of the proportional expectations of the workers. That is, the workers apparently all expect their pay to be proportional, the same pay per hour. But when Jesus tells the story so that the workers all receive the same standard daily wage whether they had worked one hour or 12 hours, we can imagine this would seem quite unfair to the original hearers. But Jesus' purpose was to challenge the idea that God should be expected to operate by human rules of proportionality. Or perhaps Jesus' purpose was to state flat out that God operates by different rules than what humans always think is fair. I believe Jesus' point is that God's mercy and grace are not proportional, but every one can receive a full dose whether they deserve it or not.

The theoretical underpinnings of parable interpretation really have not changed much since the appearance of Crossan's book, In Parables. Numerous scholars have offered their take on the parables, but they are all working with the same assumptions that came From Julicher and Dodd, through Jeremias and then through Crossan. No one among modern American historical critical scholars challenges the basic premises of Crossan's approach to parable interpretation, even though they might differ on the exact meanings and interpretations of the various parables. If Borg on the parables sounds anything like Crossan, you can attribute that to the enduring influence of Crossan's ideas. Crossan is definitely (in my mind) the most creative New Testament scholars living (others may be more creative, but no one has had more success in getting other scholars to accept his innovative views about Jesus than Crossan).

There is one other bit of parable scholarship I wish to discuss. This pertains to the question of how realistic are the parables? Scholars like Jeremias expect the parables to be accurate depictions of everyday life. I tend to side with those who question this. For example, take the parable of the Lost Sheep (Luke 15:3-7). The whole key to this parable is wrapped up in this rhetorical question: "Which of you, having a hundred sheep and losing one of them, does not leave the ninety-nine in the wilderness and go after the one that is lost until he finds it?" (Luke 15:4). The common sense answer to this question is no one is so foolish as to leave sheep to fend for themselves in the wilderness. The way the question is written in Greek, it is obvious that it expects a positive answer; it is not an open-ended question. Jeremias interprets this parable as realistic by saying the shepherd would have had helpers to assist him and watch the 99 while he looked for the lost sheep. But if we simply take the text at face value, it says nothing about helpers or assistants, but it's all about leaving the 99 to fend for themselves. In my mind, this is another way of Jesus saying that God does not always work according to principles that seem fair to humans. But it also reinforces the value of the one. This emphasis on the individual would have been the reverse of what was the prevailing view within the society and culture in which Jesus lived and taught, where it was always the job of the individual to sacrifice one's self for the good of others. The individual was never as important in any ancient society as appears to be the case in the parables of Jesus. But over and over again Jesus reiterates the positive value of each individual person in God's sight (a perfect example is the parable of the Prodigal Son, Luke 15:11-32).

Along this line, French philosopher Paul Ricoeur (who also wrote several books on religion in addition to his tomes on philosophy) wrote a small book on the parables. He is the source of this way of thinking about the strangeness of the parables I mention above. His theory was that each parable had a "trait of extravagance," something that stretched credulity and (remembering Dodd's definition of a parable) the strangeness then teased the mind into active thought. Thus Ricoeur proposes that whatever this "trait of extravagance" might be in each parable, that is the key to the interpretation of that parable. For instance, in the parable of the Prodigal Son, it is the Father's indulgent love for his wayward son that is extravagant and strains credulity (once a child left his Jewish family to live among the pagan he was considered "dead" to the family), so the Father's indulgent love serves as the key to the interpretati0on of the parable.

Suggestion: When reading over the parables of Jesus, ask yourself these questions. (Not every question will apply to every parable.) Does this parable promote a view of the Kingdom as present or the Kingdom as future? What about this parable seems odd or strange? How would the Palestinian Jews who first heard this parable have responded? What attitude or action is Jesus trying to change with this parable?

Ehrman, Chap 9, Teachings of Jesus

In the section on the teachings of Jesus, Ehrman takes the sayings in the Gospels attributed to Jesus that are obviously apocalyptic and states that these are the core of Jesus' teaching. Then he takes the other sayings of Jesus and fits them into the same picture. No modern critical scholars doubt that the "kingdom of God" is the central focus of the message of Jesus. The big debate has always been over what does Jesus mean by the "kingdom of God"? Obviously Ehrman takes it as referring to an apocalyptic event that brings the direct reign of God to earth.

Other scholars are not so sure. Some like John Dominic Crossan interpret the kingdom in terms of what we would call the development of an alternative society in a counter-cultural movement. In other words, for Crossan (and those who believe as he does), Jesus never expected there to be a dramatic cataclysmic shaking of the physical earth in which God would inaugurate his kingdom (this is Ehrman's position). Likewise, Crossan would not accept the view of many modern scholars that God would do something dramatic to overturn the current world order (the Great Reversal) in the near future. Scholars like Crossan would much rather view Jesus as the one who came to proclaim the kingdom is present in those circumstances in which God's rule becomes a reality, but not that God would ever intervene in some dramatic, coercive, cataclysmic fashion, either in the near to distant future.

Like many other New Testament scholars, Ehrman states that Jesus taught there would be "a total reversal of the social order" (page 146). However, Ehrman states that Jesus expected this to happen very soon (but many scholars are doubtful that Jesus actually expected this to happen in his own lifetime). The key to this is the Son of Man sayings. The on-going debate among Jesus scholars on this topic centers around two questions. 1) When Jesus uses the phrase Son of Man, is he using the word generically to refer to a human being, or does the phrase refer to a human-like divine judge (as in Daniel 7:13-14)? 2) Does Jesus ever apply this term to himself or does he mean someone else? Scholars who believe in a non-apocalyptic Jesus (like Crossan) say that Jesus never uttered a Son of Man saying in which Jesus expected a divine judge.

Ehrman is convinced that Jesus expected such a divine judge and expected him to come soon, but that person would not be Jesus himself (Mark 14:62) (page 145). However, when I read Mark 14:62 it seems to me that since Jesus is affirming he is the son of the Blessed One, that he might also believe he will be this Son of Man. Though for Ehrman, since it is important for his interpretation of Jesus that Jesus expect this during his own earthly lifetime, and since Jesus is a failed apocalyptic prophet, there is no way that Jesus could be referring to his own impending return as a divine judge in Mark 14:62. However, this is exactly the interpretation this verse has traditionally received (before the arrival of modern historical criticism), that Jesus was speaking of his own return. It is on account of this traditional interpretation of Mark 14:62 that most modern historical critics believe the saying was placed in the mouth of Jesus by early Christians. (Remember one of the tenets of the historical critical method is that no one can predict the future, just as no one can perform miracles.)

E. P. Sanders offers a competing interpretation of Jesus as an eschatological prophet, proclaiming that the culmination of human history was near at hand, also believing that Jesus expected God to do "something big" real soon. Sanders also is convinced that Jesus expected the kingdom to happen in a dramatic way in the near future. But contrary to Ehrman, instead of the "cosmic signs and universal destruction" that Ehrman believes Jesus expected, Sanders believes Jesus was really expecting that God's dramatic intervention would be a renewal of the earth, in which all things wrong would be made right, and the key for this is the 12 disciples and the restoration of the 12 tribes of Israel. Sanders reasons that if Jesus expected restoration of the 12 tribes then he also expected the restoration of society, and then the "great reversal" would be about all things being made right rather than the destruction of the physical world and punishment of the former oppressors. So, the expectation of cataclysmic destruction on the scale envisioned in the Book of Revelation is not necessarily the only way to interpret Jesus as an apocalyptic prophet. Sanders looks to the prophecies in Isaiah in which restoration is the main theme of God's future dramatic actions, and supposes that Jesus easily might have been expecting the same thing (see Isaiah 55). While Sanders' proposal has not received a wide following, it is an interesting alternative to Ehrman's interpretation of Jesus as an apocalyptic prophet of an imminent end with cosmic signs and universal destruction. Most historical critical scholars say Jesus expected something to happen, and might also label Jesus an eschatological prophet (proclaiming what will happen in the end times), but such scholars are often reticent to say what Jesus expected to happen and when he expected it to happen.

Ehrman uses Jesus' apocalyptic perspective as the lens through which to interpret Jesus' other sayings. But even when he does this in his discussion of Jesus' other teachings on page 147, he does not sound much different from other New Testament scholars who do not believe Jesus had an apocalyptic mindset. When Ehrman writes: "Those who began to implement the ideals of the kingdom, where there would be no sin, hatred, or evil, had in a sense begun to experience the rule of God here and now" (page 147, col 2), he is saying what just about every other New Testament scholar would say about the presence of the kingdom (reign of God) in the ministry of Jesus and in the lives of his followers.

Ehrman's use of the title "Apocalyptic" death of Jesus to mark the discussion of the Jesus' crucifixion is a curious choice of words in that what Ehrman says in this section is basic "main stream" historical critical scholarship on the topic, and I do not find anything particularly "apocalyptic" about it. But it is a good presentation on this topic with which I find no fault.

Ehrman, Chapter 9

In this chapter Ehrman takes up where I left off at the end of my discussion of the development of the Historical Critical Method. In this chapter we see how Ehrman applies the criteria of authenticity to the study of the historical Jesus. As is typical for Ehrman, I think he overstates the problem of the sources, or the lack of historically reliable sources. Ehrman mentions that Jesus is never mentioned by any pagan writer until 115 CE as if this is cause for concern about the historical value of any writing about Jesus. But this is easily explained by the fact that for the most part, earliest Christianity was a religious movement that gained most of its adherents from people of the lower social class, the servant class. That's not the kind of development that pagan Roman writers would consider newsworthy. The most they might do is complain to each other about their servants getting mixed up is a very strange oriental religion. Part of the reason for the lack of non-Christian writings about Jesus (in addition to the fact that people of the wealthy classes wrote about themselves and not the heroes of their servants, and the servant class could rarely read or write) is the fact that not as much writing at all went on in antiquity as we might imagine. Even as recently as colonial America the town crier was as important as the daily broadside (one sheet newspaper). Most information was passed on by word of mouth, not in written documents. Though early Christianity quickly became a religion of written documents in the second century, in the first century it was largely a religious movement with an oral culture.

When Ehrman sets up the ideal criteria for reconstructing the past (page 128, col. 1) , it would not be until the European Renaissance that we find sufficient documentation of any events that would fulfill these criteria. There are plenty of sources (that I would call reliable) for many significant events in the years from the early middle ages onward, but it is most unusual to find independent corroboration of a particular historical event in another account of the same event.

Concerning Ehrman and the criteria of authenticity (see Using Our Sources, page 129), in #3 Ehrman mentions the criterion of dissimilarity and offers a good explanation of it. What he calls, "the more the better" (#2) is what I label "multiple attestation;" and what he calls "more contextually credible" is what I label "coherence." Ehrman does not employ the criterion which I call "embarrassment." Whenever he addresses a passage I would place in this category he puts it under dissimilarity.

In reading Ehrman's section on Jewish Apocalypticism, it is necessary to keep in mind that Ehrman considers Jesus a failed apocalyptic prophet. No New Testament scholar denies that Jewish apocalypticism was "in the air" as a part of the options in Jewish belief during Jesus' lifetime, but few modern scholars share Ehrman's assurance that Jesus expected the end of the world as we know it real soon, and of course Jesus was wrong. Many of the movements within Palestinian Judaism that sought to have the land rid of the Romans held apocalyptic beliefs. And the Pharisees believed there would be a final judgment, but most did not seem to have expected it to happen soon. But to some of the people who felt oppressed by the Roman occupation and longed for the vindication of God's rule over the land, apocalyptic beliefs seemed very appealing. Ehrman does a very good job of explaining the tenets of Jewish apocalypticism in the time of Jesus (pages 130-132).

In the section titled, "The Beginning and End as Keys to the Middle," Ehrman makes his case for his belief that since Jesus and several of his disciples were directly connected with and influenced by the apocalyptic prophet John the Baptist, and many early Christians held apocalyptic beliefs (especially Paul, as in 1 Thessalonians 4:13-18 and 1 Corinthians 15:51-57), that the only way to explain this similarity is if the link in the middle between the two (Jesus) also held an apocalyptic expectation. This may be true, but one obvious possible explanation that Ehrman does not consider is that Paul was probably an apocalyptic Pharisee before he became an apocalyptic Christian evangelist. And there are a good number of scholars who believe that Jesus' break with John the Baptist was directly over a disagreement concerning the imminence of the end. In boxes 9.3 (page 134) and box 9.4 (page 135) Ehrman offers his rebuttal to the two suggestions most commonly offered historical critical scholars who do not believe that Jesus preached an apocalyptic message.

Beginning with this premise, Ehrman goes on to explain the entire message of Jesus from an apocalyptic perspective. Based on his apocalyptic interpretation of the "temple incident" Ehrman is convinced that Jesus died because he "proclaimed the imminent downfall of the social order and the advent of a new kingdom to replace the corrupt ruling powers" (page 136). Many other scholars agree that the "temple incident" is what started the process rolling that led to his crucifixion. But most are not so convinced that Jesus' critique of temple practices falls into the category of apocalyptic prophesy.

Aside: Ehrman's box 9.5 is another critique of a scholar Ehrman is very much at odds with in their interpretations of Jesus. He is John Dominic Crossan (also mentioned in 9.4), and Crossan has come up with some very creative interpretations of sayings and events in the life of Jesus. Ehrman would not have to take the time to offer a rebuttal to Crossan's ideas (that are often far-fetched) except for the fact that Crossan has been very influential among American New Testament scholars.

Concerning "Jesus' Associations," Ehrman does have a point that the 12 disciples most likely corresponds to the expectation in some Jewish apocalyptic circles that a time will come when God will restore the 12 tribes of Israel, as an event when God will make right every thing that has gone wrong with the place of the people Israel in the world order. Some New Testament scholars see this more in terms of God establishing his rule or reign (=kingdom) in a non-political, non-territorial manner. In other words, maybe Jesus did not expect the arrival of the kingdom of God will be accompanied by the cataclysmic events of Ehrman's apocalyptic model. Most scholars would agree that Jesus' associations with his disciples and with sinners does pertain to the "coming of the kingdom of God," without supposing it has to be the expectation of God's total rule preceded by apocalyptic events.

On Jesus and his miracles. Ehrman has no inclination to believe Jesus actually performed a miracle, but he cannot deny that Jesus clearly had the reputation in his own lifetime as a miracle worker. I believe Ehrman is also correct when he interprets the accounts of Jesus' exorcisms as having apocalyptic overtones. I would explain this in terms of dualism (which Ehrman has already mentioned in regard to apocalypticism), in which the exorcisms demonstrate that God's proxy (Jesus) has come to do battle with Satan's proxies (the demons) and Jesus is soundly defeating the forces of Satan, which is a preview of the main event when God will completely overthrow the power of Satan on earth and set up his own direct rule over all creation.
My discussion of Ehrman, chapter 9, will be continued in an entry on the Teachings of Jesus.

Ehrman, Chapter 4

The four Blog entries on the topic of the "Historical Critical Method" offer an explanation of how the method of Biblical interpretation that Ehrman presupposes in this textbook developed. What Ehrman takes for granted as the way that "modern" scholars interpret the Bible was over 200 years in the making. While this method of biblical interpretation may not be what you have heard in church, it is the method used by almost all "modern" Biblical scholars and the method endorsed by the Religion department at UNO. Since Ehrman's textbook employs this method, that is one of the reasons why his textbook is used in this course.

Ehrman begins by presenting the conclusion that the earliest Gospel probably was not written before 65-70 CE (page 46 bot). This presupposes another conclusion, no eyewitness to the events of Jesus had a hand in the composition of the Gospels. This means that if Jesus' death was about 30 CE, we must identify how the sayings of Jesus were handed on during the intervening 35 years. Most scholars say this was done by orally passing on the sayings embedded in a short narrative framework, that is, as individual episodes, not as extended narratives.

In the first part of the chapter Ehrman presents his understanding of how this process probably occurred. Of course, a lot of it is educated guess work, but the approach that Ehrman presents is very similar to what you will find in any introductory textbook on the New Testament written by a historical critical scholar. Likewise his skepticism about the historical accuracy of the Gospel accounts of the sayings and actions of Jesus is shared by most scholars of this variety. While it might seem odd to us that no one would have thought to write down the sayings and events of Jesus' life before 65 CE, part of the reason has to do with the fact that (for the most part) most people in the ancient world could not write or read (see Box 4.1 on page 50).

Another related issue that Ehrman does not bring up, is that in many groups within ancient societies, a verbal word had more authority than a written word. We will see this is an issue when we discuss the letters of the Apostle Paul. Therefore, when Jesus' sayings were being handed on from Christian to Christian by word of mouth, someone who could claim a direct connection with a reliable source (such as" "I know the Apostle Peter, and he told me thus and so about Jesus") would be considered more historically reliable than a written piece proffered by someone. This is because it is easy to write anything you want on paper (or parchment) and how do we know if it is truth or fiction? Therefore, at the time of Jesus, a verbal report from an authoritative source was generally considered more historically reliable than a written report.

One place where an oral report still takes precedence over a written report in our society is in a court of law. Before any piece of paper with writing on it may be placed in evidence in a case, the authenticity of the writing on that paper must be vouched for orally by someone who is a credible witness. It is for this reason that we do not have more written documents from the early years of Christianity, and the reason that Paul's letters were considered a novelty by some people in the church at Corinth. Of course, any modern religious skeptic will be skeptical about the accuracy of any information handed on by word of mouth for 35 years, and that is exactly Ehrman's position on the matter (see pages 49-50).

Then there is also the possibility that a Gospel writer might alter the story of Jesus to make a theological point. This is exactly the reason Ehrman has a long discussion on Jesus and the passover in the Gospel of John (see pages 52-54 top).

With regard to Ehrman's discussion of the Gospels as ancient biographies, in one respect Ehrman is correct. The Gospels cannot be seen as the equivalent of modern biographies. However, rather than see the Gospels as promoting the "character" of Jesus, I believe the purpose of the Gospels is better described by saying they intend to convince the reader that Jesus is the Son of God and the Jewish Messiah (Christ) (Mark & John). If the purpose of a Gospel was not to convince the readers of the truth claims made about Jesus, at least it intended to reinforce that belief and present the way of life that Jesus taught his disciples as the way of life all Christians were expected to follow (especially true of Jesus in Matthew's Gospel), and perhaps also to demonstrate that Jesus came as the divine savior of the whole world.

Despite the fact that Jesus and all the first Christians were born Jewish, none of the Gospels presents Jesus as only a Jewish savior. The manner in which each Gospel is written either implicitly says that Jesus is the world's savior (such as the arrival of the Magi in Matthew chapter 2, or the Greeks wishing to meet Jesus in John 12:20-21) or various statements are made that presuppose the readers of that Gospel do not come from a Jewish background (such as the need to explain Jewish practices in Mark 7:3-4). Luke's Gospel does not have to stress this point of the universality of Jesus as savior, since it becomes all too obvious in his volume 2, which we call the Acts of the Apostles. However, the belief that Jesus came as the savior of the entire world was not automatically assumed to be true by earliest Christians, as we will see in our study of Paul. So there is considerable development of the Christian message surrounding Jesus between the time Jesus died and the time when the first Gospel was written.

Monday, May 16, 2011

The Historical Critical Method - Part 4 Criteria of Authenticity

CRITERIA OF AUTHENTICITY

At the conclusion of my last Blog entry, I mentioned Norman Perrin, an American who was one of Bultmann's last doctoral students. He had a prolific but short academic career at the University of Chicago until he died of a heart attack in 1976 at the age of 55. By all accounts, he was a driven scholar (who drove himself too hard). In his relatively short academic career he had an oversize impact on New Testament scholarship in the United States. This is no where more evident than in his book: Rediscovering the Teaching of Jesus, 1967.

In this book Perrin lays out what portion of the sayings of Jesus (he believes) can actually be traced back to Jesus himself. Perrin is really the first person to undertake this enterprise (with thoroughness) since the time his teacher Bultmann wrote The History of the Synoptic Tradition in 1921. But Perrin wanted to systematize the whole business. Perrin's research and writing on the sayings of Jesus (and in particular the overall message and teaching of Jesus) became very influential in the New Testament scholarship in the United States, and consequently in Europe as well. Perrin lays out his plan in the preface: "The purpose of the book came to be to establish what may be known with reasonable certainty of the teaching of Jesus. To this end, every effort has been made to apply criteria strictly, and it has been accepted that the burden of proof always lies on the claim to authenticity" (pages 10-11).

From this we see the formulation of an operating principle that is still at work among most historical critical scholars today. That principle is: Do not believe a saying of Jesus in the Gospels was really spoken by Jesus, unless a strict application of the criteria of authenticity rules out every other possible explanation except that Jesus actually said it. Of course, such a narrow view of what may be admitted as "for certain" going back to Jesus, means that there is much material in the Gospels that Jesus may well have spoken, but since we cannot be sure, it does not count in reconstructing our picture of the "authentic" teaching of Jesus.

The reason this book, Rediscovering the Teaching of Jesus, is so important in the history of New testament scholarship is that this is the first time that someone has attempted to formulate and articulate the vague and often undefined criteria scholars were using in deciding whether or not Jesus actually might have said a certain saying. For someone who is inclined to believe that Jesus probably said everything attributed to him in the Gospels, this whole enterprise will seem like a complete waste of time. But for the development of the historical critical method, it was a momentous step.

Perrin begins with noting some widely accepted operating assumptions of historical critical scholars at that time. Here are the two most important ones. 1) "Any and every saying in the gospels could be the product of an evangelist [meaning the gospel's author] or transmitter of the tradition. Nor can we assume that the sayings will be based upon genuine sayings of Jesus" (page20). 2) "Any parable as it now stands in the gospels represents the teaching of the early Church and the way back from the early Church to the historical Jesus is a long and arduous one" (page 21). What Perrin proposes to do, is provide scholars with specific criteria that will lead them down that arduous road back to the historical Jesus.

Perrin writes: "Thus we reach the fundamental criterion for authenticity upon which all reconstructions of the teaching of Jesus must be built, which we propose to call the 'criterion of dissimilarity'. ... The earliest form of a saying we can reach may be regarded as authentic if it can be shown to be dissimilar to characteristic emphases both of ancient Judaism and of the early Church" (page 39).

This means if a saying attributed to Jesus has overtones that better fit the situation of the early Christians as an organization than the unorganized format of Jesus' ministry, Jesus probably did not say it. Or, if a saying is attributed to Jesus that would better fit the needs of his followers in identifying Jesus as having special standing with God or divine prerogatives, such as the need for early Christians to believe and convince others that Jesus is God's "Anointed One" [Messiah in Aramaic, Christ in Greek], the Son of God, Lord, the savior, the redeemer, all these are more important to the early Christians in spreading the message about Jesus than the focus of Jesus' ministry. Therefore, such statements that give a divine title to Jesus most likely were never spoken by Jesus. A saying of Jesus that counts as authentic by reason of dissimilarity can have no common ground with concerns that were especially important to the early Christians after Jesus' death, or especially important to the Judaism into which he was born. The unspoken goal here is to find that which is truly unique in the sayings of Jesus.

Perrin writes: "With the criterion of dissimilarity as our starting point, ... we propose a second criterion, which we will call 'the Criterion of Coherence': material from the earliest strata of the tradition may be accepted as authentic if it can be shown to cohere with material established as authentic by means of the criterion of dissimilarity" (page 43).

What Perrin means by coherence is that if a saying does not strictly pass the test of dissimilarity, but seems to cohere (hangs together) with a saying that does, due to a similar meaning or import of its message, then it can be counted as authentic. In practice many scholars have used this criterion to admit sayings of Jesus that do not pass the test of dissimilarity, but that they really want to believe Jesus said because it fits their view of the reconstructed message of Jesus.

Perrin writes: "Before leaving the question of criteria, we must mention of further one: the Criterion of Multiple Attestation. This is a proposal to accept as authentic material which is attested in all, or most, of the sources which can be discerned behind the synoptic gospels. ... This criterion does have a usefulness in terms of establishing the authenticity of motifs from the ministry of Jesus, though rarely that of specific sayings. ... So, for example, we may accept the authenticity of Jesus' special concern for 'tax collectors and sinners', which certainly has multiple attestation in this sense" (pages 45-46). That is, the motif can be found in two or more of Mark, Q, M, & L.

Multiple attestation is most often used by scholars when something can be shown to exist in both Mark and Q or Q + M or L, or Mark + L or M (see Ehrman , page 60 if these letters mean nothing to you as representing sources of the Gospel material). Not a lot falls into this category but it can be useful.

There is a Fourth criterion that is worth knowing and that is the criterion of Embarrassment (I believe this term was first coined by the Dutch liberal Catholic scholar Schillebeeckx). This refers to events that would naturally be an embarrassment to the early Christians, and therefore no reason to include them in the Gospels unless they were so much a part of the historical record that they could not be avoided and must be mentioned. The best example is the baptism of Jesus by John the Baptist. This is because if Jesus is the Son of God, why would he need a baptism for the forgiveness of sins? Ehrman considers the baptism of Jesus as falling under dissimilarity (in a different book) , but it fits much better (I believe) under embarrassment. The betrayal of Judas belongs in this category too. Of course, the crucifixion of Jesus also fits this category, but no credible scholar I know of doubts the reality of Jesus' death by crucifixion. Anything in the Gospels that happened in the life and ministry of Jesus that blatantly could prove embarrassing to the early Christians is probably true and falls under the label of true by the criterion of embarrassment, because the only reason to put it in the Gospel (if embarrassing) is that was widely known to be true and to leave it out would gain nothing because people already knew about it.

The Historical Critical Method - Part 3 Form Criticism

THE FOUR SOURCE HYPOTHESIS & FORM CRITICISM

I last mentioned Holtzmann and his "two-source hypothesis" to explain the literary interrelationship of the three synoptic gospels. The concluding step in that development was the publication in 1924 of B. H. Streeter's The Four Gospels, in which he argues that Matthew and Luke each had an independent source (usually dubbed "M" and "L") which explains the material unique to both Matthew and Luke and rounds out the two source theory, and becomes known as the "four source hypothesis. The Four Source Hypothesis is still referred to today as the best way to explain the literary interrelationship of the three synoptic Gospels. (See Ehrman's textbook, page 60)

Scholars today do not spend a lot of time trying to reconstruct the sources of the Gospels (“source criticism”). Yet that was the focus of much study of the Gospels in the first half of the 20th century. At the same time as "source criticism" was in vogue, out of Germany came a major development in the historical critical method called "Form Criticism." Form Criticism arose from the realization that the Gospels are essential "episodic" literature, that is, they are comprised mostly of short compact episodes (that biblical scholars call by the Greek word "pericope"). Then the question arose, how did we get from Jesus to these episodes as we find them in the canonical Gospels?

The German scholar who is best known for advancing a viable explanation is Rudolf Bultmann. When he published his book, The History of the Synoptic Tradition in 1921, it became the major focal point in liberal biblical scholarship (it was not translated into English until 1963, when his views had already become the standard fare at mainline Protestant seminaries). This book became (and remains) the "standard" on this topic; and within this book we also find implicitly what becomes known as the criteria of authenticity (subject of my next Blog entry).

Bultmann did not coin the term Form Criticism, nor did he conceive of the concept. But he is the one who applied it to the synoptic Gospels in a thorough going fashion with the intention of covering most of the material in the Gospels, especially how the smaller pericopes were transmitted. The initial interest in Form Criticism was in categorizing the various pericopes according to the particular form in which they appeared (categorization seems to me to be a German scientific obsession during this period about everything). So Bultmann came up with names to categorize the sayings of Jesus. The large categories are: 1) Apophthegms (a Greek word meaning a pithy saying), 2) Dominical sayings (longer sayings of Jesus like the parables), 3) Miracle stories, and 4) Historical stories and legends.

My favorite example of how this process works for Bultmann is a "controversy dialogue," Mark 2:23-28 in which Jesus debates with the Pharisees about Jesus' disciples picking grain on the Sabbath while walking through a field. Bultmann concludes that the only piece of this passage that actually goes back to the historical Jesus is the pithy saying at the end: "The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath." Bultmann surmises that the story as we find it was created to address the attempts for the earliest Jewish-Christians in a Jewish setting to define themselves over against Judaism (probably in the 40's CE). So a setting about an action on the Sabbath that was considered work by the Pharisees is created (by the Christians who passed on this memorable saying), and in typical Jewish fashion, an example from the scriptures is worked in (see Mark 2:26 & 1 Sam. 21:3-6), and the scene concludes with Jesus' memorable saying about the purpose of the Sabbath.

Bultmann, in the same fashion, reconstructs (or deconstructs) all of the sayings in the Gospels attributed to Jesus, thereby accomplishing in a systematic fashion what Strauss had attempted almost a hundred years before, which is, demonstrating (in a manner convincing to modern scholars) the validity of Strauss' conclusions about the "mythic" character of the Gospel accounts of Jesus.

What Bultmann provided the world of biblical scholarship was: 1) an analysis of the various pericopes in the gospels, and also, 2) a means of deciding what came first in the Jesus tradition and what was added later (without explicitly intending to do so). Implicit in Bultmann's work is a mean of determining what can be traced back to Jesus and what was created by the Christians who first transmitted his sayings, deeds, and stories to other Christians. While Bultmann never really defined the principles he was working with, on close examination one can discover the principles that guided his decisions on what was historical or what was legendary, and what can be traced back to Jesus and what cannot.

It was left to a student of Bultmann's, Norman Perrin, to formulate Bultmann's unstated principles into "criteria of authenticity." With the publication of Perrin's book, Rediscovering the Teaching of Jesus, in 1967 the source of innovative New Testament scholarship had clearly shifted from Germany to the United States. Next Blog entry: Criteria of Authenticity.

The Historical Critical Method - Part 2 Synoptic Problem

THE SYNOPTIC PROBLEM & THE TWO SOURCE THEORY

Before returning to the question of the development of the solution to the "synoptic problem," I wish to digress for a moment to mention a scholar whose work will have profound implications only many years after his death. That scholar is David Friedrich Strauss who published his Life of Jesus Critically Examined in 1835. Strauss challenged the idea that the Gospels had a reliable historical framework to them, even though they contained some supernatural elements which might not be credible to the modern mind. Strauss maintained that not only the obviously supernatural elements (such as the miracles, the birth of Jesus and his resurrection) have no claim to be historical facts, even the supposedly historical material is "mythical."

Strauss' stark historical critical stance is that the whole story of Jesus' life was told by pious believers who were more interested in using the Gospels to demonstrate the messiahship and divine sonship of Jesus than to produce an unbiased historical report. Therefore, pious exaggeration should be suspected, and the dividing line between the historical and the unhistorical is impossible to discern. Furthermore, Strauss interpreted the unique character of the Gospel of John as being most likely due to the theological creativity of the author and having little historical value. These ideas were not well received in their time. But they got much traction in the 20th century, and Ehrman follows in his footsteps.

Back to the "Synoptic Problem." After Griesbach produced his "Synopsis" and when the furor over the publication of Strauss' Life of Jesus had died down in Germany, it was Heinrich Holtzmann who came up with a proposed solution to explain the literary interrelationships of the first three Gospels. In 1863 Holtzmann published his book, The Synoptic Gospels, in which he argued for the priority of Mark. That is, that Mark was written first and that Matthew and Luke used Mark's Gospel in the composition of their own Gospels. Furthermore, to explain the similarities (parallels) between Matthew and Luke, Holtzmann proposed a common written source used by both of them, but unknown to Mark. This source was simply called the "source," which is the word "Quelle" in German, and has been known ever after simply by its first letter, "Q."

Holtzmann also proposed that scholars not look for written sources behind Mark Gospel, but that they look for oral traditions that lie behind the stories of Jesus recounted in Mark's Gospel. This latter suggestion became the impetus for significant developments in the historical critical method in the first half of the 20th century. This move also (by implication) moves away from traditional notions of Gospel authorship, and by placing several layers of development between Jesus and the written Gospels, removes any likelihood that someone who knew Jesus had a direct hand in the composition of any of the Gospels.

Holtzmann's basic proposal of a two source theory with Mark and Q has become an accepted truth in modern critical biblical scholarship. The theory of "Markan priority" is rarely questioned in modern scholarship. Those who do question it are dismissed as unenlightened cranks. This is true even though there are other ways to construe the relationship between the Gospels. But alternative theories do not get much attention from modern scholars.

What (I think) really sealed the deal for the Two Source Theory was that Holtzmann commissioned a studious pastor by the name of Albert Huck to compose a new synopsis of the first three Gospels in which Markan priority was assumed and Mark was the framework for the organization of the order of the Gospel episodes and passages, according to the way that Holtzmann had divided and arranged them in Holtzmann's book. So in Huck's synopsis (sometimes called a "Gospel Parallels") the Gospel of Mark is placed in its original order, with the corresponding passages from Matthew and Luke placed in parallel columns on either side of Mark, so they can be compared at a glance. Huck's synopsis quickly became the academic standard and was reprinted in its original form until the middle of the 20th century.

The Historical Critical Method - Part 1 The Enlightenment

THE EUROPEAN ENLIGHTENMENT

The English and German Enlightenment of the early 1700's paved the way for the emergence of the Historical Critical Method as it developed in the 20th century. Before this time few people in Europe ever thought to question the historical accuracy of the Christian Bible. A most momentous development in Biblical criticism was the challenge to the whole idea of miracles as they are found in the Bible. The English Deist David Hume is perhaps the most widely read writer of the time to challenge the reality of Biblical miracles (1748). The larger intellectual picture of the time that feeds into this way of thinking is the emergence of the notion that everything that happens in the world around us, happens by natural processes.

In a different way, Immanuel Kant (a key figure in the German Enlightenment) influenced the interpretation of scripture. Kant questions the idea that anything can be known with certainty. This is the epistemological question - how do we know what we think we know and can we know it with any degree of certainty?, which leads to an emphasis on subjectivism in both knowledge and interpretation. This in turn leads to the question whether there can be such a thing as objective knowledge, which then leads to questions about whether any religious statements can be construed as true apart from them being true only for the person believing it so. Hume and Kant provide the backdrop for the challenges to traditional biblical interpretation that would be made in the 18th and 19th centuries.

The process of the development of the Historical Critical Method was aided by the infusion of additional ideas in the 18th and 19th centuries that challenged the traditional way of interpreting the Bible. In 1728 a Swiss theologian questioned the notion of biblical inspiration, positing that perhaps the biblical books are best understood as having the same properties as other such books, saying that Biblical books are human documents that speak of religious topics. In 1775 a German New Testament scholar published a book in which he made a distinction between "Holy Scripture" (the Bible) and the "Word of God," in which he argues that the Bible contains books that only had importance in ancient times and cannot contribute to the "moral improvement" of humanity today.

A student of this scholar, Griesbach, makes a break with a tradition going back to the early church, by questioning the accepted view that Matthew's Gospel (Matthew being an Apostle of Jesus) was written first and that Mark and Luke (not Apostles) used Matthew in the composition of their Gospels. The reason for the logic of a literary relationship between the first three Gospels is the inescapable similarities between these three gospels (referred to as Synoptic Gospels since they view the life of Jesus from the same perspective). The fact that there are so many places where the Greek text of these three Gospels is identical requires a theory of literary dependence to explain it (if one does not believe in a theory of full verbal inspiration).

Griesbach recognizes the "Synoptic Problem," but fails to produce a satisfactory solution. The solution to this "problem" is at the heart of the development of the historical critical method.

Sunday, May 15, 2011

Judaism in the Time of Jesus, Continued

Two more topics I wish to add to the discussion on Judaism in the time of Jesus are the role of Herod and the role of the Jerusalem Temple.

Herod the Great:
Herod was called Herod the Great because of his magnificent building projects. But he was not a great guy. After he killed his wife Mariamne and her sons (because she fell out of favor and Herod did not want any of her sons to inherit the throne) it was said that it was safer to be Herod's pig than his son (because he refrained from eating pork so that his subjects would think him more Jewish than he actually was).

The Temple:
The biggest industry in Palestine at this time is the Temple in Jerusalem. Some have estimated that it took 1,000 people to run the whole operation. The Gospel of Luke likes to portray the Temple as a place of prayer, but in reality its primary function was as a major slaughterhouse, with the high priestly families keeping the majority of the profits for themselves.

Here is how it worked: ordinary Joe Jew wants to offer a sacrifice at the temple, but it has to be a perfect animal (without blemish). He might own a perfect animal (sheep or goat) suitable for the occasion, but if he walks it all the way to Jerusalem, it might not be perfect when he arrives there, and it is too hot and difficult to carry such an animal. So, a better route (but costlier) is to purchase an already approved animal on the site.

But if you carried Roman government coinage you may have to exchange your coinage for the correct currency for temple purchases (for a small fee). Then you have to purchase the animal suitable for the sacrifice, which would be a lot more expensive than market rates. (Now you know the background of the story of Jesus upsetting the tables of the money-changers and letting the animals out of their pens in the temple outer courtyard). By the time Joe has purchased his animal and led it to the priests for sacrifice (one quick upward slice into the jugular to make sure all the blood drains out), he has quite an investment in this animal. But after the sacrificial ritual Joe only receives a portion of the meat in return to share and eat with his family. The priests keep the majority, but they can eat only so much, so they sell the rest to the local butcher shops.

The temple in Jerusalem was a religious monopoly, and the high priestly families worked it to their advantage, and produced significant profits that they then invested in purchasing farm land around Palestine. So the average person suffered economically from this religious arrangement. The high priestly family served at the pleasure of the Roman governor, so they had to be on good terms with Romans and do nothing to upset the Roman authorities.

But the imperial Roman government based in Rome exacted high taxes from the lands they occupied and Palestine was no exception, and these high taxes and the underlying resentment of them by the average person is the background for the question to Jesus about paying taxes to Caesar, in wanting to see if Jesus would advocate tax resistance. But the fact that his questioners had a Roman coin in their possession showed which side of that debate they were on.

The high taxation also was a major factor in the revolt that took place in 66 CE. To enforce their rule and put down revolts the Romans garrisoned troops in Palestine, and this was another sore point with the average person. Most people were happy to stay clear of any Romans. To the average rural Galilean, life was trying to scratch an agricultural living out of rocky soil on land that the person did not even own.

The high rate of taxation was a major sore point with the working class people. No wonder tax collectors were despised by the local population, in addition to the fact that such people often over-stated the taxes due and pocketed the difference for themselves (thus the economic/moral significance of the Zacchaeus story). But the smoldering resentment brought on by the economic and political oppression did not result in a multitude of overt acts of violent resistance during Jesus' time, but only became organized much later into an armed revolt (year 66 CE). Scholars are divided on exactly how much of a role this oppression-resentment factor actually plays in understanding the life of Jesus, even if it was part of the social background. One thing is for sure, the Romans were brutal in enforcing their control on the land of Palestine and everyone knew it.

Ehrman, Chapter 3, Judaism in the Time of Jesus

In Chapter 3, Ehrman provides us with much useful information about the religious environment into which Jesus was born and out of which Christianity emerged. Worthy of note is the Box 3.1 on page 29, about the Septuagint. Ignore the part about the legend behind the translation. The key feature is the fact that even Judaism had been heavily affected by the spread of Greek language and culture (referring to the process of "Hellenization" mentioned in the last Blog entry). While Jesus was very much a part of Aramaic speaking Judaism, Aramaic speaking Jews do not seem to have latched on to Christianity in any great numbers. But the response was much better among Greek speaking Jews.

Notice that in Acts 2, when Luke reports that the Jesus people (120 in number) began telling the message of Jesus in at least 14 different languages, the message of Jesus is going out to Jews (either pilgrims to the festival or foreign born Jews living in Jerusalem)for whom Aramaic is not their first language. This event, quickly puts the whole idea of Christianity into the ears of Jews who had connections throughout the entire eastern Mediterranean region. This is a precursor to the fact that Christianity did catch on among Greek speaking Jews. The first two we meet in the Bible are Stephen and Saul(Paul) in Acts 6&7.

Back to the Septuagint. What Ehrman says in Box 3.1 is well taken, especially the first and the last paragraphs. The entire NT was originally composed in Greek, and it is entirely possible that all of the NT writers were born Jewish and spoke Greek (I do realize that tradition says that the author of Luke-Acts was born pagan). This explains why the Old Testament quotations are taken from the Septuagint (the Septuagint is still the official Old Testament of the Greek Orthodox Church. After Christianity began to catch on in the Roman empire, even the "Diaspora" Jews ditched Greek and went back to Hebrew).

What we find is that Judaism in the time of Jesus was multi-faceted both in terms of language (speaking both Aramaic and Greek, and some scholars would have been able to speak Hebrew, while all Jewish scholars would have been able to read Hebrew) and holding a variety of belief patterns. In Palestine we know about the Pharisees, Sadducees, Essenes, and Zealots, as well as the disciples of John the Baptist and probably other smaller groups like Jesus and his disciples. We really do Not know much about Judaism outside of Palestine during this time. Even when the scholarly Jew, Philo of Alexandria (in Egypt), speaks of the varieties of Judaism in the first century CE, what he says is very similar to the Palestinian born Josephus (see Box 3.2 on page 35). But we cannot be sure if that implies that there are representatives of the four main groups of Jews (Pharisees, Sadducees, Essenes & Zealots) outside of Palestine or not. Interestingly, Paul apparently meets disciples of John the Baptist in Ephesus (west coast of modern day Turkey) (see Acts 19:1-3).

Ehrman gives a very good summary of these four groups within Palestinian Judaism, based on what is actually known about them. When scholars refers to these four groups as "sects" they intend to imply that these do no represent the majority of Jews in Palestine. Sometimes we think of a sect as if it is a cult, but that word sect and cult mean things much different in religious academic speak than what they mean in modern everyday English. A sect is a well defined group that has its own rules for belonging and is intended to keep together people of a particular like-minded religious way of life. A cult is any kind of regular religious ritual activity that is repeated according to a specific set of rules. The "cult" that is most important to the New Testament is the sacrificial "cult" that operates everyday in the Jerusalem Temple involv8ing the ritual slaughter of animals as religious sacrifices.

I find it disappointing that Ehrman did not expand upon the this statement he makes on page 36, column 2: "I should emphasize at the outset that most Jews in Palestine did not belong to any of these groups." But Ehrman never says how these ordinary Jews actually practiced their faith. Here is my best answer on that.

The average Palestinian Jew in the time of Jesus probably did not work on Saturday, may have attended synagogue services, if his town had a synagogue (women did not participate directly in the practice of the Jewish religion at this time to my knowledge; thus the significance of the Martha & Mary episode in Luke 10:39). A major feature of Judaism of this time was attendance at the annual festivals in Jerusalem whenever possible. The temple in Jerusalem was the center of the practice of Judaism in the time of Jesus. Orthodox Judaism as we know it today, where the synagogue is the focus of any communal worship only came into prominence after the destruction of the temple in 70 CE and the subsequent emergence of Rabbinic Judaism based on the traditions of the elders (the Pharisees' oral law). The central features of most temple festivals would have been special events (processions) at the temple or to the temple, certain animal sacrifices (such as the lambs at Passover), and having a festive meal with the meat. As we see in Luke 2 in which 12 year Jesus gos to Jerusalem for the Passover, often large contingents of people from a village would travel together to such a temple festival.

The annual Jerusalem temple festivals in which male Israelites were expected to attend were: Pessah (Passover), Shavuot (Feast of Weeks or Pentecost) and Sukkot (Feast of Tabernacles or Booths). Other temple festivals people might want to attend were Yom Kippur (Day of Atonement) and Rosh Hashanah (New Year). Other annual festivals would be celebrated at home, including Hanukkah and Purim. And perhaps most importantly would be the family evening meal marking the beginning of every Shabat (Sabbath) with the special blessing said over the cup and the bread ( the beginning of a Jewish day begins at sundown and continues to the next sundown).

In addition to the festivals the average Jewish person would be expected refrain from work on the Sabbath and to eat kosher in the broad sense of no swine or shellfish (I won't attempt to explain the details they are very complex. If you are every interested in the intricacies of Orthodox Judaism, go their American web site at www.ou.org/ and scroll down the left side until your get to Judaism 101, click on that and you will find everything you might want to know about the current practice of Rabbinic Judaism).

A note on synagogues. Traditional Rabbinic Judaism believes that synagogues as a gathering of men for prayer on the Sabbath began during the Babylonian exile. However, the existence of synagogues as buildings for prayer does not seem to predate Jesus by much. Notice that according to Luke 7:5 the synagogue in Capernaum was built recently and paid for by a Roman army officer no less. There is no archaeological evidence of synagogues to be found before the first century CE. Therefore, during the time of Jesus they were just coming into being as buildings (though men probably gathered for Sabbath prayer in someone's home prior to that). Some scholars suggest that perhaps the buildings doubled as community centers since there is evidence that during the early centuries CE the Torah scrolls were kept at the Rabbi's house during the week and only transported to the synagogue building on the Sabbath.

Also worth careful reading is Ehrman's page 34, column 2 on the events that led up to the Maccabean revolt. One of the more accessible sources for these events is the book in your NOAB 1 Maccabees. This revolt marked the beginning of new ways of thinking for Palestinian Judaism. First that it was worth the potential loss of life to revolt against a non-Jewish occupying power. This also happens during the time of the Roman occupation (which began in 63 BCE) on several occasions, but the revolt of 66 CE (when the Roman government was in disarray) was the only (temporarily) successful revolt during the time of the Roman occupation. The second thing that seems to emerge out of this era is the development of what we call apocalyptic religious expectations, which usually included the expectation of dramatic divine intervention to aid the Jewish cause in against a foreign power or against a demonic power (and the two could be one and the same). But more on apocalypticism later.

Ehrman, Chapter 2, the Greco-Roman World

The content of chapter 2 in Ehrman is much more useful for understanding what the Apostle Paul encountered in his attempts to spread the Christian message in a pagan world than anything that occurs in the life of Jesus. Paul's mission was to take the message of Jesus to the pagan world. Jesus lived a rather provincial life in Palestine, remaining among people who spoke Aramaic (the common spoken dialect of Hebrew in Palestine).

Granted there were Greek cities in Palestine at the time of Jesus, whose inhabitants would be a combination of pagans and Greek speaking Jews. Some New Testament scholars like to speculate that Jesus would have spent time in these cities, especially since one of them, Sepphoris, was close to Nazareth. I find this rather unlikely since all the towns that are mentioned in the Gospels in connection with Jesus would have had only Aramaic as the local language (including Jerusalem).

Ehrman does provide a good sketch of Greco-Roman religiosity (pages 17-25). Though the information here is much more useful in understanding what is going on in Acts and 1 Corinthians than anything that happens in the Gospels. One point that cannot be over-emphasized is what Ehrman says about Hellenization in Box 2.2 (page 16). The word might seem funny, but that is because we call the place Greece, following the example of the Latin speaking Romans. In Greece itself, in the Greek language their country is call "Hellas". So that's why scholars came up with the term Hellenization to explain the process of how the Mediterranean world became dominated by Greek language, (and to a lesser degree) by Greek culture and customs in the 300 years after the death of Alexander the Great.

This might be hard for us to grasp today, because we look at the Mediterranean world post Muhammad, in which the Greek speaking Christian cultures of Palestine, Syria, Asia Minor and North Africa were not prepared militarily to resist the rapid advance of Islam. One hundred years after the death of the prophet Muhammad, Islam had advanced across northern Africa, through Spain and into southern France, while also threatening Byzantine Constantinople, all by 750 CE, using the proven evangelizing technique of "convert or die." But prior to the spread of Islam, from the time of Alexander the dominant language around the Mediterranean world was Greek, which was especially the language of international commerce from even the time before Alexander because of the dominance of Greek merchant ships on the Mediterranean Sea.

Thus the Greek language dominated in the east until the arrival of Islam. Even in Jerusalem, the language of the Christian liturgy (i.e. worship services) changed from Aramaic to Greek Greek became the language of the liturgy (worship) in western Europe because the first converts to Christianity were among Greek speaking Jews (especially in Rome). So the Greek language still held sway in worship in the early centuries of Christianity in Rome, even when the majority of converts would be Latin speaking people. In the Christian "west" (western Europe and western north Africa) sometime around 250-300 CE the language used in Christian worship began to shift from Greek to Latin, but this process was not complete until after 400 CE.

As can be expected, Ehrman throws in his section on "One Remarkable Life" to take a dig at Christians. I suspect Ehrman is overstating his case when he says that Jesus was just "one of many" miracle workers whose followers called him the "Son of God." No one I know of comes as close to resembling Jesus as Apollonius, though there were many who used some form of "magic" to impress people and get them to follow them. You can find a perfect example in Acts 8 with Simon Magus (of whom we also know from sources outside Acts) who had such a reputation as a miracle worker (I would think the word charlatan would be appropriate here) that people believed the power of a pagan god worked through him.

Also of questionable reliability is the source that Ehrman uses, the Life of Apollonius by Philotratus. You will soon discover that Ehrman does not consider the Gospels in the New Testament very reliable sources of the sayings and actions of Jesus for two reasons. First, Ehrman does not believe miracles can happen. Many modern Biblical scholars agree with him on this. Likewise with the second point, which is: if the sayings of Jesus were not written down until about 70 CE, there must have been much alteration of the sayings of Jesus as they were passed on by word of mouth for 40 years. So Ehrman (like many other modern scholars) does not believe the NT Gospels offer a reliable portrayal of the life of Jesus.

Now, my next dig at Ehrman on Apollonius. If the 40 years between the death of Jesus and the time his sayings were written down renders them of suspect historical reliability, what about the 150 years between the death of Apollonius and the time that Philostratus wrote the story of his life? I would say that this renders the truthfulness of the Life of Apollonius even more suspect. Of course all of this is irrelevant to Ehrman; his main point is to try to erase any features about Jesus that might seem to us to be unique. To Ehrman, Christianity is just another ancient religion founded on false pretenses.

Ehrman, Chapter 1

What Ehrman writes is generally easy to understand, but sometimes what he says can leave the wrong impression, as when his intention is to cast some doubt on the traditional explanation of how the choice was made of those writings that came to be included in what we call the New Testament. Ehrman's operating assumption is that there were a great diversity of views on what constituted Christianity in the first two centuries after the death of Jesus. Which, in its own right is true. However, traditionally Christianity has held that there was a continuity of beliefs from Jesus to his disciples and then to those who wrote the books included in the New Testament. This handing on of the traditions about Jesus, the Apostles and the early church represents a process of development of a body of doctrine that Ehrman refers to as "proto-orthodox" (translated: emerging correct doctrine).

Certainly, there was no unanimity of beliefs in the early church. But I think Ehrman goes too far in the direction of offering the impression of a number of equally valid competing sets of beliefs among Christians of the first two centuries. I am of the opinion that the books included in the New Testament represent a consensus of beliefs among early Christians. Ehrman would counter by saying that the winners write the history. But when Ehrman presents Athanasius as "the powerful bishop of Alexandria, Egypt" who dictated what books would be in or out of the final canon (meaning "official list") as decided in 367 CE (see page 6), Ehrman overstates the case dramatically. I will explain why.

The earliest Christian writings still in existence are the letters of the Apostle Paul included in the New Testament (as you will soon discover, many modern scholars doubt that Paul actually wrote all 13 letters attributed to him). Certainly Paul was not the only Christian in 50-60CE who knew how to write. No doubt other Christians composed various writings for various purposes that did not survive.

Without taking recourse to divine providence as an explanation, the survival of Paul's letters and their overarching influence in the development of Christian doctrine is due to several factors. The first factor is that documents were not a vital part of early Christianity. Those few wealthy Christians who could afford scrolls or books of the Jewish scriptures would own them for the benefit of their local congregation. But early Christianity began as a religion of the spoken word. At the beginning of Christianity a writing about Jesus would carry no authority whatsoever, compared to someone who could come to a local gathering of Christians and say, I will tell you what I was taught by the Apostle Peter or John or some other individual who had had personal contact with Jesus during his earthly life. The direct personal link with someone who had been with Jesus was of great value in granting authority to what that person taught about Christian doctrine. The second source of authority is someone who offered to a gathered congregation some word of the Lord under the direct inspiration of the Holy Spirit (or claimed to do so). Added to this mix is the general perception in the ancient world that the mark of the educated man is the one who spoke well (that is: was an impressive orator). This bias comes out clearly in 2 Corinthians 10:10, where Paul writes in his own defense: "For they say, 'His letters are weighty and strong, but his bodily presence is weak and his speech is contemptible.'" Whatever deficiencies Paul might have had as a public orator did hinder his work in Corinth as is evidenced by the statement: "Since you desire proof that Christ is speaking in me" (2 Cor. 13:3). But his letters were impressive in their persuasive power.

We find that in some respects Paul unintentionally made possible his place in the development of Christian doctrine by taking what was then a rather novel approach to addressing problems in the churches he founded by composing letters and sending them (via an associate) to the church (rather than Paul visiting the church or having the associate attempt to speak for Paul). The true novelty to Paul's letter writing is that he (Paul) believed when his letters were read in the presence of the gathered congregation, it serves as a valid substitute for his presence, which I take to be the point that Paul is making in 1 Corinthians 5:3 where he calls the church to account for tolerating blatant immorality and states: "For though absent in body, I am present in spirit, and as if present, I have already pronounced judgment in the name of the Lord Jesus on the man who has done such a thing." Thus Paul clearly believed his letters were a substitute for his personal presence and most scholars seem to believe this is a novel concept with Paul. But where that premise was accepted by the recipients of Paul's letters, it gives those letters an added authority.

What then happens (apparently) is that Paul's letters are copied and circulated among the churches that Paul founded and then among others as well. In the writings known as the "Apostolic Fathers" is a letter by the bishop of Rome, Clement by name (90CE) to the church at Corinth, which has sought his advice on some problems they were having (apparently they were still having problems). What is most significant about this letter of Clement to the church in Corinth is that he quotes from Paul's letter to the church at Corinth (the irony of the bishop of Rome quoting the words of their founder to them, words they had first received 35 years previously). Clement's quotations from Paul's letters demonstrates that in less that 35 years, Paul's letters were not only copied and circulated among churches far from their original recipients, but that these letters have begun to take on an aura of authority. There is no reason to gather together Paul's letters, painstakingly copy these letters by hand and then circulate them among a wide range of churches unless Christians believed that these letters (which were originally written to address specific problems) possessed religious truths that were equally valid for all Christians.

Thus we have the beginning of the Christian "canon." By 180 CE the four Gospels that are now in the New Testament had widespread approval among Christians, as we know from the writing of Irenaeus, bishop of Lyon, France at that time, in his writings against the Gnostics. Irenaeus cites that these four gospels were widely accepted, and in addition to this we find that Irenaeus' theology is heavily indebted to theological concepts that originated with Paul, and Lyon (in what is now France) is a long way from Ephesus (in what is now eastern Turkey). So, by 180 CE Paul's letters and the four Gospels are widely accepted as having the status of inspired scripture equal to that of the Jewish scriptures (Old Testament). This is confirmed by a piece call the Muratorian Fragment (a portion of a Christian writing, circa 200 CE) which makes reference to the books accepted as having the status of scripture among the churches in Rome and its vicinity. Included are the four gospels, the 13 letters attributed to Paul, Acts of the Apostles, the letter of Jude, two letters of John and the apocalypse (Revelation). The rule that guided the composition of this list was whether or not a book was allowed to be read during worship. This writing (the Muratorian Fragment) makes that point clear in stating that a very popular book among the Christians in Rome, called the Shepherd of Hermas, did not make the list, even though it was copied into some collections of the New Testament.

The reason the Shepherd did not make the official list is, since it is prophecy it could not be included because the list of prophetic books is considered closed (which would include what we call the Old Testament prophets, plus Revelation), and it could not be considered apostolic (the main criteria for authenticity of those books admitted to the final form of the New Testament) because the apostolic age was considered having concluded before the Shepherd of Hermas was written. The Shepherd of Hermas is included in the list of the non-canonical early Christian writings labeled the Apostolic Fathers (the Apostolic Fathers represent early Christian books written after the time of the New Testament but whose religious views are compatible with the views found in the New Testament).

What we see from this is that by 200 CE the four gospels, Acts and the letters of Paul already have the status of sacred scripture and they form the core of what will become the New Testament. But there are numerous writing of early Christianity that do not make it into the New Testament. In my opinion, the composition of the majority of the writings of the New Testament predate any other Christian writing still in existence.

There is validity to Ehrman's view that there was a great diversity of opinion of what constituted Christianity in the early days. There is no doubt that there were competing views of what constituted Christianity right from the beginning. But I believe the difference is that the books in the New Testament can claim a direct link to the original disciples of Jesus and that there is continuity of the traditions. Whereas, with almost all of the other so-called gospels (with the possible exception of Thomas), they are dependent on the canonical gospels for any reliable information about Jesus, and much of what they do contain is either legend or flight of fancy. (You will find that Ehrman will say just that about some of the contents of the four canonical gospels).

There is no doubt about the existence of competing views of what Christianity ought to be. In Galatians, chapters 1 and 2, we find Paul recounting how hard it was for him to convince the apostles in Jerusalem that it was okay for pagans to convert to Christianity without adopting a Jewish lifestyle. It seems that Peter went along with this idea, but James the half-brother of Jesus was set against such a view and probably never changed his mind. I am sure James had the view that if my brother the Jewish Messiah lived like a Jew, then all those who wish to receive the salvation he offers must adopt a Jewish lifestyle. Paul saw Christianity as going beyond Jesus the savior of the people Israel, but Jesus the universal savior, which James (who became the defacto leader of the Jerusalem church) did not accept. James was not being closed minded, because he was eager to have the pagans convert IF they adopted a Jewish lifestyle.

Then we find Paul in Corinth dealing with competing views to his own, especially views that many scholars label proto-Gnostic (or an emerging Gnosticism), as evidenced by a Paul writing against a view point that embraces an emphasis on knowledge (gnosis in Greek)) and a denial of a future resurrection of all people at the end of time (see 1 Corinthians 15). Paul says that if you do not believe in the resurrection of all people you cannot believe in Jesus' resurrection either. In the letter to the Colossians we find a concern about a form of Christianity including worshiping angels and and an emphasis on visions (see Colossians 2:18; the question is: is this a competing form of Christianity or some other "mystery" type religion? Some scholars speculate the problem may have been a strange form of Judaized Christianity, since angels specifically belong to Judaism). Then in 2 Timothy 4:4 (a book many modern scholars believe was written long after the time of Paul) we find reference to "myths" which may be a reference to the type of divine myths the Gnostics came up with in the second century.

The writings found at Nag Hammadi clearly represent a Christian Gnosticism. But there is such great discontinuity of these writing from what is found in the new Testament and they were clearly written after most of the New Testament writings that in my opinion, they represent a reaction to the emerging orthodox Christianity, not a parallel alternative. The Gnostic writings have some material in common with the New Testament (especially in the Gospel of Thomas), but much that is not. The Nag Hammadi writings are indebted to views that derive from Neo-Platonism and some contain some really strange ideas that Jesus is purported to have secretly conveyed to his disciples (which explains why no one had ever heard of them before; they were secrets). But the way to salvation required knowing these secrets, and the Gospel of Mary Magdalene is a good example of book in with some of the trappings of a gospel, but really is a vehicle for some esoteric teaching.

But Ehrman goes a bit far, I believe, when he says that the New testament emerged from conflicts among Christian groups and that the dominance of the position that won out is what led to the development of the Christian canon as we have it today. Now since Ehrman has no personal stake in Christianity it is easy for him to say that the gospels of Peter and Philip were summarily rejected because they expressed a different view of Christianity., But I think that if you read these Gospels, I think you would be inclined to agree with me that parts of them are down right flaky, and it is no wonder they were not included in the New Testament. If you want, I will provide you with examples.

In conclusion, Ehrman gives too much credit to Athanasius for establishing the final form of the New Testament canon. First, Athanasius was simply echoing what was the commonly accepted view by that time. By 367, all of the discussions and arguments about the canon were in the past and what happened in 367 was simply a council rubber stamping the status quo so there was no question in Christianity anywhere in the vast Roman empire about what Christian writings were Christian scripture. Secondly, Athanasius was not all that powerful. He spent much of his time as bishop of Alexandria in exile in the desert. First he was banished by the Roman emperor Constantine because theologians whom Athanasius claimed had heretical views persuaded the emperor to depose Athanasius (especially the Arians who believed that Jesus was the created son of the Father not the co-eternal son of the Father as Athanasius taught). After Constantine died, Athanasius appealed to the new emperor who gave him his job of bishop back to him. But still for four more times from 335 to 366 Athanasius was exiled by those who opposed him (usually for his beliefs). Athanasius was returned to his role as bishop of Alexandria securely in 366 until his death in 373. During these last years, Athanasius was indeed a powerful force in Christianity, and enjoyed the support of the Roman emperor. However, when Ehrman speaks of the impact of the decision of the council of 367 as an example of Athanasius' power, that's stretching it a bit. While in retrospect, the views of Athanasius became normative for Christianity (as encased in the Nicene Creed), during his lifetime, there was no guarantee that Athanasius' theological views would become those embraced as normative for Christianity, since the competing views of Arius (d. 336) enjoyed wide popularity throughout Christianity, not limited to certain locals, but widespread support among priests, theologians, and lay people. The matter was not finally settled until a council convened in 381 to address the matter. But by that time nobody was arguing about what books belonged in the New Testament. That question was settled long before the decision became official.