I was a teenage werewolf

This post is a mopping up operation. It will complete my projected review of Bart Ehrman’s new book, Jesus Interrupted. I don’t plan to review the whole thing. Just enough to convey what’s wrong with it.

Darrell Bock is also reviewing his book. And I hope other scholars like Craig Blomberg will weigh in as well. I’m just a pitch-hitter.

Reading Ehrman is like watching one of those B-film horror flicks of the I was a teenage werewolf variety that kids in the 50s used to see at drive-in movie theaters. You know from one scene to the next exactly what’s going to happen. Stock villains. Predictable plot. Corny dialogue. It’s not even bad enough to be good.

“There are other books that did not make it into the Bible that at one time or another were considered canonical–other Gospels, for example, allegedly written by Jesus’ followers Peter, Thomas, and Mary” (5).

Really? What church or churches regarded these apocrypha gospels as canonical scripture? And what’s the timeframe?

“The Exodus probably did not happen as described in the Old Testament. The conquest of the Promised Land is probably based on legend” (5-6).

These are assertions in search of arguments. Various scholars like Kitchen, Hoffmeier, and Younger have argued to the contrary.

“Genesis 1 is very different from the account in Genesis 2…the two chapters use different names for God…Are the animals created before humans, as in chapter 1, or after, as in chapter 2?”

i) That’s because Gen 1 is a global creation account whereas Gen 2 is a local creation account. Gen 1 describes the creation of everything in general whereas Gen 2 is specifically concerned with the creation of man and his immediate environment (the Garden).

ii) This also reflects a standard compositional technique: “Synoptic/resumption-expansion. A Hebrew author will at times tell the whole story in brief form (synopsis), then repeat the story (resumption), adding greater detail (expansion).”

http://faculty.gordon.edu/hu/bi/Ted_Hildebrandt/OTeSources/01-Genesis/Text/Articles-Books/Futato_RainGen2_WTJ.pdf

“If ‘light’ was created on the first day of creation in Genesis 1, how is it that the sun, moon, and stars were not created until the fourth day? Where was the light coming form, if not the sun, moon, and stars? And how could there be an ‘evening and morning’ on each of the first three days if there was not sun?” (9-10).

That’s a good exegetical question, and I could to an entire post in answer to that question. For now, though, I’ll simply point out that the narrator was hardly oblivious to the fact that light normally comes from natural luminaries like the sun and moon. After all, the narrator lived long before the invention of the light bulb.

“When Noah takes the animals on the ark, does he take seven pairs of all the ‘clean’ animals, as Genesis 7:2 states, or just two pairs, as Genesis 7:9-10 indicates?” (10).

i) This is another example of the synoptic/resumptive-expansive technique (see above). “In typical Semitic style, the summary injunction to take pairs of animals into the ark is now developed by the more specific injunction to take seven pairs of clean animals,” B. Waltke, Genesis (Zondervan 2001), 137-138.

“In the Book of Exodus, God tells Moses, ‘I appeared to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob as God Almighty, but by my name ‘The Lord’ [=Yahweh] I did not make myself known to them’ (Exodus 6:3). How does this square with what is found earlier, in Genesis [15:7]?” (10).

It’s the difference between promise and fulfillment, knowledge by description and knowledge by acquaintance. Yes, God revealed his name (Yahweh) to the patriarchs, but that was in the form of covenantal promises. Now, as he is about to deliver the Israelites in fidelity to the Abrahamic covenant, the Israelites will actually experience Yahweh in the context of fulfillment.

“The fifth plague was a pestilence that killed ‘all of the livestock of the Egyptians’ (Exodus 9:5). How is it, then, that a few days later the seventh plague, of hail, was to destroy all of the Egyptian livestock in the fields (Exodus 9:21-22)? What livestock?” (10).

But as one scholar explains, “The Hebrew word kol, usually translated ‘all,’ can mean ‘all sorts of’ or ‘from all over’ or ‘all over the place.’” D. Stuart, Exodus (Broadman 2006), 223-24.

“Are we really to think of God as someone who orders the wholesale massacre of an entire city?” (10).

i) From a moral standpoint, it ultimately makes no difference whether or not God ordered it. The mere fact that it happened must mean that, at some level, God willed it to happen. That God had a purpose for that outcome. Therefore, adding an explicit divine command doesn’t change the morality of the transaction.

ii) If sinners deserve to die, God does no wrong by having them executed.

“Or what is one to make of Psalm 137…Knocking the brains out of the Babylonian babies in retaliation for what their father-soldiers did? Is this in the Bible?” (10-11).

i) What we’re to make of Ps 137 is, at a minimum, that Scripture records the bitter, grief-stricken outburst of a Jewish exile. Why does Ehrman think that inspiration is incompatible with recording a range of sentiments expressed by various speakers? Should Scripture only record the nice things that people think, do, and say? Wouldn’t that make Scripture a very unrealistic book? Presenting an airbrushed version of human experience?

There are people like the Psalmist who, under extreme duress and provocation, really feel that way. They understandably lash out at those who hurt them. Why is Scripture not allowed to even record their feelings?

ii) Does Ehrman think that Scripture automatically approves of everything it records? That’s obviously not the case.

“The God of vengeance is found not only in the Old Testament, as some Christians have tried to claim. Even in the New Testament God is a God of judgment and wrath, as any reader of the book of Revelation knows” (11).

Ehrman states this as if it were a bad thing. He doesn’t even feel the need to explain why that’s a bad thing. He treats this as self-evidently wrong. But why?

There are banana republics in which all the judges are on the take. Drug-lords murder and plunder the populace with impunity. They are answerable to no one.

Does Ehrman think that’s a good thing? What is wrong with a God who will exact vengeance on the wicked? Isn’t that what we expect a just judge to do?

“The Lake of Fire is stoked up and ready for everyone who is opposed to God. This will involve eternal burning–an everlasting punishment, even for those who have sinned against God, intermittently, say, for twenty years. Twenty trillion years of torment in exchange for twenty years of wrong living, and that’s only the beginning. Is this really worthy of God” (11).

i) First of all, this objection gets carried away with the figurative imagery.

ii) The ironic thing about someone like Ehrman is that he’s so moralistic and morally shallow at the same time. What makes him think the duration of sin ought to have any intrinsic bearing on the duration of punishment? Suppose one man is a shoplifter for 20 years while another man is a serial-killer for 20 years. Since they committed their respective crimes for the same amount of time, do they merit the same punishment?

iii) The reason that sinners sin for a finite amount of time in this life is because they die. Mortality limits their earthly career in sinning. But suppose they were immortal. Suppose they never died. In that event, they’d keep on sinning indefinitely–whether they lived to be 100 or a 1000 or a 1,000,000 years old. So what difference does it make? Death marks a cut-off point for their sinful lifestyle, here-below, but not for their sinful disposition. Were their life extended, they would continue to sin. Sin continuously for as long as they live.

iv) At it’s not as if they cease to sin once they die. They continue to sin in hell.

v) Suppose the damned spend eternity tormenting each other. How is that unjust? What is wrong with letting bad people do bad things to each other?

It’s not the place that makes hell hellish, but the hellish inhabitants.

“The authors of Job and Ecclesiastes explicitly state that there is no afterlife” (12).

To the contrary:

i) ”Qoheleth’s view of the postmortem state can be summarized by contrasting what he sees under the sun with what he knows in his heart. Under the sun human beings share the same fate as animals: both die, cease to breathe, and go to the same place (i.e. the dust), with no assurance that the fate of their spirits differs (3:19-21). In his heart, however, Qoheleth knows that God will bring to judgment both the righteous and the wicked (3:17; 11:9), and that the human spirit returns to God who gave it (12:7). The epilogist agrees and argues that people should guide their lives in light of ultimately justice,” B. Waltke, An Old Testament Theology (Zondervan 2007), 964-965.

“The tension between those texts that represent death as annihilation and others as a state from which all will be raised–the righteous to everlasting life and the wicked to everlasting shame–can be resolved in the same way the similar tension in Ecclesiastes between futility under the sun and hope is resolved: by distinguishing between what can be known by sight and by faith. Texts that refer to annihilation depict the visible phenomenon that the dead cease to exist in the land of the living and are annihilated, and texts that refer to the final judgment beyond are faith statements,” ibid. 968-969.”

ii) Ehrman should also read Elmer Smick’s commentary on Job 19:25-27.

“For me, it started making less and less sense to think that God had inspired the very words of the text if we didn’t actually have these words, if the texts had in fact been changed, in many thousands of places, most of the changes insignificant but many of the of real importance. If God wanted us to have his words, why didn’t he preserve his words?” (16).

Of course, Ehrman couldn’t even begin attack the inerrancy of Scripture unless the text were fairly secure. If he’s just attacking scribal errors, rather than the original text, then that hardly impugns the inerrancy of Scripture.

“There is no much senseless pain and misery in the world that I came to find it impossible to believe that there is good and loving God who is in control, despite my knowing all the standard rejoinders that people give” (17).

i) How does he know the pain and misery is senseless? He’s like a character in one chapter of a Russian novel.

ii) He shows no evidence of knowing all the standard rejoinders.

iii) Moreover, he’s too dimwitted to realize that atheism has no basis for morality. Even a number of secular thinkers candidly admit as much. There can be no problem of evil, much less argument from evil, if there is no evil

“It is an extremely well-documented phenomenon that people sometimes have visions of their loved ones after they died. A man sees his wife in his bedroom a month after she was buried; a woman sees her dead daughter; a girl sees her dead grandmother. Happens all the time. It is extremely we documented. In many instances the person having this experience can talk to the dead person, can give them a hug and feel them” (178).

i) The only evidence that Ehrman cites for this sweeping claim is a book by Dale Allison. Unfortunately for Ehrman, I happen to own that book. This is what Allison actually says: “Typical encounters with the recently deceased do not issue in claims about an empty tomb, nor do they lead to the founding of a new religion. And they certainly cannot explain the specific context of the words attributed to the risen Jesus. Apparitions do not, furthermore, typically eat or drink, and they are not seen by crowds of up to five hundred people,” Resurrecting Jesus (T&T Clark 2005), 283.

ii) Some Bible scholars think the intermediate state involves immediate resurrection. That’s debatable, but if it were true, then “tangible” apparitions of the dead (assuming there is such a thing) would not count as evidence against the bodily resurrection of Christ.

iii) Gary Habermas had done a lot of research on visions and apparitions, including a review of Allison’s book. As usual, Ehrman ignores evidence that’s inconvenient for his position:

http://garyhabermas.com/articles/crj_explainingaway/crj_explainingaway.htm#ch3

http://garyhabermas.com/articles/phil_christi/habermas_phil_christi_dale_allisons_res_skept.htm

iv) The Bible itself reports on visions and apparitions of the dead. Yet it distinguishes between visionary/ghostly phenomena and resurrection phenomena.

“There are documented instances of multiple people having some such visionary experience together, and not just visions of relatives. The blessed Virgin Mary appears to groups of people all the time–there are thousands of eyewitnesses” (178).

From these vague, elliptical references, I don’t have a lot of confidence that Ehrman has done much personal research on the subject.

“Maybe these things happened. But it is unlikely. In fact, from the historian’s point of view, it is virtually impossible” (178).

So it “happens all the time,” but it’s “virtually impossible.”

“If the very notion that Jesus is coming back down assumes that there is an ‘up’–what does one do with that idea in a universe such as ours where there is, literally, no up and down, except in relation to where you happen to be standing at the moment” (281).

i) But that’s exactly how Acts 1 describes the Ascension. From a local frame of reference.

ii) Moreover, Jesus didn’t keep going up, up, up until he disappeared from view or entered the Empyrean. Rather, he levitated to a certain point before the Shekinah enveloped him.

Finally, I think it’s instructive to compare Ehrman’s view of NT history with the view of his mentor, Bruce Metzger. Metzger was famous for his scholarship, Ehrman is famous for his apostasy. Put another way, Ehrman is famous for being infamous. Just compare his approach to NT history with the approach of a real scholar like Metzger:

There were several circumstances that tended to prevent the free invention of Gospel traditions. One was the presence of original eyewitnesses (Luke 1:2), who would have acted as a check upon wholesale distortion of Jesus’ words and works. Another was the rabbinical method of teaching that Jesus seems at times to have employed when impressing his message upon the memory of his disciples, thus guaranteeing a high degree of fidelity in its transmission.

A consideration of the actual state of the evidence will lead one to the conclusion that there was no large-scale introduction of extraneous materials into the Gospels…The total absence of parables in the teaching of the apostles, as reported in the book of Acts and the twenty-one Letters of the New Testament, indicates that, so far from their being the creation of the early church, the Gospel parables reflect the authentic teaching method and message of Jesus.

A simple test can be made to determine the extent to which extraneous materials have been taken into the gospels. One of the most influential figures in the early church was the apostle Paul. His Letters, which date from the time when many of the Gospel traditions were taking shape, abound in pithy sentences and spiritual insights that could easily have been transferred to Jesus and presented as oracles of the Lord. If it be asked how many times this has happened, the answer must be Not once!

Furthermore, it is noteworthy that Jesus’ followers felt obliged to transmit his sayings even though some were not understood at the time and others became increasingly embarrassing to the church…The early church could have allowed such sayings to fall into oblivion, yet these and others have been faithfully preserved despite strong pressures to modify or forget them.

It is also necessary that the historian have access to reliable source material. What were the sources, both written and oral, available to Luke? The following have been suggested, with more or less probability, as sources lying behind the book of Acts.

(1) In three sections of Acts (16:10-17; 20:5-21:18; and 27:1-28:16) the author changes his style from the third person (“he,” “him,” “they,” “them”) to the first person plural (“we,” “our,” “us”) These “we” passages give the impression that the author was present and participated in the events that he describes. It may be that in these passages, which contain a wealth of details, Luke utilized notes that he had taken in diary form. If this is so, the “we” passages rest upon written sources drawn up by an eyewitness.
(2) At Antioch a copy of the decrees of the apostolic council (Acts 21:25) may have been available to Luke.
(3) It is not improbable that there were written archives in the possession of the church at Jerusalem that Luke would have been able to consult.
The “we” sections provide evidence of the author’s presence in a variety of places and in company with various persons, from whom he could have secured additional information for his history of the church. Among the possible oral sources that have been suggested are the following:
(4) While living at Antioch Luke may have received information concerning the Herodian dynasty from Manaen (Acts 13:1), an Antiochian Christian who was a member of the court of Herod the tetrach. In this way one could account for the fact that among the four Gospels the one by Luke contains the most detailed information about the Herodian family.
(5) Luke’s intimate acquaintance with Paul would have enabled him to secure information concerning the earlier life and work of the apostle before they became companions.
(6) At Caesarea Luke stayed at the home of Philip the evangelist (Acts 21:8), from whom he could have learned about events that led to the appointment of the Seven (Acts 6:1-6), as well as Philip’s experience with the Ethiopian official (8:26-40).
(7) In Acts 21:6 reference is made to the author’s lodging with a certain “Manason of Cyprus, an early disciple.” It is possible that Luke learned from him concerning affairs of the church in Cyprus which, so far as we know, Luke never visited.
(8) While in Jerusalem, Luke would have had opportunity to consult with James, from whom he may have learned about the apostolic council (Acts 15:1-29) and other events in Judea of importance concerning the growing church.
(9) Finally, from remarks made by Paul at the close of several of his letters (e.g. Colossians and Philemon), it appears that Silas and Timothy were with Paul when Luke was also present. From these and other leaders of the early church Luke would have had opportunity to glean further information.

B. Metzger, The New Testament: Its Background, Growth, and Content (Abingdon 2003), 103-106,199-200.

The hidden contradictions of Ehrman

I’m continuing my review of Bart Ehrman’s new book, Jesus Interrupted (HarperOne 2009). Now I’ll examine some the errors he imputes to the NT. In a subsequent post, I’ll examine some of the errors he imputes to the OT.

Ehrman is banking on the fact that the average reader doesn’t have access to good commentaries and other reference works. His presentation is deliberately one-sided. Also, the natural constituency for his material are fellow unbelievers. Because he’s pandering to a sympathetic audience, he thinks he can get away with deception–and, to some extent–he’s right.

For several reasons, I’m not going to discuss every single example. For one thing, life is short. I have other projects. Furthermore, I already discussed some of his stock objection in This Joyful Eastertide. Finally, there’s nothing he mentions that a good commentary wouldn’t address.

But I’m going to examine some representative examples to illustrate how untrustworthy he is in presenting the evidence.

The Infancy of Jesus

“A careful comparison of the two accounts [in Matthew & Luke] also shows internal discrepancies…The wise men, who are following a star (presumably it took some time) come to worship Jesus in his house in Bethlehem… Joseph and Mary are still living in Bethlehem months or even a year or more after the birth of Jesus. So how can Luke be right when he says that they are from Nazareth and returned there just a month or so after Jesus’ birth?” (34).

Matthew doesn’t say they were “still” living in Bethlehem, as if they were living there continuously.

“In Matthew’s account they are not originally from Nazareth but from Bethlehem.”

Matthew doesn’t say where they’re “originally” from. Moreover, it would hardly be surprising if Mary’s hometown was different from Joseph’s. They’re husband and wife, not brother and sister.

“Even more obvious, though, is the discrepancy involved with the events after Jesus’ birth. If Matthew is right that the family escaped to Egypt, how can Luke be right that they returned directly to Nazareth?” (34).

Because the flight to Egypt occurred some time after the return to Nazareth.

The Cleansing of the Temple

“The Gospel of Mark indicates that it was in the last week of his life that Jesus ‘cleansed the Temple’…whereas according to John this happened at the very beginning of his ministry (John 2). Some readers have thought that Jesus must have cleansed the Temple twice, once at the beginning of his ministry and once at the end. But that would mean that neither Mark nor John tells the ‘true’ story, since in both accounts he cleanses the temple only once” (7).

i) It's possible that Jesus did it twice. As an omnipotent being, who's going to stop him from doing it a second time?

ii) There's a difference between the order in which John mentions an event and the order in which it happened. If John is dictating his oral history to a scribe, he may mention the cleansing of the temple because that's what he had on his mind on day particular day, when he was reminiscing about the ministry of Christ. Consider how older relatives recount incidents in their lives in no particular chronological order. So the sequence may simply reflect what was uppermost in John's mind on that day, and not a chronological claim.

Cockcrow

Predictably, Ehrman also raises the musty canard about the timing of Peter’s denials. But as one commentator explains:

“Why then does Mark have the cock crowing twice, and later make a point of mentioning the crowings in his narrative at vv.72? The simplest explanation, particularly for those who take seriously the tradition that Peter was himself the source of much of the material in Mark’s gospel, is that Mark preserves the account in its fullest and most detailed form (as Peter himself would have remembered and repeated it), but that the double cockcrow was omitted as an unnecessary additional detail in the other accounts. There is after all nothing improbable in a repeated crowing: even a single cock would be unlikely to crow once and then stop, and if there were others in the neighborhood they would take it up,” R. France, The Gospel of Mark (Eerdmans 2002), 579.

In this same connection, Ehrman exclaims that,

“In order to resolve the tension between the Gospels the interpreter has to write his own Gospel, which is unlike any of the Gospels founding the New Testament. And isn’t it a bit absurd to say that, in effect, only “my” Gospel–the one I create from parts of the four in the New Testament–is the right one, and the others are only partially right?” (7-8).

Once again, is Ehrman really that stupid? If he is asking us how one account relates to another, then, of course, we have to go beyond the confines of any one account to show how they’re interrelated. By definition, a relation involves two or more relata. And the harmonistic exercise is generated by his demand.

Two Angels?

Regarding the number of angels at the tomb, he says,

“Do they see a man, as Mark says, or two men (Luke), or an angel (Matthew)? This is normally reconciled by saying that the women actually saw ‘two angels.’…The problem is that this kind of reconciling again requires one to assert that what really happened is unlike what any of the Gospels say–since none of the three accounts states that the women saw ‘two angels’” (8).

i) In Scripture, angels often appear as men.

ii) The Bible sometimes uses stock numbers. Two may be a stock number.

iii) Angels appear and disappear at will. The fact that they are visible in the tomb at one point doesn't mean they are continuously present in the tomb.

iv) For that matter, our perception of angels may well be telepathic. Two observers could look in the same direction, one sees an angel while the other doesn't because the angel only projects himself into the mind of one observer.

How Many Signs?

Ehrman thinks there’s a discrepancy in the number of signs Jesus performed (Jn 2:11,23; 4:54). But as one commentator explains, “The reference to a ‘second sign’ here is to the second sign Jesus performed after he had come from Judea to Galilee,” A. Köstenberger, John (Baker 2004), 172.

Throughout his book, Ehrman does an excellent job, not of proving the Bible to be in error, but proving Ehrman to be in error.

The Farewell Discourse

Commenting on the apparent discrepancy between Jn 13:36, 14:5, and 16:5, Ehrman says “either Jesus had a very short attention span or there is something strange going on with the sources for these chapters, creating an odd kind of disconnect” (9).

But this is well-trodden ground in the exegetical literature. As one scholar explains,

“The alternative reading attempts to take account of the characterization of the disciples in the discourse as a whole. It notes that Jesus does not say ‘None of you has asked me’ but ‘None of you is asking me,’ thus drawing the readers’ attention to the difference between the present response of the disciples and their response at the beginning of the discourse. Their earlier superficial questioning has revealed a total lack of compression about the implications Jesus’ departure. Since the last question from a disciple, Jesus has given uninterrupted teaching from 14:23-16:4. As Jesus’ comment in v6 makes clear, now at least the disciples’ lack of questioning indicates a partial, if still very inadequate, understanding,” A. Lincoln, The Gospel According to Saint John (Continuum 2005), 418.

The Chronology of the Passion

Ehrman asserts a contradiction between Markan chronology and Johannine chronology on the timing of the Passion. There are harmonizations that Ehrman fails to tell the reader:

http://triablogue.blogspot.com/2014/06/johns-passion-week-chronology.html

https://triablogue.blogspot.com/2017/11/passover-and-last-supper.html

The Genealogies of Jesus

“The real problem they pose, however, is that the two genealogies are actually quite different” (37).

This objection assumes that there is only one way to reckon descent. But as one scholar points out, that’s a dubious assumption:

“Obviously, in a small and close-knit community, there is every probability that someone could trace their descent from the same source by two or more different routes. The Maori themselves can give several different genealogies for themselves, depending on which ancestor they want to highlight and how much intermarrying has taken place. Different tribal sub-units can trace their descent in different ways for different purposes, resulting in criss-crossing links of all sorts.”
“This is so even in modern Western society. After my own parents married, they discovered that they were distant cousins with one remove of generation. Think of the little country of Israel in the period between David and Jesus; similar things could easily have happened. Many could have traced their descent to the same ancestors by at least two routes,” Tom Wright, Luke for Everyone (WJK 2004), 39-40.

Ehrman has another complaint:

“The problem is that the fourteen-fourteen-fourteen schema doesn’t actually work…In the third set of fourteen there are in fact only thirteen generations. Moreover…It turns out that Matthew left out some names…” (38).

i) It’s true that his tabulation is selective. So what? This is not meant to be a pure genealogy. Rather, it’s an exercise in gematria. So we’d expect the arrangement to be somewhat stylized. Matthew is writing to Jews, using Jewish conventions.

ii) As to the alleged numerical discrepancy, there are at least two explanations:

a) ”In this statement [v11] the genealogist needs to evoke the end of the David kingship, with the collapse of the nation and exile…How can all this be evoked? We recall that in Septuagintal usage the grandson of Josiah is called either ‘Jechoniah’ or ‘Jehoiakim,’ in the latter sense using the same name as for the father…In the statement, ‘Jechoniah’ is first and foremost himself, but secondarily a cipher for the father with whom he shares a name.”
”The third fourteen takes us from Jechoniah to Jesus, and are achieved by counting both Jechoniah and Jesus. The genealogist probably does not consider this to be double counting because in counting Jechoniah in the second fourteen, he really had in mind Jehoiakim; this leaves Jechoniah actually to be counted in his own right in the third fourteen,” J. Nolland, The Gospel of Matthew (Eerdmans 2006), 84-86.

b) ”Matthew's numerically structured genealogy parallels this arbitrary schematization of Israel's history. Moreover, the supposed discrepancy between the statement of verse 17 that there are fourteen generations from the Babylonian deportation to the Messiah and the actual number thirteen names listed in the table is resolved by it. Indeed, it is in the third division of the genealogy that the scheme of twelve plus two or fourteen has its real application. That is, there are twelve ancestors and Jesus the Messiah who, in contrast to all the other individuals in the family tree is to be counted twice. He represents two generations, not consecutively, but simultaneously from the beginning of his life.”

“His birth marks the end of the age of exile…He is ‘the king of the Jews’ who draws the Magi from the east, and "they rejoice with exceeding great joy’ when they arrive at his home in Bethlehem in order to pay him homage. But his birth also elicits the dreadful response of Herod the Great who dispatches his soldiers to slaughter all the infant boys in Bethlehem and the surrounding regions. Jesus as the sole survivor of this massacre becomes the bearer of this holocaust character and will embody its judgment at the end of his life when this sequence of the new age and death will be reversed…Because Jesus' life is the ground on which the consummating events of history occur, he is the bearer of two generations. His death not only relates him to the thirteenth episode in the scheme of the Messiah Apocalypse; the resurrection of the saints effected by the emission of his final divine breath of life (27:50), links him to the fourteenth, the beginning of a new time.”
http://www.religion-online.org/showarticle.asp?title=30

Because Ehrman always assumes that Scripture must be wrong, he makes no effort to understand it. As such, we’re treated to a steady stream of superficial objections. Real scholars try to understand what the writer is saying.

The Baptism of Christ

“Mark especially is quite clear about the matter, for he states, after telling of the baptism, that Jesus left ‘immediately’ for the wilderness…In John…the day after John the Baptist borne witness to the Spirit descending on Jesus as a dove at baptism (John 1:29-34), he sees Jesus again…(John is quite explicit, stating that this occurred ‘the next day’)” (40-41).

But “immediately” (Gr.=euthus] is just a stylistic feature of Markan syntax–occurring some 40 times in his Gospel. In Markan usage it doesn’t generally carry any special temporal significance. Most of the time it functions “merely [as] a connective conjunction,” N. Turner, Grammar of New Testament Greek, vol. III (T&T Clark 1980), 229. Doesn’t Ehrman know Greek?

The Census of Quirinius

“The historical problems with Luke are even more pronounced. For one thing, we have relatively good records for the reign of Caesar Augustus, and there is no mention anywhere in any of them of an empire-wide census for which everyone had to register by returning to their ancestral homes…If the Gospels are right that Jesus’ birth occurred during Herod’s reign, then Luke cannot also be right that it happened when Quirinius was the governor of Syria. We know from a range of other historical sources, including the Roman historian Tacitus, the Jewish historian Josephus, and several ancient inscriptions, that Quirinius did not become governor of Syria until 6CE, ten years after the death of Herod” (32-34).

i) Josephus may simply be wrong:

https://www.etsjets.org/files/JETS-PDFs/54/54-1/JETS_54-1_65-87_Rhoads.pdf

ii) Luke's statement may be hyperbolic. Hyperbole is a deliberate overstatement for rhetorical effect. The Bible often resorts to hyperbole. For example, “Then the earth reeled and rocked; the foundations also of the mountains trembled and quaked, because he was angry” (Ps 18:7).

Luke is fond of hyperbole, as Robert Stein has documented in his commentary on the Gospel of Luke. If Lk 2:1-2 is hyperbolic, then all this means is that Luke is telescoping a number of events in time and place as if they all took place at one time.

Hyperbole is not an error. It would only be erroneous if the author intended to be strictly accurate. Hyperbole is a standard rhetorical device. Luke’s original audience would appreciate that fact. Ehrman is simply tone-deaf to Luke’s literary conventions.

The Death of Judas

“Luke wrote a second volume to accompany his Gospel, the Book of Acts. Acts gives an account of what happened to Judas after the betrayal, as does the Gospel of Matthew, but it is striking that the two accounts stand directly at odds with each other on a number of points…the two reports give different accounts of how Judas died…And they are flat out contradictory on two other points: how purchased the field (the priests, as per Matthew, or Judas, as per Acts?) and why the field was called the field of blood (because it was purchased with blood money, as Matthew says, or because Jesus bled all over it, as Acts says?)” (46-47).

i) There are striking differences in how Matthew and Acts report this event. But even in that respect, it's equally striking that both accounts say the death of Judas occurred at the same place (the "Field of Blood"). If, however, these are independent legends, then how do you explain that parallel? It only makes sense if both accounts have a common source in a common event. Judas did indeed die at that location. 

ii) The description of events in biblical narration is generally quite sketchy, so there are many variations on how to visualize the an event happened. 

iii) Suppose Judas hanged himself on the branch of a tree on the ridge of a hill. There's nothing unrealistic about that scenario. 

Suppose, in addition, Judas didn't simply fall from the tree. Suppose the rope didn't break from the weight. Rather, what if the body was pulled down. 

By what, you ask? What about scavenger dogs? It's not unrealistic to posit scavenger dogs. We know they exist. Packs of dogs on the prowl for carrion. That happens. 

If the dogs got on their hind legs, perhaps supported by the tree trunk or the corpse, grabbed the corpse by the armpit, and kept tugging, and if that dislodged the corpse, the corpse wouldn't just fall down but fall over. It wouldn't fall feetfirst but headfirst. For the very act of pulling it down would reposition the corpse. 

(Incidentally, I once saw a nature show in which photographers hung meat from a branch to photograph the reaction of lions. The lions were very persistent in attempting to pull the meat down.) 

The only remaining question is if it falls headfirst, does it land headfirst? I'm no expert, but when we watch swimmers highdive (10 meters), they dive headfirst and land headfirst. Their body doesn't change position in mid-fall. 

From what I can tell, there's nothing unrealistic about my harmonization. These are things that naturally happen.

iv) Suppose you have a corpse that falls from a hilltop. The slope of a hill means that it's narrower on top but spreads out further down. Depending on the slope, a body could tumble down a hill. It's in one position when it begins the descent, but rolls over and over, picking up speed on the way down. It's in a different position when it reaches bottom.

v) Or a corpse might begin the descent feetfirst in freefall for several yards, then strike the side of the hill one or more times. Bouncing off the hillside repositions the body. 

vi) Matthew doesn't say where Judas hanged himself. Acts doesn't say where Judas hanged himself. It indicates where he landed. All it says (in Greek) is that:

He acquired a field from the reward of unrighteousness, and falling headlong he burst open in the middle and all his guts spilled out. 

He may well have hanged himself in a different location above the Field of Blood, then his falling corpse landed in the Field of Blood. For instance, Mount Olivet has an elevation of 2684 feet while the adjacent peak (Mount Scopus) has an elevation of 2710 feet. If, say, he hanged himself on the branch of an olive tree high on the hillside of Mount Olivet, it's easy to imagine the falling body splattering over the field when it hit the ground. 

It's possible that the tree was dislodged by seismic activity (Mt 27:51; 28:2). 

There's nothing ingenious about these explanations. They're realistic, commonplace scenarios. 

The Triumphal Entry

“When Jesus entered Jerusalem during the Triumphal Entry, how many animals did he ride?” (50).

i) To begin with, the syntax is ambiguous:

“Addition of the prefix leads to a change of Mark’s επ αυτον, ‘on him,’ to επανω αυτων, ‘on top of them,’ which probably refers to the saddle garments rather than to the animals…It is doubtful that he intends his readers to visualize a trick rider balancing himself on two animals at the same time. Therefore we are to think that the garments were draped over both animals, just as in modern Palestine both mother donkeys and their unridden colts trotting after them have garments put across their backs…Though Jesus sat on top of the garments only on the colt, the association of the garmented mother makes a kind of wider throne,” R. Gundry, Matthew (Eerdmans 1994), 410.

ii) Moreover, even if we think the second auton refers to the animals, it’s pedantic to assume that Matthew took this literally: “it hardly means that the evangelist alleges that Jesus actually sat upon both animals at once (!) or even in succession. Instead it means that here the two animals, which were kept so closely together, are conceptually regarded as a single, inseparable unit,” D. Hagner, Matthew 14-28 (Nelson 1995), 595.

The Thirty Pieces of Silver

“When Matthew indicates that Judas betrayed Jesus for thirty piece of silver, he notes (as we now expect of him) that this was spoken in fulfillment of Scripture…The problem is that this prophecy is not found in Jeremiah. It appears to be a loose quotation of Zechariah 11:3)” (51).

But as one commentator explains,

“This is not, however, a simple quotation of a single text, but a mosaic of scriptural motifs, some of which do in fact come from Jeremiah (see below). Like the combined quotation of Mark 1:2-3, it is attributed to the better known of the prophets concerned, even though its opening words are from the minor prophet. As a ‘quotation’ about a potter’s field it was naturally associated with Jeremiah as the prophet most memorably associated with potters and with the buying of a field. Note that Matthew’s attributed quotations name only the major prophets Isaiah and Jeremiah…together with one specific allusion to Daniel (24:15), while formal quotations drawn from the minor prophets are elsewhere left anonymous,” R. France, The Gospel of Matthew (Eerdmans 2007), 1042-1043.
“Some interpreters are content to consider ‘Jeremiah” in Mt 27:9 a simple mistake, indicating limited access to scriptural texts on the part of Matthew. But the series of links with texts in Jeremiah which we have been exploring count strongly against this view. Matthew has other quotations that merge texts: Mt 2:5-6 merges Mi 5:1 with 2 Sa 5:2; Mt 21:4-5 merges Is 62:11 and Zc 9:9,” J. Nolland, The Gospel of Matthew (Eerdmans 2005), 1156n322.
“Given his ability to retranslate the entire Hebrew text based on revocalization…it is unlikely that Matthew simply got his attribution wrong,” C. Keener, A Commentary on the Gospel of Matthew (Eerdmans 1999), 657n140.

Throughout these objections, Ehrman thinks he’s being oh-so clever when he merely exposes himself as shallow, ignorant, and obtuse.

The Lucan Paul

Ehrman also plays up alleged discrepancies between Acts and the Pauline epistles on the life of Paul.

To correlate one man’s writing with another man’s writing is obviously a complicated business. There are entire books that defend the Lucan Paul. From reading Ehrman, the uninitiated would never know that this material even exists. For example:

Hemer, C. The Book of Acts in the Setting of Hellenistic History (Eisenbrauns 1990)

Porter, S. Paul in Acts (Hendrickson 2001)

Riesner, R. Paul’s Early Period: Chronology, Mission Strategy, Theology (Eerdmans 1998).

Ehrman may be a competent textual critic, but when he strays from his field of expertise, he comes across a nothing more than big-name hack.

Lukan Christology

“Historical critics have long disagreed among themselves concerning just how reliable the book of Acts is for understanding the life and writings of Paul. My personal view is that Acts is about as accurate for Paul as Luke’s first volume, the Gospel of Luke is, for Jesus: much of the basic information is probably reliable, but a lot of the details managed to get changed,” B. Ehrman, Jesus Interrupted, 54.

That’s a remarkable admission on the lips of an atheist. Supernaturalism is a pervasive feature of Luke’s Gospel as well as the Book of Acts.

Moreover, Luke has a high Christology, as scholars like Simon Gathercole (The Preexistent Son: Recovering the Christologies of Matthew, Mark, and Luke) and Larry Hurtado (Lord Jesus Christ: Devotion to Jesus in Earliest Christianity) have documented.

If Luke is reliable on the basics, then how can you be an atheist?

"Who Wrote the Bible?"

I’m continuing my review of Bart Erhman’s new book, Jesus Interrupted (HarperOne 2009). In chapter 4 he has a skeptical discussion regarding the authorship of Scripture. Here are the highlights–or lowlights.

“But the reality is that eyewitnesses cannot be trusted to give historically accurate accounts. They never could be trusted and can’t be trusted still” (103).

i) If true, then that would be most unfortunate for Bart Ehrman since he likes to regale his readers with stories about his student days at Moody, Wheaton, and Princeton. But by his own disclaimer, Ehrman can’t be trusted to furnish accurate accounts of his personal experience at those institutions.

ii) Another casualty of this statement is the way it disarms him from attacking the Bible by opposing biblical accounts to extrabiblical accounts. For example, he assures the reader that the census of Quirinius (in Luke) is inaccurate because it (allegedly) contradicts our extrabiblical sources of information. But, of course, he must rely on the testimonial evidence of period historians (e.g. Tacitus, Josephus) to make that comparison. Yet if testimonial evidence is unreliable, then he loses his standard of comparison.

“A further reality is that all the Gospels were written anonymously, and none of the writers claims to be an eyewitness” (103).

i) That’s an assertion, not an argument. And it disregards evidence to the contrary. Cf. R. Bauckham, Jesus And the Eyewitnesses (Eerdmans 2017).

ii) But suppose that every book of the NT was loaded with explicit, eyewitness descriptions of Jesus’ teaching and deeds. How would Ehrman respond to that? Wouldn’t he dismiss all such claims as pseudepigraphical? For somebody like Ehrman, the presence or absence of an eyewitness claim is just a diversionary tactic.

If the author of a NT document doesn’t lay claim to eyewitness testimony, then Ehrman will dismiss its historicity since the author lacks firsthand information–but if the author of a NT document does lay claim to eyewitness testimony, then Ehrman will dismiss its historicity since the author must be a forger. Heads I win, tails you lose!

“Names are attached to the titles of the Gospels (‘the Gospel according to Matthew’), but these titles are later additions to the Gospels, provided by editors and scribes to inform readers who the editors thought were the authorities behind the different versions” (103).

i) That’s an odd statement coming from a textual critic. To my knowledge, there’s no textual evidence that the Gospels ever circulated anonymously.

ii) Actually, I think readers would naturally be curious to know who the author was.

iii) But let’s assume for the sake of argument that the first gospel originally circulated anonymously. And let’s assume Markan priority. Once more than was Gospel was in circulation, it would then be necessary to add titles to distinguish them. Yet even by Ehrman’s liberal dating scheme, all for Gospels were written in the 1C. So even if titles were added to the gospels at a later date, that could well be within the lifetime of the Gospel writers.

Indeed, if Mark was already in circulation when Matthew, Mark, and John published their respective Gospels, then wouldn’t we expect them to entitle their own Gospels, to distinguish one from the other?

iv) Incidentally, Martin Hegel has discussed the originality of the superscriptions in his book The Four Gospels and the One Gospel of Jesus Christ (Trinity 2000), 48-56, 78-106.

As usual, Ehrman disregards any counterevidence that’s inconvenient for his own theory.

“Authors never title their books ‘according to’” (104).

i) Is that a fact? Let’s put this claim to a little test, shall we? I did a quick search of Amazon.com. Here’s what I pulled up:

Books › "according to"

Showing 1 - 12 of 12,264 Results

ii) In chapter 6 of his book, Ehrman mentions some apocryphal gospels like the Gospel of Thomas, Gospel of Peter, and Gospel of the Ebionites. But to judge by his statement on p104, he must think that all these apocryphal gospels originally circulated anonymously. Or does that only apply to canonical gospels, and not apocryphal gospels? If so, then why so?

“Moreover, Matthew’s Gospel is written completely in the third person” (104).

i) Isn't that a stock convention of ancient historiography?

http://triablogue.blogspot.com/2018/05/illeism.html

ii) If Matthew were written in the first-person, don’t you suppose Ehrman would be quick to dismiss that fact as a pseudonymic pose?

iii) A writer may also employ the same narrative viewpoint, whether first-person or third-person, for stylistic uniformity, rather than oscillating between one and the other.

“With John it is even more clear…Note how the author differentiates between his source of information…and himself [21:24]…”He/we: this author is not the discipline. He claims to have gotten some of his information from the disciple” (104).

Several problems:

i) Even if we deny the Johannine authorship of the Fourth Gospel, it could still be the work of an eyewitness. Ehrman is committing a non sequitur. You don’t need to be the apostle John to be an eyewitness. And the Fourth Gospels contains some explicit eyewitness statements at strategic turning-points in the narrative.

ii) Even if we treat Jn 21 as an editorial postscript, that doesn’t mean someone other than John wrote the first 20 chapters. More likely, this would be a posthumous obituary or eulogy (like Deut 34)–occasioned by the death of John. I incline to the view that the postscript was occasioned by the death of Peter rather than John.

iii) However, there’s no particular reason to treat Jn 21 as an editorial postscript. On the basis of period literary usage, Köstenberger shows how the third-person usage in 21:24 is probably a self-referential literary convention, and not an editorial addition. Cf. A. Köstenberger, “I Suppose” (oιμαι): The Conclusion of John’s Gospel in Its Literary and Historical Context,” P. Williams et al eds. The New Testament in its First Century Setting (Eerdmans 2004), 72-88.

As usual, Ehrman ignores counterevidence that’s inconvenient for his position.

“How many could read? Illiteracy was widespread throughout the Roman Empire…Nothing in the Gospels or Acts indicates that Jesus’ followers could read, let alone write. In fact there is an account in Acts in which Peter and John are said to be ‘unlettered’ (Acts 4:13)–the ancient word for illiterate. As Galilean Jews, Jesus’ followers, like Jesus himself, would have been speakers of Aramaic. As rural folk they probably would not have any knowledge of Greek; if they did, it would have been extremely rough, since they spent their time with other illiterate Aramaic-speaking peasants trying to eke out a hand-to-mouth existence,” 105-06.

There’s so much wrong with this depiction that it’s hard to know where to begin:

i) For the sake of argument, let’s grant all of his faulty assumptions. Suppose the disciples were illiterate. So what? You don’t have to be a literate to be an eyewitness. You don’t have to be literate to remember what an eyewitness told you. And you don’t have to be literate to dictate a book.

An illiterate writer might sound like an oxymoron, but it’s not. Even ancient authors who knew how to write often found it more convenient to dictate their material to a scribe.

ii) Ehrman is willfully blurring the distinction between Jesus’ disciples and NT writers. Take the Gospels.

a) There’s no evidence that Matthew was an Aramaic-speaking peasant. Given his occupation as a tax-collector, we’d expect him to be a bilingual urbanite. After all, he had to work with the Roman authorities on a regular basis.

b) Mark was not an Aramaic-speaking peasant. He was an urbanite (Acts 12:12). Probably bilingual. Since his mother hosted a house-church, he wasn’t a slaveboy. He came from a family of some means. As one scholar explains, “The description in Acts 12[:12] suggests a large house with a gateway (πυλον) which acts as a buffer between the inner courtyard and the rooms and the street,” B. Blue, “Acts and the House Church,” D. Gill & C. Gempf, The Book of Acts in Its Graeco-Roman Setting (Eerdmans 1994), 135

c) Luke was not an Aramaic-speaking peasant. He was a Gentile, Probably a proselyte. As a physician, he was a well-educated man.

d) What about John? John wasn’t merely an Aramaic-speaking peasant, out in the sticks. He evidently maintained a residence in Jerusalem (Jn 19:27). And the über-liberal Bishop Robinson has made some of the following observations:

“Moreover the Zebedees were evidently not poor. Salome, if she was his wife, was among the women of Galilee who contributed to the support of Jesus (Mk 15:40f.) out of their resources (Lk 8:2f.). They owned their own boats (Lk 5:3), and employed servants (Mk 1:20)…Fishing on the Sea of Galilee was good business…Galilee supplied the whole of Palestine except the coast, as it does today,” J. Robinson, The Priority of John (Meyer-Stone 1987), 116.

Robinson also marshals various lines of evidence to show that John was a kinsman of the high priest. Ibid. 63ff.; 121f. He’s not a country bumpkins.

As usual, Ehrman ignores counterevidence that’s inconvenient for his position.

iii) As another scholar points out,

”The impressive discoveries in Galilee in general and in Sapphoris in particular have forced New Testament interpreters to reevaluate several things. For one, it is no longer tenable to think of Jesus as having grown up in rustic isolation–as was fashionable to think for so long. Jesus grew up in a village within reasonable walking distance from a large urban center…Furthermore, the great number of Greek inscriptions as well as Greek literary finds in the Dead Sea region has led many scholars to conclude that Greek was spoken by many Jews in Galilee,” C. Evans, Fabricating Jesus (IVP 2006), 113-14.

As usual, Ehrman ignores counterevidence that’s inconvenient for his position.

iv) Ehrman disregards evidence for Jewish literacy in Herodian Palestine and urban centers in the Roman Empire, viz,

Alan Millard, Reading and Writing in the Time of Jesus (NUY 2000).

“Zechariah Wrote (Luke 1:63)” P. Williams et al eds. The New Testament in its First Century Setting (Eerdmans 2004), 47-55.

https://larryhurtado.wordpress.com/2018/11/01/literacies-in-the-roman-world/

http://www.jgrchj.net/volume4/JGRChJ4-3_Poirer.pdf

https://baptist21.com/blog-posts/2018/triumph-christianitys-reading-practices-faulty-assumptions-swept-biblical-scholarship/

https://www.academia.edu/13211795/_Ancient_Literacy_in_New_Testament_Research_Incorporating_a_Few_More_Lines_of_Enquiry_TrinJ_36_2015_161-189

iv) As for Acts 4:13, “It refers to one who is ‘without letters’–unschooled or lacking formal education (BDAG 15). It need not mean ‘unable to read’ but simply that the person lacks a certain level of skills. Kraus (1999) has a careful study of both terms [agrammatoi…idiotai] in this phrase. In this context, it is religious instruction that is primarily meant,” D. Bock, Acts (Baker 2007), 195.

“As I’ve indicated, only about 10 percent of the people in the Roman Empire, at best, could read, even fewer could write out sentences, far fewer still could actually compose narratives on a rudimentary level, and very few indeed could compose extended literary works like the Gospels. To be sure, the Gospels are not the most refined books to appear in the empire–far from it. Still they are coherent narratives written by highly trained authors who knew how to construct a story and carry out their literary aims with finesse” (106).

Other issues aside (see above):

i) One doesn’t need any formal education whatsoever to tell a good story. Appalachian hillbillies can be spellbinding storytellers. That’s more a matter of natural talent, fostered by an oral culture. Not book larnin’ required!

ii) Moreover, the Gospel writers aren’t “constructing stories” from scratch, like a novelist. Rather, they’re selecting and arranging major events in the life of Christ. Even if they were illiterate, it would be like oral history: dictating your life to a stenographer.

iii) The Gospels also reflect what we’d expect from the varied educational levels of their respective authors. For example, Luke has more literary finesse than Matthew, Mark, or John. And that’s hardly surprising since he was, in all likelihood, better educated than the rest.

John is very subtle and sophisticated, but not the least bit academic in tone. He uses simple diction, simple syntax, simple metaphors. Quite different from Paul, or the author of Hebrews.

iv) Fact is–in times where access to higher education was limited, you had a lot of very smart people around little or no formal education. I had a grandmother who, after a game of bridge, would phone a friend the next day and proceed to recount every card that was played. She was a small-town housewife. Her husband had a friend who, when he had to wait at a RR crossing for the train to pass, would later tell the passenger what was in every boxcar. He had total recall of the code numbers on the side of the boxcars, and what they stood for. I had an aunt with a natural knack for foreign languages. For example, she could master the African click languages–which is the despair of many a linguist. She happened to be a highly educated woman, but had she been born a century earlier, or born into an Indian lower caste, or into a strict Muslim culture, that that ability would never have been cultivated.

Back then you had men and women with extraordinary abilities who, due to limited opportunities, led very ordinary lives.

v) Then there’s a little thing called inspiration. God can empower quite ordinary men to do quite extraordinary things. Martyn Lloyd-Jones mentions one such case:

“One night Humphrey Jones was speaking with exceptional power and David Morgan was profoundly affected. He said later, ‘I went to be that night just David Morgan as usual. I woke up the next morning feeling like a lion, feeling that I was filled with the power of the Holy Ghost.’ At that time had had been a minister for a number of years. He was always a good man, not outstanding–in fact just an ordinary preacher. Nothing much happened as the result of his preaching. But he woke up that next morning feeling like a lion, and began to preach with such power that people were converted in large numbers followed by rejoicing; and additions to the churches followed. This went on for over two years; wherever this man went tremendous results took place…Such was the type of ministry exercised by David Morgan for about two years. What was the end of his story? Years later he said, ‘I went to be one night still feeling like a lion, filled with this strange power that I had enjoyed for the two years. I woke up the next morning and found that I had become David Morgan once more.’ He lived for about fifteen years afterwards during which he exercised a most ordinary ministry,” Preaching & Preachers (Zondervan 1972), 322-23.

God can do remarkable things with unremarkable vessels.

“Whoever these authors were, they were unusually gifted Christians of a later generation. Scholars debate where they lived and worked, but their ignorance of Palestinian geography and Jewish customs suggests they composed their works somewhere else in the empire…” (106).

This is just a bare assertion. Major commentaries on the four gospels by scholars like Blomberg, Bock, France, Keener, Nolland, and Stein refute these facile accusations.

Ehrman denies the Pauline authorship of 2 Thessalonians because its eschatology allegedly contradicts the eschatology of 1 Thessalonians:

“Paul goes on to reiterate what he had told them when he was among them (1 Thes 5:1-2), that Jesus’ coming would be sudden and unexpected, ‘like a thief in the night’ (1 Thes 5:2). It would bring ‘sudden destruction’ (1 Thes 5:3), and so the Thessalonians had to be constantly prepared so that it would not overtake them unexpected. If Paul mean what he said in 1 Thessalonians, that Jesus’ return would be sudden and unexpected, it is hard to believe that he could have written what is said in 2 Thessalonians–that the end is not coming right away and that there will be clear-cut signs to indicate that the end is near, signs that have not yet appear” (125).

That's discussed in standard commentaries, viz. Weima, Shogren, Fee,

“The author of 1 John doesn’t’ say anything about himself. The author could be almost any leader of the church near the end of the first century” (134).

i) This is patently false. The author explicitly identifies himself as an eyewitness to the historical Christ (1 Jn 1:1ff.).

ii) Moreover, based on style and content, 1 John clearly shares common authorship with the Gospel of John.

“What is certain is that whoever wrote 2 Peter did not also write 1 Peter: the writing styles are vastly different” (135).

But there’s a basic problem with this stylistic comparison. As one scholar points out,

“Of interest here is the fact that preformed material makes up at least one-third of II Peter and that other verses, although less easy to identify as such, may also represent traditional idiom (e.g. II Pet 1:2,5b-7; 3:18). That is, like other New Testament letters II Peter, although a carefully formed unity, is composed to a considerable extent from preformed materials that are somewhat reworked to for the purpose of the author,” E. Ellis, The Making of the New Testament Documents (Brill 2002), 133.

But in that event, we wouldn’t expect 2 Peter to be written in a Petrine style–whatever that is. Rather, 2 Peter would reflect the style of the secondary source material which Peter incorporated into his letter.

As usual, Ehrman disregards evidence that’s inconvenient for his position.

“But again, how likely is it that a simple fisherman from rural Galilee suddenly developed skills in Greek literary composition?” (135).

Aside from the straw man depiction of Peter’s background, this is one of those vague, impressionistic objections that fails to actually engage in the spadework of a detailed, comparative analysis. By contrast, let’s consider some of what a real scholar has said on the subject:

“At the level of syntax, the Greek of 1 Peter arguably exhibits bilingual interference that is consistent with a Semitic author for whom Greek is a second language (see the excursus at the end of the book). This is perhaps the most telling feature of the Greek of 1 Peter, for a letter’s syntax flows almost subconsciously from an author’s proficiency with the language, unlike the deliberate structure, content, and ornamentation of a discourse…A comparison of 1 Peter with Josephus and Polybius clearly shows that its syntax is not nearly as ‘good’ as the classical writer Polybius, or even as good as the Palestinian Jewish writer Josephus, if ‘good’ is defined as the Greek style and syntax of a native proficient writer. Syntax criticism (see excursus) shows that the author of 1 Peter had not attained the same mastery of Greek that Josephus had in at least four areas…Since Semitic languages were limited to Palestine and adjoining areas in the first century, the author of 1 Peter was probably not a Greek or Latin-speaking Roman or a Christian elder in Asia Minor, as has sometimes been proposed,” K. Jobes, 1 Peter (Baker 2005), 7-8.

Like many men and women with Ivy League degrees, it takes a lot of formal education to be as ignorant as Ehrman.

Josephus Judged By A Different Standard

I've been discussing inconsistencies in how skeptics treat ancient non-Christian sources and how they treat ancient Christian sources. An example is Jon Curry's treatment of Josephus, contrasted with his treatment of Christian sources of antiquity. Yesterday, he posted a few more responses to me on the subject. One is in the thread here and the other two are in a new thread here. I'm going to review some of his inconsistencies in light of his latest responses.

Textual Transmission

Jon writes:

I don't know what Bart Ehrman has to do with it. Everybody knows that the earliest NT manuscripts are dated far closer to the originals than the earliest manuscripts of Josephus....

Late manuscripts are not ideal, but in and of themselves they don't necessarily indicate a problem. It's a problem if it is clear that there is a widespread effort to modify the texts, forge documents in the name of said authors, etc.

I explained the relevance of Bart Ehrman in a previous response to Jon. Ehrman is an opponent of Christianity, and Jon often cites him, including on textual issues.

And Ehrman doesn't just refer to the earliness of manuscripts. He refers to the quality of the textual evidence as a whole. He ranks the New Testament higher than Josephus. Yet, Jon accepts the text of Josephus, basing his arguments for the reliability of Josephus on the textual details, while casting doubt on the New Testament text.

In a discussion with James White on the July 13, 2006 edition of the "Dividing Line" webcast, Jon brought up the lateness of the gospel manuscripts in support of the concept that the text of the gospels might have been changed. He didn't add the qualifiers that he does above. He later described that discussion with James White:

"James White and I were discussing Mt 17 and whether it is possible that the text could be corrupted without manuscript evidence. I said (working from memory) that the first copies we have of it are something like 3rd century." (source)

In another context, he wrote:

"I am not of the opinion that changes can't occur without hard manuscript evidence in 400 years." (source)

And elsewhere:

"The problem is we don't know what form these gospels would have taken [when Justin Martyr referred to them]. There is no guarantee that the gospels they were seeing are the same gospels we see." (source)

Why propose textual corruption in Matthew 17 without any textual evidence? Why make references, like those above, to the timing of the manuscripts if the manuscripts can be as late as those of Josephus, yet still be reliable? Why does Jon place so much emphasis on lateness and textual doubts when discussing the New Testament textual record, but not when discussing Josephus?

Robert Price, whose work Jon often cites, claims that the New Testament manuscripts are too late to refute his theories concerning the alteration of the New Testament documents. When Jon repeatedly makes comments such as the ones cited above, and he repeatedly cites the work of men like Robert Price, who are so dismissive of the reliability of the New Testament text, why would we conclude that he trusts the New Testament text? And if he doesn't trust the New Testament text, then why does he trust the Josephan text?

Authorship

Jon writes:

I've already explained that we don't trust Josephus because we know that his name is Josephus rather than Steve. There are details in his writings which make good sense as reliable information. Encyclopadaeic details, eyewitness information, details that we would expect Josephus could reliably know based upon the position he attained (we know the autobiography of Josephus. We have nothing like that from the gospel authors).

Earlier, Jon referred to Josephus as an eyewitness. But, again, how does he know that the author was an eyewitness without knowing who the author was? How can you know "the position he attained" if you don't know who the author was? How does Jon know that the information in Josephus is "eyewitness information"? When discussing the New Testament, Jon tells us that forgers can lie, that they can write as if they're eyewitnesses, that they can write with verisimilitude, etc. Jon told us:

"You mention statements of verisimilitude...The forger is not an idiot. He knows to add references to (past) important people to make off the cuff remarks which gives the appearance that this really has the form of a genine letter from Paul. This proves nothing." (source)

Jon thinks that it "proves nothing" if an alleged letter of Paul gives autobiographical information about Paul, is realistic, makes historically accurate statements, etc. A forger "is not an idiot", and he would write with verisimilitude. Yet, he claims that "we know the autobiography of Josephus" on the basis of what the Josephan documents tell us. He isn't applying his standards consistently.

Remember, Jon has frequently referred to ancient sources as if he accepts the authorship attributions of the documents, often referring to how Irenaeus wrote a particular document, how Tertullian was a Christian who wrote a particular document and lived at a particular time, etc. Though he's now trying to avoid giving a defense of the Josephan authorship of the documents traditionally attributed to Josephus, how plausible would it be for Jon to keep trying to avoid such a defense for the ancient sources he addresses? Internal evidence can only take you so far.

Internal Consistency

Jon writes:

First of all, I have no problem with Josephus using assistants....

Paul Maier similarly recognizes deficiencies in Josephus.

Once again, so what? I have no problem with your quote from Maier. If you want to be consistent then, would you similarly tell us about the deficiencies and inaccuracies contained in the NT?

The overall lesson here is a good one. Be skeptical when reading an ancient author when he is discussing subjects where you might expect him to have a bias.

As I explained earlier, Jon's previous comments on Josephus were much more restrained than what I cited from scholars like J.J. Scott and Paul Maier. Jon tells us that he agrees with what I cited from those scholars, but one of the points I was making was that Jon initially didn't give us such an assessment of Josephus. He was much more restrained in his treatment of Josephus than he is in his treatment of Christian sources.

The sources I cited refer to inconsistencies in Josephus. Paul Maier tells us:

"At times he is inconsistent in statements made in The Jewish War when compared with those in Antiquities, even if many of these may be understood as corrections in the latter writing on the basis of better knowledge. The discrepancies between The Jewish War and his Vita, however, are more serious. They include irreconcilable versions of a brutal incident involving Josephus's activities at Taricheae (Magdala) in Galilee, when enemies tried to attack him in his lodging." (The New Complete Works Of Josephus [Grand Rapids, Michigan: Kregel Publications, 1999], p. 14)

J.J. Scott notes that "Parallel sections of different works have unreconcilable variants." (in Joel Green, et al., edd., Dictionary Of Jesus And The Gospels [Downers Grove, Illinois: InterVarsity Press, 1992], p. 393) Steve Mason refers to "countless changes and contradictions" (Josephus, Judea, And Christian Origins [Peabody, Massachusetts: Hendrickson Publishers, 2009], p. 42).

When Jon was discussing the letters attributed to Paul, he didn't just conclude that inconsistencies in the Pauline documents reflect "deficiencies in Paul" or "bias" on Paul's part. Rather, he concluded that inconsistencies suggest forgery:

"As I'm sure you are aware, pretty much all critical scholars admit that Paul could not have written 1 and 2 Timothy and Titus. The vocabulary issues and things like the implied church structure (again like Ignatius representing a later, catholicizing of Paul) rule out Paul....Ephesians is also doubted by most critical scholars for reasons I've already explained. In addition to Goodspeed's table, you also have these long sentences, again completely outside the style of Paul, where these Pauline phrases from the other texts are linked together with clauses, again suggesting that this book is nothing more than an attempt to patch together Pauline phrases gleaned from other texts....With Galatians and I Corinthians you have independent factions with rival conceptions of how Paul operates. In Galatians he's an independent maverick that got the gospel from none other than the risen Christ himself. As opposed to I Cor which says that he got the very heart of the gospel directly from the Jerusalem apostles. There are indications that these texts are patchwork quilts. For instance, what of sectarian strife? At the beginning of I Cor Paul knows all of the issues, what's going on who's involved. Later (11:18) he talks about how he hears there are divisions and he's tempted to believe it, as if he knows nothing of it. In one section women can prophesy in public (11), a few chapters later (14) suddenly they can't." (source)

To be consistent, Jon ought to conclude that the writings attributed to Josephus are "patchwork quilts", forgeries composed by multiple unknown authors. Instead, he keeps referring to the author as "Josephus", keeps claiming that we know his biography, keeps referring to him as if he's one person who had help from other people in composing his writings, accuses him of "deficiencies" and "bias" rather than concluding that the documents are forgeries, etc.

Jon suggests that I'm not being consistent, since I don't acknowledge inconsistencies in the New Testament, just as there are inconsistencies in Josephus. He also writes:

So how does this work, Jason? If I were to concede that Josephus used an assistant I must therefore permit you to invoke an amanuensis whenever you feel the need to get yourself out of a tight spot?...

After all, Josephus used an assistant, so now I'm free to invoke it whenever I find myself in a tight spot. Explain to me the logical principles you use to come up with these rules.

There are several problems with that line of argumentation:

1. I have reasons to believe in the Divine inspiration of the New Testament authors, which I don't have for Josephus. To repeat an example I cited in a discussion with Jon a few years ago, I have reason to give a scientist the benefit of the doubt if he refers to the sun rising. He probably knows that the sun doesn't actually rise. If a four-year-old refers to the sun rising, I don't give him the same benefit of the doubt.

2. I've argued for the Divine inspiration of the New Testament at length, including in discussions with Jon. Interested readers can consult this blog's archives.

3. I don't believe that there are inconsistencies in the New Testament, whereas Jon does believe that there are inconsistencies in Josephus. I don't see the two sources as being comparable in that regard. Jon does, yet he treats Josephus in a significantly different manner, as I've demonstrated.

4. Josephus isn't the only ancient source who used assistants in the process of composing documents. It was a common practice. I haven't argued that Josephus alone justifies an assumption of the use of assistants "whenever I find myself in a tight spot". And I haven't cited the use of assistants "whenever I find myself in a tight spot".

5. As the sources I've already cited explain, the text of Josephus doesn't tell us every time one writer is replacing another or the specific role each contributor had. When Jon assumes that assistants under the primary author's direction are responsible for the inconsistencies, should we conclude that Jon is making that assumption "whenever he finds himself in a tight spot"?

6. The potential for abuse runs both ways. Just as somebody can appeal to the use of assistants too often, so also somebody can neglect the role of assistants too often.

7. Notice that while Jon dismisses the external evidence for every New Testament document as if it has little significance, he's resistant to a much lesser diminishment of internal evidence. The acknowledgement of the potential involvement of assistants in the composing of a document still leaves the door open to other means of judging a document by its internal contents (anachronisms, conceptual contradictions, etc.). But Jon wants the door open wider. He wants it to be easier to dismiss every document he dislikes. The fact that writing assistants were commonly used in antiquity doesn't become any less of a fact just because it favors Christianity.

External Consistency

Jon writes:

What documents can I present that permit cross checking [of Josephus]? Go back to my argument about an appropriate use of a scholar and an inappropriate use. A claim from a scholar that this is done [that Josephus is cross checked] is proof of the point. If you dispute the point, then it wouldn't make sense for me to just cite the scholar. I would need to look into the evidence. Do you dispute the point?

I'm addressing whether Jon is being consistent with his own professed standards in the process of arriving at his conclusion. Whether I agree with Jon's conclusion is irrelevant. The issue under consideration is how Jon gets to that conclusion and whether that means of getting there is consistent with the standards he's applied to Christianity. I value external evidence more than Jon does. I don't consider ancient people as undiscerning as Jon does. Etc. We have some different standards. The question is, if Jon judges Josephus to be reliable by comparing him to a Roman historian, for example, then why does Jon trust that Roman historian? How does he maintain trust in that Roman historian while applying the same sort of radical skepticism that he applies to Christian sources?

Steve Mason explains that Josephus is our only source for most of what he writes (Josephus, Judea, And Christian Origins [Peabody, Massachusetts: Hendrickson Publishers, 2009], p. 16). Keep in mind what I said in a previous post about the nature of what Jon and his source, Robert Eisenman, have said about Josephus. Jon trusts Josephus as a "reliable historian" in general, which implies that he trusts at least some of the accounts Josephus gives for which we have no other source. Yet, if a letter of Paul or the book of Acts is realistic or historically accurate, Jon suggests that a forger wrote the document with verisimilitude and that we shouldn't assume that the author is trustworthy where we can't check him against other sources. Jon needs to explain what sources he's comparing Josephus to and why he thinks that Josephus' verisimilitude on those matters warrants our trust in him on other matters.

Forgeries


Jon writes:

Are people forging documents in the name of Josephus? No.

Contrary to what Jon claims, some people have been interested in attaching Josephus' name to documents he didn't write. The Slavonic Josephus is an example. 4 Maccabees was falsely attributed to Josephus at times (Eusebius, Church History, 3:10). So was the Discourse To The Greeks Concerning Hades.

And why does Jon suggest that for forgeries to be relevant, they must be "in the name of Josephus"? Here's an example of what Jon said about forgeries previously:

"Clearly early Christians were not so ethical as to not put false documentation forward. You can start by looking at all the false gospels. Acts of Pilate. Gospel of Mary. Gospel of Thomas. Infancy Gospel of Thomas." (source)

Are any of the New Testament documents attributed to Pilate? To Mary? To Thomas? No. And when Jon tries to cast doubt on the authorship attribution of a document like the gospel of Matthew by mentioning the existence of forgeries, he doesn't limit himself to forgeries done in the name of Matthew. Rather, he refers to the large number of forgeries in general, including ones that don't bear Matthew's name. Jon isn't limiting himself to forgeries done in the name of a purported New Testament author. He's referring to forgeries in general. Why, then, when discussing Josephus, would he limit the forgeries to those done in the name of Josephus? The writings of Josephus come from a Jewish and Roman context, and they were largely transmitted in a Christian context. There were many Jewish and Roman forgeries in antiquity, and there were many Christian forgeries. The writings of Josephus come from an environment in which there were many forgeries, but Jon is trying to avoid drawing the same implications from that fact that he draws from the parallel situation with New Testament documents.

Moral Standards

Jon writes:

Certain scholars regard Josephus as "an incurable liar" and otherwise question his integrity....

I wouldn't be a bit surprised.

Remember, Jon said earlier that he trusts Josephus as a "reliable historian". He and his source, Robert Eisenman, trust Josephus to honestly tell us "everything he can remember within the parameters of his own necessary well-being and personal survival". They "marvel" at the "encyclopedic" information Josephus gives them. Etc. While Jon is still so willing to trust Josephus, he speculates that Christians may have been dishonest even when we don't have evidence to that effect, and he'll dismiss somebody like Tertullian as "vicious" and "wicked" based on much less evidence than we have against Josephus:

"Suppose a church father was dishonest and pushed for acceptance of a book he knew wasn't authentic. How would we ever know? Would we expect a secret book containing admissions of wicked deeds? We do know that many of these fathers and 'saints' are vicious, wicked people. Cyril of Alexandria and Tertullian come to mind as just two examples." (source)

The "how would we ever know" reasoning can be applied to both Christian and non-Christian sources, including Josephus.

While we're on the subject of moral standards, I want to address a charge that Jon keeps bringing up against Eusebius:

It's possible that Eusebius himself composed the TF [a passage in Josephus about Jesus]. It doesn't exist in writings prior to him. But we would expect that Eusebius would love to see Josephus assert that Jesus is the Messiah. We would expect that Eusebius is embarrassed at the total lack of mention of Jesus from historians that existed at the time of Jesus. So we might suspect that he could concoct such things.

Jon ought to interact with the contrary evidence that Chris Price has presented. And if Josephus, who was born after Jesus' death and didn't write as a historian until a few decades later, is to be considered a "historian who existed at the time of Jesus", then why not conclude the same about Tacitus, who mentions Jesus and wrote shortly after Josephus? How does Jon know which sources extant at that time did and didn't mention Jesus? Given that the ancient Christians and their opponents agreed about the historicity of Jesus and other facts about Him, I would say that what's "embarrassing" is the lack of ancient sources who agreed with Jon's position that Jesus didn't exist.

Anachronisms

Jon writes:

If Josephus is mistaken about the Canon, how does this imply forgery?

Many scholars think that the Old Testament canon wasn't as settled as Josephus portrays it at the time when Josephus is supposed to have written. The canon didn't become so settled until later. Thus, it could be argued that Josephus couldn't have written in such a manner.

Jon takes a similar approach, though with less evidence, toward the book of Romans:

"Romans implies knowledge of the destruction of the temple. Chapter 11 talks about how the Jew's table has become a death trap, and that the Jews en masse had rejected Christianity. Can this really be clear to anybody writing no later than 63 under Nero?" (source)

In that thread linked above, I explain why Jon's view of Romans 11 is unlikely. But if we're to apply Jon's reasoning to Romans, why not apply it to Josephus as well? Such a facile dismissal of Romans can be matched by a facile dismissal of Josephus.

A Bad Argument Against Irenaeus

Jon Curry keeps repeating a bad argument that's been answered already:

What do we do with Irenaeus when he tells us Jesus lived to the age of 50 and we know he wants this to be true to combat so called heretics? What should we think when he similarly tells us that the apostle John wrote the 4th gospel? We know he wants to give the text apostolic authority. Shouldn't we approach such claims cautiously? I think so. Jason doesn't. He just takes it at face value. He wants that one to be true, but doesn't want the claim of Jesus living to the age of 50 to be true. So he accepts the former and rejects the latter. Is this a consistent methodology?

It's a bad argument to begin with. I've answered it multiple times already. And Jon doesn't even attempt to interact with what I've said on the subject. Compare his comments above to what I wrote in response to him more than two years ago, especially in the last post of the thread.