Suppose that sometime around the year 3,800 A.D., someone wrote a newspaper that began: "According to a recently-discovered document, which appears to have been written sometime before 1926, Benedict Arnold did not attempt to betray George Washington and the American cause, as is commonly believed. Rather, Benedict Arnold was acting at the request of George Washington, because Washington wanted Arnold to help him create a dictatorship of the proletariat and the abolition of private property."
A reader who knew her ancient history would recognize that the newly-discovered "Arnold document" was almost certainly not a historically accurate account of the relationship between George Washington and Benedict Arnold. The reader would know that the terms "dictatorship of the proletariat" and "abolition of private property" come from a political philosophy, Marxism, which was created long after Washington and Arnold were dead. The reader would also know that the most reliable records from the 18th century provided no support for the theory that Washington or Arnold favored a dictatorship of the proletariat or the abolition of private property.
This Friday's coverage of the so-called "Gospel of Judas" in much of the U.S. media was appallingly stupid. The Judas gospel is interesting in its own right, but the notion that it disproves, or casts into doubt, the traditional orthodox understanding of the betrayal of Jesus is preposterous.
In the March 2 issue of USA Today, ancient Egyptian documents expert James Robinson correctly predicted that the owners of the Judas Gospel manuscript would attempt to release it to coincide with the publicity build-up for "The DaVinci Code" movie, but explained that the "gospel" was part of a genre of pseudo-gospels from the second century onward, in which the authors simply made up the stories. In contrast, virtually all serious scholarship about the canonical gospels (Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John) believes that they were written much closer to the events they describe--sometime in the first century a.d.
The influential Christian bishop Ireneus, in his treatise Against Heresies, written in 180 a.d., denounced the Gospel of Judas as the product of a gnostic sect called the Cainites. (Book 1, ch. 31, para. 1.)
The "Gospel of Judas" asserts that Jesus asked Judas to betray Jesus so that Jesus's spirit could be liberated from its earthly body. ("You will exceed all of them. For you will sacrifice the man that clothes me.") This statement is a classic expression of gnosticism, and for that reason is antithetical to Christianity.
Unfortunately, the amazingly mendacious DaVinci Code presents a picture of gnosticism that is wildly false — so it is helpful to set the record straight about what gnostics really believed.
The roots of the Gospel of Judas and of gnosticism go back to Marcion (approx. 100-160 a.d.). After he was excommunicated for heresy, he founded his own sect, the Marcionites. The Marcionites never grew as numerous as orthodox Christians, but for several centuries they were important rivals to the orthodox.
The Marcionites believed that the physical world was created by the angry god of the Old Testament, and that Jesus had been sent by a different god, who had nothing to do with the created world. Marcionites strove to avoid all contact with the created world. They were celibate, and ultra-ascetic. They did not even allow the use of wine at communion, insisting only on bread. Consistent with this highly ascetic view, they rejected war in any form. The Marcionites also denied the authority of the Old Testament, and most of the Gospels. Their only scriptures were portions of Luke, and ten epistles from Paul. (The idea of expunging the Old Testament from the Christian Bible was reintroduced by Adolf von Harnack, a very influential late-nineteenth and early twentieth-century liberal Protestant theologian. The Nazis enthusiastically adopted Harnack’s proposal.)
The great nineteenth-century Catholic theologian John Henry Cardinal Newman explained that gnostics such as the Marcionites believed in "the intrinsic malignity of matter." The rejection of the Old Testament was necessary because the Old Testament is replete with stories about the wonders of the created world. In the first chapter of the first book of the Bible, God looked at his newly-created natural world, "and God saw that it was good." Then, "God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them....And so God saw every thing that he had made, and, behold, it was very good." The Song of Songs rejoices in a newly-married couple’s sensuous love. Ecclesiastes celebrates the natural cycle of life.
The New Testament agreed that the God who was the father of Jesus was the same God who had made the material world. In Acts, the Apostles prayed "Lord, thou are God, which has made heaven, and earth, and the sea..."
Newman also pointed out that "All the Gnostic sects seem to have condemned marriage for one or another reason." This is the opposite of the mainstream Christian view which, while recognizing that celibacy can be a special calling for some people, celebrates "holy matrimony." The Marcionites acknowledged that Jesus had been born of a woman, but claimed that the fetal Jesus never touched Mary’s body or received any nourishment from her womb.
The Marcionite and other forms of Gnostic pacifism have a reasonable internal logic. If the entire world and every human body is repulsively unclean (if one looks on the whole creation the same way that the Old Testament regarded a leprous corpse), then it makes sense never to lift a finger to defend a human being who is being attacked. Why try to preserve the evil human body from destruction? And how sinful it would seem, in the Gnostic view, to involve oneself in the material world so greatly that one would actually use a physical weapon.
The earliest Christians seem to have foreseen that something like gnosticism would attempt to substitute itself for Christianity. In the First Epistle to Timothy, Paul specifically warned about the false teaching that would arise from "doctrines of devils." The evil doctrines that would arise in "latter times" would be "Forbidding to marry, and commanding to abstain from meats, which God hath created to be received with thanksgiving of them which believe and know the truth. For every creature of God is good, and nothing to be refused, if it be received with thanksgiving."
Timothy’s instructions also drew an important parallel between the carnal eating of meat and the carnality of marriage. Both are gifts which God created for humanity.
Gnosticism’s hatred of the created world sets it in direct opposition to Jewish and Christian doctrine from the first chapter of Genesis all the way through the New Testament.
The Gospel of Judas adds no historical information to the biography of Jesus, but it does provide additional information about the gnostic heresy which thrived in the mid-second century, and which has attracted many adherents today as well.
UPDATE: Fantastic Planet provides very interesting, thoughtful commentary about the Gospel of Judas, written by a modern Gnostic.
The Judas Gospel:
[There are standard commentators who would suggest that Paul's letter served both purposes. There are some scholars who argue that the letter wasn't really written by Paul, but was written in approx. 125 a.d., and attributed to Paul, in direct response to gnosticism.]
This all seems a bigger problem for Protestants than Catholics. Catholics believe that the Bible has authority and is what the Church says it is because the Church has teaching authority and is endowed with inerrancy when speaking authoritatively on matters of faith and morals. So when the Church says Chris has two natures in one person, or that there is a trinity, or that the Gospel of Thomas is heretical while the Gospel of Mark is not, we can believe it. We believe it because the fountain of our faith is Christ and we believe he left the Church has his voice on earth. But what of Protestants. How can they believe the Counsel of Nicea and the ohter early counsels that defined doctrine (including the doctrine of which texts are inspired or not). The Bible did not come down from heaven, ready-made, and in codified form. Numerous texts floated around the early Christian Church. They were only fully codified some 300 years later, where numerous gnostic texts in particular were expelled. It's true the Gnostics thought they were Christians. So did the Arians, Nestorians, and Pelagians. But the Church said they weren't after an ecumneical counsel. And since I believe in the Bible because I believe in the Church, then I must believe that that excommunication was meaningful as well. Why do Protestants is the real question?
[DK: That's a whole other issue, but I don't think that Protestants consider themselves bound by the Council of Nicea for what constitutes the canon. That's why the intertestmental books (e.g., Judith, Macab., etc) are in the Catholic and Orthodox canons, but not in the Protestant canon.]
[DK: Careful now. I'm a carnivorous gun-owning pro-Incarnation Democrat. :) ]
But if you are studying the gospels as a historian, none of them are presumed to be historically accurate. It is of course not the case that Judas disproves anything - but none of the gospels have been proven in the first place, so the version that one believes is based on faith, not any sort of historical accuracy.
This seems similar to the idea of Hadith in Islam; these are sayings that are attributed to the prophet, and used as additional guidance to the Quran. Each one has a list of names it was passed down through, which is meant to show its authenticity; for a believer, that may be relevant, but for a historian, it matters very little. None of them were written until well after Muhammad's death, and none are independently verifiable. The same is true of the gospels.
[DK: Of course you're right; the four traditional gospels are not self-authenticating for a person outside the faith community. But I would argue that they are more reliable, on the whole, than documents about the same events which were written later. By analogy, I don't consider the Koran to be self-authenticating, but I consider it to be more reliable about Mohammad's biography than the Hadith are, because the Koran was temporally closer to the events it describes.]
[DK: The Princeton prof was Elaine Pagels. It was a pretty good quote, in the sense that she didn't say anything inaccurate, and did say something that, at least to a superficial reader, would seem to bolster the legitimacy of the Judas Gospel. A great deal of her career has been devoted to mainstreaming gnosticism back into Christianity.]
They enthusiastically adopted four-lane limited access highways, too. So?
For example, is there absolute irrefutable proof that Paul and Timothy didn't cook the whole thing up?
Speaking for one Protestant (a Lutheran, ironically) it is a matter of faith and grace. It is as simple or as complicated as that.
I was under the impression that the early Church exercised pretty stern editorial control over the gospels and it wouldnt surprise me if factual accuracy was sacrificed in favor of ideological goals. Knowing the truth is further complicated by the fact that the Church went on to become a centuries-spanning beaureacracy that would certainly have a vested interest in altering or concealing any early histories to support the stated dogma of the Church.
I'm not so much accusing the Catholic Church of being evil or mendacious as I am accusing it of being a centuries-spanning quasi-governmental institution run by human beings.
This is a pretty clear violation of Godwin's law. There may not be a bright line for use of Nazi analogies in arguments, but I am pretty confident that something this gratuitious crosses the line.
The argument is logically flawed, since early 20th century german philosophy has absolutely nothing to do with 2nd century Gnosticism beyond not being in agreement with Catholocism. Does this also mean that Jews are like Nazis because they reject dont concur with the Catholic Church on all issues?
[DK: I've argued previously, http://volokh.com/archives/archive_2006_01_29-2006_02_04.shtml#1138736303, that Godwin's Law isn't violated by discussing what the Nazis actually did. Harnack explicitly argued that Marcion had been correct about dumping the OT; there's no evidence that Harnack would have approved of what the Nazis did. Eric Voegelin is among the scholars who have argued that Nazism was heavily influenced by gnosticism.]
Don't you mean the (we believe) earliest followers of Jesus who ultimately won the fight to represent Christianity (to most people) seem to have foreseen that opposing groups like gnostics would also wish to win this battle.
WRT media accounts of the gospel of judas - yeah, they are uniformly bad...although, to be fair, general understanding of how the NT canon came to be is also poor, but at least a little such knowledge would be a prerequisite for a better understanding of what the gospel of judas means.
I do find David's post to be overly deferential to orthodox views, however. The early church really was in a position of flux and could have easily ended up being a religion closer to Marcionism or Arianism than ended up being the case. After all, when Jesus was unexpectedly killed and then his apocalyptic prediction that many people who heard him preach would live to see coming of the lord did not come to pass, there was a lot of leeway for interpretation. Marcion's idea about the old testament god being different from the new testament god is the simplest explanation for the smiting of the old testament versus the loving of the new testament. And I suspect that, actually, most christians do believe something closer to (but not identical to) the gnostic idea of a soul with an existence independent from the body than to the orthodox view that your physical body will be resurrected and you will live again immortal. Despite the fact that the resurrection of the body was such a big deal to early orthodox christians that they specifically added it to the nicene creed.
Aside from doctrinal issues, though, the scholarship of the council of nicea has help up fairly well - with some disagreements, esp. wrt the apocrypha.
But I think the discovery of the gospel of judas is very interesting - not because it will really challenge orthodox christianity, but because it will give an interesting insight into the belief of an important early branch of christianity.
That proves it! civil engineers are Nazis! I always thought so.
Von Harnack is actually a pretty interesting figure. I do suggest to readers with interest in such things to look beyond Kopel's um, brief summary, of the man.
What a ridiculous way to sort out the world.
Oh please. How could anyone possibly know with any sort of scientific certainty what Jesus did or did not say? If I told you I had four books written about a man tens of years after he died, how accurate do you think it would be? There’s a rigorous debate between historians about what can likely be attributed to Jesus. There’s hardly a consensus. Given the data points, it would be odd if there was.
There are two inaccuracies in this statement.
1. Most Protestants (in particular Anglicans and Lutherans) accept the teachings of the Council of Nicea. Notable exceptions include Unitarians and Mormons.
2. The status of the deuterocanonicals/apocrypha (Judith, Maccabees, etc.) was not on the agenda of the Council of Nicea. The Council was mainly concerned with the Arian controversy and the date of Easter. The Council settled on the canonical books of the New Testament, but did not consider which books belonged in the canonical Old Testament. That question wasn't officially decided until the Council of Trent (which is obviously rejected by Protestants).
[DK: Folks who have the gnosis will be able to see both themes clearly enough. :) ]
Actually, the situation is more akin to you asserting that you heard a rumor that four books written about a man existed, but the originals unfortunately are lost.
But then again, I'm Jewish, so what do I know...
More here:
The Cranky Insomniac
Gnosticism pre-dates Christianity, so finding Gnostic concepts in the Gospel of Judas doesn't tell us anything about the veracity of its narrative. Thus, your comparison with a tale of George Washington wanting to create a dictatorship of the proletariat is a false analogy.
[DK: If you like, change my Washington/Arnold example so that Washington is "trying to create a monarch who would exercise the absolute authority which God granted to Adam and sons of Adam through primogeniture." Then you'd have Washington/Arnold following the philosophy of Robert Filmer, who wrote in the 17th century. And it would still be implausible.]
To the extent that the Gospel of Judas does have anachronisms, that only tells us about the version of the Gospel that we have, not about its original version. It is useful to think of the undiscovered ur-source Q of the canonical Gospels, that contains the sayings of Jesus (which look an awful lot like the Rabbinic sayings in Pirkei Avot, excepting Jesus' position on divorce). The problems in the version we have do not tell us about the veracity of its sources. Indeed, it is worth remembering that there are non-canonical versions of the canonical Gospels, just as we have non-canonical versions of the books of the Hebrew Bible (for example, God appears in the Septuagint version of Esther, but not in the canonical Hebrew version), and non-canonical versions of the Koran (which the Saudi regime systematically destroys because of the threat they pose to fundamentalist Islam).
What the Gospel of Judas should remind us of is that religious texts (including the Koran) are not simple factual histories--they are writings with an agenda and need to be read as such.
I'm waiting until it's posted in pdf on the internet and the boys at Powerline have their way with it. Here's one person who thinks it's fake.
[DK: I disagree. We know from Ireneus--who wrote in 180 a.d., and whose authenticity is not is dispute--that there was a gnostic Gospel of Judas. The existing manuscript is consistent with Ir.'s description of the Gospel of Judas. I will change my mind, however, if the layout of the letters on papyrus fragments exactly matches the default settings of MS Word.]
So it seems to me perfectly plausible that Jesus would tell Judas to swallow his reservations, and go ahead and play his role in the drama. It doesn't actually change anything at all about the core teachings of Christianity.
[DK: The first sentence of paragraph isn't entirely implausible. The second sentence doesn't work, as applied to the Gospel of Judas, because the sanctity of the human body is a core teaching. The resurrected Jesus was resurrected in his physical body, and, post-resurrection, spent several weeks on earth teaching the apostles. Moreover, Christianity is the only major religion, as far as I know, which teaches that the end-time resurrection of the righteous dead will be accomplished by the literal restoration of their earthly bodies. If the Gospel of Judas made Jesus say something like "It is necessary that I be crucified so that sins may be forgiven," than I would agree with you that it wouldn't be inconsistent with core Christian teaching. But saying that the spirit needs to be liberated from the physical body is a gnostic concept that is completely contrary to the Old Testament, and to orthodox Christianity.]
* As we all know, over the years, plenty of people have called Jews 'christ-killers.' I've always thought this an excuse not a reason: hating Jews anyway (because they refuse the message), let's use this great excuse to mess them up. The Crucifixion is not a Bad Thing, it's part of the point.
Well, then Judas sure got screwed when they sent him to Hell and branded him for all eternity as the Ultimate Betrayer.
Too bad The Passion of Christ didn't have Gary Oldman as Judas, saying (in Aramaic, of course) "I'm just a patsy! I'm just a patsy!"
[DK: "I'm just a patsy" does seem to be theme of the song Judas sings just before he hangs himself in Jesus Christ Superstar. A point that's made in Catcher in the Rye (and which I presume is also made in more traditional sources) is that Judas, even after betrayal, could have been saved, if he had formally repented, rather than killing himself.]
Time for a reinterpretation of Jesus Christ Superstar! Other hilights include the Temple being recast as a meth house, and Mary Magdalene a medical marijuana patient fighting for her right to live. Oh, and the cast being the reunion of the members of Sha Na Na.
This is the difference between the four gospels in the Bible and gnostic writings. According to Gary Habermas, a major New Testament scholar, all of the gospels in the New Testament were written either directly by one of the apostles or by a person under the direct influence of the apostles. Therefore, these are eyewitness recordings of the life of Jesus Christ. They were also all written extremely close to the death of Jesus Christ. All four gospels were written within "thirty-five to sixty-five years after the death of Jesus, close enough to allow for accurate accounts." (Habermas) Therefore, it is known that all of the gospels in the New Testament were written either by eyewitnesses or people under the influence of eyewitnesses within 35-65 years after the death of Jesus Christ. This is a powerful statement about the reliability of the New Testament accounts.
The Gospel of Judas was probably written long after the life of Jesus Christ by a person who did not know Judas nor was an eyewitness to the events. According to scholar Charles Hedrick, the "original Gospel of Judas was probably written in Greek in the second century AD." There is a major separation of time between when Judas was alive and when this document was authored. There is no reason to believe that a person writing about Judas this long after he was alive would have any special knowledge about the topic that could in anyway compare to the information provided by the gospels. Therefore, there is no reason to believe that most of the information in the Gospel of Judas is not made up. And at the very least, one must concede that the account of the gospels in the New Testament is far more reliable than the Gospel of Judas.
Yes the idea that the gospel of Judas is a trustworthy historical source about Jesus is absurd and stupid. However, it is no more absurd and stupid than believing the same thing about the other gospels which we know were not only written well after the fact but significantly modified during the middle ages.
Yes but a reader with just a basic knowledge of physics/the way the world generally works (people don't rise from the dead etc..) would have far more reason to reject ALL of the traditional gospels as any sort of historical authority on Jesus (except indirectly but the Judas Gospel is usefull in this way too).
Certainly you aren't denying that it is logically possible that the Judas gospel's accuretly record the historical record. Rather, given the inherent improbability of the events descrbed (Judas being asked to do this for Jesus) and the obvious explanation in terms of early church politics we deem the later explanation far more likely. However, the exact same thing is true (perhaps moreso) of the traditional gospels.
So sure a rational investigator should not (directly) allow his beliefs about the historical personage Jesus to be significantly swayed by the Judas gospel. However, such an investigator would no more be swayed by the other gospels and probably pay the historical (as opposed to sociological) jesus story no more mind than stories about Zeus.
So it seems a little unfair to me to dish such strong criticism on the Judas gospel and not point out that it is no worse than it's compatriots.
How does he prove this?
The above described quality of manuscript data shows that the New Testament manuscripts were careful copies of what the original authors produced. However, this does not necessarily guarantee that the contents of these writings are historically accurate. The traditional strategy has been to argue that the Gospels and Acts were written by eyewitnesses, or those writing under their influence, thereby ensuring as much as possible the factual content. A somewhat more cautious position is that these five books were at least influenced by eyewitness testimony.7
Evangelical scholars often date each of the synoptic Gospels ten or so years earlier than their critical counterparts, who usually prefer dates of roughly A.D. 65-90. There is widespread agreement on placing John at roughly A.D. 95. This places the writing of the manuscripts thirty-five to sixty-five years after the death of Jesus, close enough to allow for accurate accounts.
Perhaps the most promising way to support the traditional approach is to argue backward from the Book of Acts. Most of this book is occupied with the ministries of Peter and Paul, and much of the action centers in the city of Jerusalem. The martyrdoms of Stephen (7:54-60) and the apostle James (12:1-2) are recorded, and the book concludes with Paul under arrest in Rome (28:14-31). Yet Acts says nothing concerning the deaths of Paul and Peter (mid-60s A.D.) or James, Jesus' brother (about A.D. 62). Moreover, accounts of the Jewish War with the Romans (beginning in A.D. 66) and the fall of Jerusalem (A.D. 70) are also strangely absent. Further, the book ends enigmatically with Paul under house arrest, without any resolution to the situation.
How could the author of Acts not mention these events or resolve Paul's dilemma, each of which is centrally related to the text's crucial themes? These events would even seem to dwarf many of the other recorded occurrences.8 It is difficult to resist the conclusion that the author did not record these items simply because they had not yet occurred. These omissions argue persuasively for an early date for the composition of Acts, before the mid-60s A.D.
If it is held that Luke was written prior to Acts but after Mark and Matthew, as perhaps most critical scholars do, then all five books may be dated before A.D. 65. It is simply amazing that Acts could be dated A.D. 80-85 and the author not be aware of, or otherwise neglect to mention, any of these events.9
Ridiculous as it sounds many people really do believe in christianity on the ground that writtings like the gospels are reliable historical accounts of the life of Jesus. This shows this belief is untenable as they have no principled way to distingush between the Judas gospel and the canon.
It's no different than the fact that people are more likely to give up faith in God when their spouse/child is taken from them at a young age in a horrific manner than when it happens to someone else. Sometimes the force of an argument isn't apparent until people see a clear cut contrete examples and the Judas gospel does this.
This is his best argument. A copy purported to date 150 after the purported original. Then he goes on to mention thousands of copies, and implies that proves something. He doesn't mention any study of the variation among the various copies; perhaps he considers it a stone best left unturned.
What you never have are the four original manuscripts, or even shreads of them, written in the original hand with the original ink on the original paper available for examination. Its always an oft told tale much repeated.
Willingness of modern printers to modify the text as they see fit in various editions undermines the credibility of any claims that these thousands of copies have been faithfully reproduced over the centuries.
And I can find you ten people who talked with god yesterday but somehow I doubt you would put much weight into what they said.
Let's try to be consistant here. If your best friend who was reknown for truthfullness told you he had seen a dead man returned to life yesterday you wouldn't believe him so the idea that the gospels are somehow a reliable guide to the life of jesus are absurd.
Of course there almost certainly was a real historical person Jesus and the gospels may well make many truthfull claims about him (sayings, places he preached etc..). While I think you have overstated your case for the canon a bit I'm even willing to stipulate that these gospel's may get more things right than the gospel of Judas.
However, most people aren't concerned about which gospel had a more accurate list of the places jesus spoke. They are concerned about the big theological questions (was jesus the son of god, did he die and rise again). Even if the Judas gospel is incorrect and less likely to be correct than the other gospels if forces one to admit that some apparen't gospel turned out to be false and thus suggests that the canonical gospels might have a reasonable chance of being false.
The fact that you might have reason to believe the Judas gospel is less reliable is irrelevant. The mere existance of these gospel's showing the ability and willingness of people to write stories about jesus out of whole cloth. Once you assign even a tiny apriori probability that this happened in the canonized gospels one (at least if one believes based on biblical authority) has serious problems justifying christianity. If some man you knew to be totally trustworthy came up to you on the street and said, "This morning I rolled a perfectly fair 1000 sided die and if it came up 1 I committed to telling you a fantastic lie and if it came up anything else to tell you the most fantastic true statement I know," and then followed this by telling you about a guy he knew in Buffallo who rose from the dead and turned out to be the sun of god it would probably be a good choice to bet that the guy rolled a 1.
DK's analogy is flawed because this is a religious document with historical significance, not a piece of reporting about history.
"This places the writing of the manuscripts thirty-five to sixty-five years after the death of Jesus, close enough to allow for accurate accounts."
For someone that claims that the media can't even give accurate accounts of same-day happenings, you believe that a heavily mythologizing and oral culture gives accurate accounts of events that happened several decades ago?
There are more textual differences in all the different copies of the texts we have for the Gospels than there are words in the entire NT. Some are minor: others are the inclusion of the last chapter of Mark or the entire discussion of the Trinity in John, much later in time.
[DK: I definitely don't think that the non-canonical gospels are immune from the types of historical investigation and criticism which are applicable to any other ancient documents. My point about the Judas Gospel is this: there is a widely-believed version about the relationship between two persons who are generally conceded to have actually lived. In this case, it's Jesus and Judas, but it could be Augustus and Antony. There are four sources (which have ideological biases) and which appear to have been written at least 20 but probably less than 65 years after the event, and to have relied in part on eyewitnesses. Another document, with it own, different, ideological biases, was written at least a century after the original event. Does the new document provide a substantial reason to disbelieve the version in the four, earlier-written accounts? I suggest not; and I suggest the reason to doubt the historical accuracy of the latter document is even stronger when it presents one of the historical actors as making a speech which appears to be inconsistent with other evidence about the ideology of the actor and the first generation of his followers. I might consider the possibility that the much-later document was more accurate if there was evidence that the earlier authors were subject to coercion or self-censorship -- such as Roman historians who were afraid to write about a current or recently-deceased tyrant.]
And I don't see the Apostles playing a sort of ancient version of Survivor--who's getting voted off the island, etc.
Cute, but no. Gnosis is usually translated as "knowledge" (although the meaning is actually closer to "insight.") so a Gnostic is roughly "one who knows." Agnostic, therefore, refers to "one who doesn't know."
I should add that the idea that the Gospels must have been based on eyewitness accounts because they must have been so early is made particularly silly by the fact that Paul's letters (at least the authentic ones) are by far the earliest documents in the NT, and not only is Paul not an eyewitness to the Gospel events, but he doesn't even mention anything about the core Gospel events/stories outside of the basic kerygma of death and ressurection.
Gary Habermas works for Liberty University, an instution founded by Jerry Falwell whose mission statement includes the following sentence: "God, the infinite source of all things, has shown us truth through scripture, nature, history, and, above all, in Christ.". Given that his employer is explicitly committed to the proposition that scripture is true, we may presume that he is not an impartial writer in this debate. I would give him as much credence writing on thscripture bring trueis matter as I would an employee of the Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence writing about the dangers of handguns.
It is true that it is very hard to find a truly impartial, rational analysis of the historical truth (or lack thereof) of the Canonical Gospels, but a researcher whose paycheck dependes upon his taking a certain position is the least impartial of all.
In 1 Corinthians 15:3-8, Paul made the following statement. "For what I received I passed on to you as of first importance: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures, and that he appeared to Cephas, and then to the Twelve. After that, he appeared to more than five hundred of the brothers and sisters at the same time, most of whom are still living, though some have fallen asleep. Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles, and last of all he appeared to me also, as to one abnormally born."
Do you have any idea how brazen this statement is? Paul is stating that more than 500 people, many who were alive when he wrote this, saw Jesus at the same time. You can dismiss 20 people as crackpots, but you have to give credibility to the claim that 500 people saw Jesus all at once. Furthermore, hostile people converted to Christianity. James, the brother of Jesus Christ, did not become a follower of Jesus until after he witnessed Jesus alive. How many people on this planet are willing to declare that one of their siblings is God? Even James would not believe it, until the evidence was too impossible to deny. Paul actively persecuted and killed Christians. His goal was to eliminate them until he saw the risen Christ appear to him on the road to Damascus, and he converted. This is all eyewitness testimony from people who are still alive when the claims are being made, and some of the people converted from a hostile position because of what they witnessed.
Trask
AgapeRevolution.com
This is an irrelevant claim. First, I can assure you that professor goes to work at Liberty University unless they believe in the mission of the institution before they arrive there. Second, I can also assure you that there are much better universities to be a professor at if making money is all that you are concerned about. Third, all of the scholars at other universities have their own biases. Fourth, the biases that a person has are irrelevant. The question is whether the person presents good arguments. If Habermas has good arguments, believe him. If he has bad arguments, do not believe him. But do not use a belief that he is biased prevent you from listening and critically evaluating his arguments.
Two, and assuming that extant historical data continues to be preserved as reliably in the future as it is now, there will wind up being a pretty ginormous asymmetry between (1) the reliability and richness of historical data regarding George Washington as it will exist in 3800 A.D. and (2) the reliability and richness of historical data regarding Jesus as it exists now.
"Paul is stating that more than 500 people, many who were alive when he wrote this, saw Jesus at the same time. You can dismiss 20 people as crackpots, but you have to give credibility to the claim that 500 people saw Jesus all at once."
I can say that 10,000 people saw me turn into a pigeon in the middle of Central Park. So what? Paul, since HE wasn't there, almost certainly heard of this from someone else, who heard of it from someone else, who... especially in a culture where everyone is spread out and rumor is the primary form of communication, its not hard at all to believe that all sorts of minor events could become legend within a short time. Heck, to be a Christian you MUST agree that this is true, because you must also discount all the OTHER cults and religious traditions that told similar stories and incredible events being witnessed by their followers and others.
"How many people on this planet are willing to declare that one of their siblings is God?"
Are you kidding? For someone that claims to be presenting scholarship, you seem remarkably ignorant of just how common such declarations and resulting followers were in the culture of those times. Heck, the Roman Empire was at one time ruled by people who claimed to be, and who were worshiped as, gods. How can you possibly be incredulous that a highly superstitious culture, FULL of magical thinking, would come to believe this or that thing?
Funny, but I don't recall hearing about any of the canonical gospels written in Aramaic. That was the language of the apostles and presumably their immediate disciples. As opposed to say Saul, a Jewish-born, Greek-influenced, citizen of Rome, and of course the later early Christians who were predominately Greek speaking/writing.
Or, Paul fabricated the story.
I hate to keep deferring to Prof. Habermas in this debate, but he addresses the point about historical information about Jesus from extra-Biblical sources too.
"Extra-biblical sources are another avenue worth pursuing when determining whether the New Testament texts speak reliably concerning historical issues. While less frequently used by scholars, a number of ancient secular sources mention various aspects of Jesus' life, corroborating the picture presented by the Gospels.10 The writers of these sources include ancient historians such as Tacitus, Suetonius, and Thallus. Jewish sources such as Josephus and the Talmud add to our knowledge. Government officials such as Pliny the Younger and even Roman Caesars Trajan and Hadrian describe early Christian beliefs and practices. Greek historian and satirist Lucian and Syrian Mara Bar-Serapion provide other details. Several nonorthodox, Gnostic writings speak about Jesus in a more theological manner.11
Overall, at least seventeen non-Christian writings record more than fifty details concerning the life, teachings, death, and resurrection of Jesus, plus details concerning the earliest church. Most frequently reported is Jesus' death, mentioned by twelve sources. Dated approximately 20 to 150 years after Jesus' death, these secular sources are quite early by the standards of ancient historiography.
Altogether, these non-Christian sources mention that Jesus fulfilled Old Testament prophecy, performed miracles, led disciples, and that many thought he was deity. These sources call him a good teacher or a philosopher and state that his message included conversion, denial of the gods, fellowship, and immortality. Further, they claim he was crucified for blasphemy but rose from the dead and appeared to his disciples, who were themselves transformed into bold preachers.12"
The best extra-Biblical source may be Josephus (37-100 A.D.) who was an ancient Jewish Historian near the time of Jesus.
This passage from Josephus is almost universally accepted as authentic:
“But the younger Ananus who, as we said, received the high priesthood, was of a bold disposition and exceptionally daring; he followed the party of the Sadducees, who are severe in judgment above all the Jews, as we have already shown. As therefore Ananus was of such a disposition, he thought he had now a good opportunity, as Festus was now dead, and Albinus was still on the road; so he assembled a council of judges, and brought before it the brother of Jesus the so-called Christ, whose name was James, together with some others, and having accused them as lawbreakers, he delivered them over to be stoned.” [Jewish Antiquities 20.9.1]
This passage from Josephus is more controversial.
“Now there was about this time Jesus, a wise man, if it be lawful to call him a man, for he was a doer of wonderful works, a teacher of such men as receive the truth with pleasure. He drew over to him both many of the Jews, and many of the Gentiles. He was the Christ, and when Pilate, at the suggestion of the principal men among us, had condemned him to the cross, those that loved him at the first did not forsake him; for he appeared to them alive again the third day; as the divine prophets had foretold these and ten thousand other wonderful things concerning him. And the tribe of Christians so named from him are not extinct at this day.” [Jewish Antiquities 18.3.3]
Among academic scholars in the twentieth century, there has been a growing consensus that this passage from Josephus may be authentic. Alice Wheatley says:
"In general, the attitudes of Protestant, Roman Catholic, Jewish and secular scholars towards the text have drawn closer together, with a greater tendency among scholars of all religious backgrounds to see the text as largely authentic. On the one hand this can be interpreted as the result of an increasing trend towards secularism, which is usually seen as product of modernity. On the other hand it can be interpreted as a sort of post-modern disillusionment with the verities of modern skepticism, and an attempt to recapture the sensibility of the ancient world, when it apparently was still possible for a first-century Jew to have written a text as favorable towards Jesus of Nazareth as the Testimonium Flavianum."
Trask
AgapeRevolution.com
Trask
AgapeRevolution.com
The question is, does the actual original manuscript written by Josephus exist in the original form, with the original words, ink, and paper? If so, where is it?
Another reason I think Paul and Timothy couldn't have cooked the whole thing up is because there's a genuine Jewishness to Paul that doesn't go away and yet there's something so revisionist to the Jewish mindset of the day. It's as if something happened to Paul that made him rethink everything he'd been taught in rabbinic school and change his stance entirely. He thought of himself as one of the worst of sinners for having persecuted Christians. I find it hard to believe that he made up the story of Jesus to begin with because the gospels are just so different from his own work and just strikingly consistent, as if they're dealing with the same subject matter from a very different standpoint), but even aside from that there's some real sense of conflict about himself that I don't think you'd have if he'd just made it up.
I was under the impression that the early Church exercised pretty stern editorial control over the gospels and it wouldnt surprise me if factual accuracy was sacrificed in favor of ideological goals.
On the other hand, ideology could motivate someone who knows how it really went down to suppress texts that are passing around that get it wrong. Why does ideology have to trump truth if the people whose ideological goals have them because they trace their understanding of things back to the guy who founded it all? It would surprise me greatly if people who knew Jesus and believed him to be resurrected from the dead wouldn't suppress things they believe to be inaccurate presentations of everything Jesus was about. It's simply a non sequitur to take ideology as a sign of inaccuracy.
There are also many quotes of ethical teachings of Jesus, e.g. his teachings on marriage in I Cor 7 or his teachings on violence and revenge in Rom 12-13. Paul shows real familiarity with some of the traditions that ended up in the gospels, though he doesn't normally use the gospels as a starting point in most of his arguments. He uses the Hebrew scriptures usually.
If his statements in Galatians are to be trusted, we should expect very little of his thought to have been directly influenced by the gospels or the apostles. He spent years by himself working through the scriptures figuring out what they must mean in light of his experience on the road to persecute Christians in Damascus. Whatever happened in that event, it clearly caused him to reexamine everything he thought, and much of his reexamination is closely tied to his rereading of the Hebrew scriptures themselves, with some influence from the Jesus sayings he had encountered along the way.
As for marriage, you seem to have a pretty jaundiced view of his full-blown teaching on it. Roughly half of scholars who write on Ephesians don't think Paul wrote it himself, but even if that 50% is correct, it probably does at least stem back to his teachings in spirit. I happen to think he wrote it, but it doesn't ultimately matter to my point if one of his followers put together a book summarizing his views.
So consider Ephesians 5, then. It would seem to have none of the negative, and if you just followed that you'd have the opposite view of what you'd get if you just took I Cor 7 out of context (as you did). The reality that you can see if pay attention to the whole Pauline corpus is that he saw marriage as a wonderful illustration of the relationship between Father and Son in the Trinity and of the relationship between Christ and the church. This appears in both I Cor 11 and Eph 5. He also saw that it involves responsibilities that some ought not to seek if they are gifted with singleness as he was and can serve the purpose of the gospel without the distractions of a family. This appears in I Cor 7 but also in several other places without the length of focus it appears there. So accepting Paul's teachings doesn't require seeing marriage as bad anymore than the view that priests should be celibate requires seeing marriage as bad for those who are not priests. It's just a view that marriage is good for some and worth avoiding for others. There's no inconsistency there.
Is this the same Chris who's the Rock www.imdb.com/name/nm0001674/ on which the Church is built? And who is "hate[d]" www.imdb.com/title/tt0460637/ of all men?
> "The Bible did not come down from heaven, ready-made, and in codified form."
Thank you, Sir Leigh Teabing! I'm not sure a Catholic wants to go too far with the "not faxed down from heaven" line of argument. Once you start arguing "The Catholic Church decided which books would go into the Bible, based on its assessment of their orthodoxy", you've opened the door more than halfway to The Da Vinci Code.
> " the smiting of the old testament versus the loving of the new testament."
Actually there's considerable smiting in the New Testament as well, provided you keep reading all the way to the end.
> "Catholics believe that the promises of Christ and the power of the Holy Spirit prevent the Church (and its Vicar, the Pope) from erring in matters of faith and morals. Unfortunately, there is nothing preventing a Pope from making bad prudential judgments"
As a Protestant, I find this an illogical distinction to attribute to God. A Pope who says "Go exterminate the Albigensians" can do just as much harm as one who says "The Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father alone, not the Father and the Son" (the first is the Catholic and Protestant view, the second the Eastern Orthodox view). Catholicism holds that no deity in His right mind would ever set up a church that could get the Filioque wrong, but would be happy to accidentally launch an unjustified crusade now and then. Yet RCs accept Orthodox as fellow believers (as more "kosher", so to speak, than Protestants) even though the EOs got it wrong and the Protestants got it right, by Catholic standards, on so fundamental a matter as the nature of the Trinity.
The distinction seems particularly illogical given that Catholics usually find themselves telling Protestants "You're not saved by faith (= correct doctrinal propositions) alone, but by works as well." Being guaranteed infallibility on the doctrinal propositions, while being left all on your own to go wrong (often quite badly wrong, as JPII himself acknowledged) on the "prudential" judgments, can lead to you doing some pretty bad works.
> " For instance, converts (to anything--Christianity isn't treated specially) won't get easy citizenship in Israel. It doesn't mean you aren't Jewish, though."
I have, anecdotally, heard otherwise: that, say, Woody Allen would do better invoking the Law of Return than Hugh Montefiore or Joseph Lustiger, for example. If the rationale for Israel is "a state where devout Jews can practice their religion freely", then Woody Allen should have no special privileges: Woody and Montefiore/ Lustiger should be both excluded. On the other hand, if the rationale for Israel is "a state where ethnic Jews can live without fear of racial discrimination or pogroms", then Montefiore/ Lustiger should be included since they too would have gone to the camps had the Nazis captured them.
Someone tell my if my anecdotal evidence here is inaccurate? I'm about as pro-Israel as most Christians can get, but it makes it hard to defend Israeli policies when critics say "Your Zionist friends discriminate against your own co-religionists".
Part of the reason for the disparate treatment, it seems, is that becoming an atheist normally involves simply “not practising” whereas becoming a Christian/ Messianic Jew involves an active commitment to a different religion, one that also involves proselytising (one of the biggest practical differences between Judaism and Christianity).
To Christians, of course, it is the Old Testament. But to Jews is it simply the Bible or Tanach. I realize that the phrase Old Testament resides so deeply in western culture that even Jews use it, but I think it would generally be a better idea to say Jewish Bible.
And is there an "angry God of the Old Testament" Not in my book.
So, the proof is that Paul says there were just TONS of eyewitnesses, you know...so it must be true!
This is just more of the same.
What we know about Paul is not reassuring. He was educated, likely a Jew or educated by Jews. That would require some family status, and official records. Yet, no one can find evidence that he did indeed come from Tarsus as he claimed. Now why would one step off the boat in a new land and lie about one's previous address? Why, to leave a spot of trouble behind.
66 AD was a time of turmoil because of the destruction of the existing religious order. As such, it was also a time of opportunity. Records survive of competing new religions that arose and differentiated themselves from the disfavored Judaism of the day in one way or another. One of these new sects was Paul's version of christianity.
So, what irrefutable proof is there that Paul and Timothy didn't just set themselves up as religious leaders and concoct a tale based on an little of this and an little of that as required to attract the most followers? They could have co-opted others to create documents to support their tale, or simply written them themselves and attributed them to dead people, to prevent inconvenient inquiry.
Another absolutely ludicrous aspect to all this is the proclivity (which continues to this very day) of religious franchisees to destroy documents and other artifacts in an intellectually dishonest attempt to freeze a version of the story and protect it from contrary evidence. A document can be examined and found to be fraudulent, but a rumor is much more ethereal and malleable. These acts belie their assertions that these things are handed down from god the creator of heaven and earth.
Like, as some have speculated, getting kicked out pretty early in? :)
Gnosticism qua that capitalized name wasn't around, but the basic ideas certainly were. Again, one of the main concerns that Paul has is arguing against the idea of a purely spiritual rebirth, which seemed to be a commonly cropping up theme that he wanted to disabuse his followers of.
In any case, while Witherington is solid and respected scholar, his views, and especially his appraisal of the work of people like Bart Ehrman is by no means the final word on the subject. They all have equally dismissive responses to his criticisms, and the debate continues.
"It's just a view that marriage is good for some and worth avoiding for others. There's no inconsistency there."
I didn't say there was an inconsistency. What I said was that Paul seems to feel that celibacy was superior to marriage: I agree that its debatable, especially since it involves trying to read into his tone, but I don't see how you can argue its a view out of context. In any case, since he seems to have believed that the world wouldn't last much longer in any case, pushing too hard one way or the other would soon be a moot point from his perspective.
By the way, proper names should be capitalized even if they refer to beings you consider to be fictional. Your last sentence should read "handed down from God the creator" and not "handed down from god the creator" as if you're just using the common noun 'god', which is inappropriate in the Christian context and would need an article anyway, as common nouns do when referring to a particular instance. I know people like to run roughshod over conventions of capitalization nowadays in the instant messenger generation, but that doesn't mean it's right to do so in a serious discussion like this.
It's also not true that he didn't think the world would last much longer. In some of his letters he assumes for the sake of argument that he might be present at the return of Christ, and in others he assumes he will probably die first. I believe there's even one letter where he is willing to allow himself into both groups (in different parts of the letter). Some uncharitably assume he was changing his views, but it's simply more likely that he didn't know when Christ would return and was willing to think himself potentially part of either group.
Why keep trying to ascribe to an easy to discount implausible conspiracy that's far more plausible as simply legend or hyperbole or mistake? As I noted, if you are a Christian, then then you must believe that this sort of thing happens to otherwise honest people all the time, in order to discount all the other religious traditions, movements, claims, and so forth that are in the offing.
Paul here spoke to a crowd of rioting Jews in Jerusalem that wanted to kill him. This by itself demonstrates the credibility of his beliefs because he is risking death by saying these things to a large mob. He told them that he once passionately hated Christianity like that did. He acted under the direction of the Jewish authories to help arrest and kill Christians. He says during his speech directly that if they do not believe him, they should go verify this with the Jewish authorities. This is a man that was a zealous Jew his whole life until his conversion.
Well, first, does the document actually exist for examination, or are we still talking about a rumor of a document?
Second, this is hardly corroboration from an independent source, "the companion of the apostle Paul".
So Paul was a zealous follower of one religion and then became an even more zealous follower of another religion. That happens all the time (cf. many members of cults, etc.) and doesn't bear on his credibility or on the historical truth of anything. Indeed, it speaks only to the aforementioned zealousness of his beliefs.
Clearly you have faith in your religion so what difference does it make if aspects of it are/are not historically accurate? The Bible says lots of things that cannot literally be true (e.g., the Creation story); why would its rendering of the life of Jesus need to be any different?