2026-06-03

No, Jerusalem was NOT an “uninhabited ruin” after 70 CE — sacrifices continued . . . .

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by Neil Godfrey

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Sometimes even PhD persons can keep repeating mistakes in their specialist field and I’d like to correct one that has come to my attention. I did attempt to notify their author a few weeks ago, offering to send some of the following citations, but have had no reply. So for everyone else who is interested….

Mistaken claim:

Jerusalem itself remained by law an uninhabited ruin from 70 to the 130s, and when it was rebuilt as Aelia Capitolina, Jews were banned from living there. Jewish attitudes and beliefs also substantially changed in result, even in Palestine. So you can’t equate the conditions post-War with those in the time of Jesus.

Source: Josephus on Jesus? Why You Can’t Cite Opinions Before 2014

Correction: There was no such law. Jerusalem was not left an “uninhabited ruin from 70 to the 130s”. As for the Aelia Capitolina experience, Jews were only expelled after the Bar Kokhba uprising 132-135 CE. And no, as can be seen in the quotes and their cited sources below, Jewish attitudes and beliefs by no means “substantially changed” as a result of 70 CE.  I will quote some sources to support these corrections at the end of this post. There are more I could add, but what has been included should be enough to make the point.

Erroneous claim:

“Jerusalem” (which in 95 A.D. was an uninhabited ruin).

Source: How We Can Know 1 Clement Was Actually Written in the 60s AD

Correction: No, it was not. It was inhabited by Jews and gentiles. Romans and Judeans lived there. I quote scholarly accounts below – beneath the heading “Jerusalem after 70 CE”

Someone made the following claim (which I happen to agree with):

The ‘Little Apocalypse’ maps better the circumstances of the Bar Kochba War…

To which the unfortunate reply was made:

It cannot. Because it still has the temple standing to be destroyed and Jerusalem inhabited. By the time of the Bar Kochba revolt, Jerusalem was an uninhabited ruin, and the temple had been razed. The author of Mark 13 had no concept of this.

Source: Was the Entire New Testament Forged in the Second Century?

No, again, this is simply false — except the temple did remain unbuilt. (Some scholars suspect a rebuilding of the temple may have begun in the early 130s but there is no clear evidence for this.) A reason it remained unbuilt appears to be that the tax the Jews had once paid for the upkeep of their temple was now diverted by the Romans to a treasury in Rome.

Jerusalem after 70 CE

Though there is no evidence in classical, ecclesiastical or Jewish literature that the rebuilding or repair55 of the Temple was forbidden after 70 (as was to be the case after 135), the diversion of the Temple tax to Rome suggests that it was at any rate discouraged, and there is no indication that rebuilding was attempted or even seriously discussed, though the Jews had free access to the site 56 (in contrast to the situation after 135).

55 BJ vi, 387-8 implies that some parts survived the fire [BJ = Josephus’s Jewish War]

56 BJ vii, 377; and references to visits by rabbis and laymen to the Temple hill—e.g., BT Makk. 24b; Ber. 3a; Tos. Ber. vii, 2b (transl. O. Holtzmann (1912), 85; transl. E. Lohse and G. Schlichting (1956–8), 86); Eduy. iii, 3, 459; Midr. Eccl. R. vii, 8, § 1; Lament. R. i, 17, § 52; ARN 4 on Hosea vi, 6 (Goldin, 34); IV (II) Esdras iii, 1–2 (cf. below, n. 58); II Baruch x, 5; xiii, 1; xxxv, 1. II Baruch comprises elements of varying date, and these chapters clearly date from after 70; see R. H. Charles in APOT II, 470–6.

Mary Smallwood, The Jews under Roman Rule: From Pompey to Diocletian: A Study in Political Relations (E.J. Brill, 1976), 346.

Another:

Following the cessation of hostilities Jews in increasing numbers moved into Judaea and Jerusalem, and Jewish pilgrims continued to come to the Temple with their offerings. Seven synagogues survived in the city to serve the need of the Jerusalem community.1 Traditional religious rites and ceremonies were persistent, and would have been observed as fully as possible. Only when the Temple worship was threatened by Hadrian’s design to establish a Temple of Jupiter on the site did revolt again break out, and one may reason that such a threat to the Temple cult must have been absent up until that time (about 130 or 132).”

1 F.-M. Abel, Histoire de la Palestine (1952), II, 48; H. Vincent et Abel, Jérusalem (1926), II, 877 f. See Ep1ph. De mens. et pond. 14.

Kenneth W. Clark, “Worship in the Jerusalem Temple after A.D. 70,” New Testament Studies 6, no. 04 (1960): 273f, https://doi.org/10.1017/S0028688500001594.

Another:

In previous times [that is, in earlier destructions of the Jerusalem Temple] the cult flourished even when there was no central sanctuary, a recognition clearly made by the rabbis. [Sacrifices continued at other Jewish temples in Egypt — at Elephantine and Leontopolis] . . . . In the past the sacrificial cult continued, or was resumed in some form and in some places whenever there was no central sanctuary or when it was not functioning.

The sacrificial cult [at Jerusalem after 70] was made optional.

After the Temple was destroyed, its place remained holy and suitable for offering sacrifices. According to other sources, the optional offering of sacrifices was permitted after the destruction of the Temple in any place, even outside of Jerusalem.

This implies that after the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem its sanctity ended: and the offering of sacrifices was permissible in other places, even outside of Palestine.

Scattered evidence points to the persistence of private sacrifices after the fall of the Temple.

Other sages, who often expressed the hope for a speedy restoration of the Temple. . . . 

This experience deterred them from appointing another High Priest which would have led to the re-establishment of a centralized cult and to a nationalistic rallying center. Nonetheless, they [sc. the Romans] did not prohibit the Jews from revisiting Jerusalem and the ruins of the Temple until the Bar Kokhba rebellion

Guttmann, Alexander. “The End of the Jewish Sacrificial Cult.” Hebrew Union College Annual 38 (1967): 137–48. — supporting rabbinic and other sources are cited throughout. His point is that though private sacrifices were permitted, and continued, at the temple site, official sacrifices were no longer offered there because that would have required the appointment of a High Priest, and only Romans could do that. Guttmann also argues that the Pharisaic leaders after 70 may not have supported Bar Kokhba’s rebellion because had it succeeded, they would have been replaced by a restored priesthood overseeing official temple sacrifices.

Another interesting point is that several leaders said that since the temple no longer existed, atonement could be achieved by expressing loving-kindness to one another. (This view was an extension of pre-70 Jews who believed the temple was not necessary if people expressed righteous behaviour. — For another remark on the same lines see the Nodet section below.) But others regularly expressed a love for the holiness of the temple site, implying a longing for its restoration.

Another — again pointing to the continuity of Jewish religious thinking, not to some “substantial change” in attitudes and beliefs:

Both archaeological and rabbinical documents testify to a Jewish cultural identity, the institutional use of Hebrew, testify “to the vitality of Judaism and Jewish identity among Judean Jews in the years between 70 and 135.”

Adiel Schremer, “The Lost Chapter: Imperialism and Jewish Society 70-135,” Revue Des Études Juives 179, nos. 1–2 (2020): 10, https://doi.org/10.2143/REJ.179.1.3287589.

Another:

We may safely conclude that during this period [sc. between 70 and 135] the population grew up in Judea, and that something of the Temple worship was restored.”

So, this administration was functioning at the time he was writing, very probably still during the reign of Domitian. Again, when Josephus describes the organization of the cult, he writes systematically in the present tense (Ant. 3:224-58). In Ag. Ap. 2:193-8), he recalls, still in the present, that there is one sole Temple for one sole God, and that the priests are constantly occupied in its service, and he even mentions the daily sacrifices offered by the Jews for the emperors and the Roman people (2:77). . . . 

It is also worth noting that Josephus, although he claims to be an eyewitness, begins his account of the War with the Maccabean crisis, more than two centuries earlier: it was a forced a cessation of the cult (the daily sacrifice) followed by its restoration at the end of three and a half years (half a “week of years”, to borrow the terminology of Dan 9:27). This suggests that he was already envisaging something similar after 70, even if he does not say so expressly, or even perhaps that things were already moving in this direction. . . . 

[Plutarch, writing in the time of Trajan, describes Jewish festival customs associated with the temple:] The wording indicates a witness of the present position, and not memories of the past. . . .

Dio Cassius, however, soberly says that a part of the Temple was set on fire (65.6.3), which opens up the possibility of a worship resumption in not too distant a future. . . .

We can finally mention a collection of ancient traditions, entitled Chronicon paschale, in which it is said that Hadrian destroyed the temple that had actually been rebuilt. . . .

Anyhow, an equestrian statue of Hadrian was erected at the very place of the Holy of Holies, and Jerome saw it as the abomination of desolation that Jesus prophesied In Matth. 24:15. See also: The Abomination of Desolation in Jesus’ Prophecy – More Scholars Who Support Its Surprising Identity

In Jesus’ prediction, the only possible reference is to Hadrian’s destruction and profanation . . . [see side box —>]

Etienne Nodet, “Destruction of Jerusalem Temple”, in Rethinking the Jewish War: Archeology, Society, Traditions, ed. Anthony Giambrone, Études Bibliques 84 (Peeters, 2021), 246.

As  per Guttmann above, Nodet notes how Jewish/Judean leadership felt at ease without a temple by substituting ethics since this had been a practice in other times when the temple was destroyed: “According to Abot de-Rabbi Nathan A, § 4), Yohanan declared that there is a mode of expiation which is just as effective as the cult, to wit, charity, but that is actually a way of bypassing the Temple, for this precept already existed well before the destruction, cf. m.Abot 1:2, which attributes it to Simon the Righteous.

Another indication of quick recovery and continuity after 70:

The Jewish material culture of Herodian era continued during the period between the two uprisings. . . . The archaeological record shows that the Jewish population recovered from the Jewish War within a generation.

Boaz Zissu, “Interbellum Judea 70-132 CE: An Archaeological Perspective,” in Jews and Christians in the First and Second Centuries: The Interbellum 70‒132 Ce: 15, ed. Joshua J. Schwartz and Peter J. Tomson (Brill, 2017), 49.

Again,

The general situation reflected in the documents is one of rapid recovery of Judaea.

Joshua Schwartz, “Yavne Revisited: Jewish ‘Survival’ in the Wake of the War of Destruction,” in Jews and Christians in the First and Second Centuries: How to Write Their History, ed. Peter J. Tomson and Joshua J. Schwartz (Brill, 2014), 248.

And again:

Destruction of the Temple and the sacking of the city did not bring about the abandonment of Jewish villages in the Jerusalem area and throughout Judaea.

Kloner’s work summarized in Joshua Schwartz, “Yavne Revisited: Jewish ‘Survival’ in the Wake of the War of Destruction,” in Jews and Christians in the First and Second Centuries: How to Write Their History, ed. Peter J. Tomson and Joshua J. Schwartz (Brill, 2014), 247.

I’d rather not stir up flame wars by mentioning names but maybe a reader here can discreetly notify anyone they think might be off-track regarding the long-held scholarly view about the situation in Jerusalem after 70 CE.

2026-05-18

Finding the Author of the First Gospel?

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by Neil Godfrey

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* Marcion was one of the “great Christian heretics” according to the early Church Fathers. He taught that there were two gods: a supreme All-Good God who was revealed for the first time by Jesus Christ, and the lesser God of the Old Testament and of the Jews, who was the God of justice and law, rewards and punishments, who created this imperfect world. Marcion taught that the Messiah or Christ the Jews were hoping for had not yet come, and that they confused Jesus, sent by the Good God, for their worldly messiah. Because his Jewish followers had failed to understand Jesus’ message, Jesus had to reveal himself to Paul who did understand and who went on to preach the true gospel. The term “New Testament” (presented in a collection of Paul’s letters and the gospel) came from Marcion.

Markus Vinzent, a historian of Christian origins, argues that the first gospel was written by Marcion* close to the middle of the second century. Our canonical gospels were therefore written as reactions to Marcion’s gospel.

It is only from Irenaeus [ca 177 CE] onward that the four gospels can safely be said to have been known, as supported by external evidence. (Vinzent 2023, 159)

For Vinzent, the current mainstream view that the gospels were all written in the first century (or close enough to it) raises a problem for us:

One must wonder where these Gospels were hidden, if they had been in existence for decades? The Gospel authors of Mark, Matthew and Luke somehow must have known each other, because they are literarily dependent in some way—but how could it be that only Gospel writers knew of each other’s works, but nobody else took any notice of it? If . . . these Gospels were written in the first century, perhaps Mark in Rome, Matthew according to most scholars in Antioch in Syria, Luke perhaps on the Peleponnese in Greece—how could these Gospel manuscripts travel without being acknowledged, recognized and quoted by any other author prior to the mid second century? And why did the first authors who work with these texts all teach in Rome (Marcion, Justin, Tatian?). My view differs . . . from our standard assumption . . . . Having studied the few, extremely thin-iced arguments that were given for a first century dating of our canonical Gospels, I am not only convinced that the later canonical Gospels have all been written shortly before the mid second century and are therefore part of the so-called Second Sophistic, urban literature, but I also suggested in my Marcion and the Dating of the Synoptic Gospels that the very first witness for our canonical Gospels, Marcion of Sinope, who from around 140 A.D. lived and taught at Rome, was not only a witness as all previous scholars have thought, but that he was the very first author who wrote a Gospel and created this literary genre. When a few months ago, I first mentioned this hypothesis to my then Head of Department Paul Janz, he asked me who of my colleagues would share this view—and I had to answer: nobody. In the meantime, it seems, at least some are prepared to test the hypothesis. (Vinzent 2015. 63-65)

Vinzent finds much of his evidence especially in the writings of Tertullian. Surely, though, other scholars must have seen it, too? Vinzent is not so sure because, as he explains, Tertullian’s Latin has been read too literally, too naively, not always making sufficient allowance for his sarcasm and rhetoric. Too often T’s rhetorical over-statements are read as genuine indicators of the beliefs of his opponents.

From what we have read so far, Tertullian’s conclusions seem to be oversimplifactions and distortions of Marcion’s own views, driving his arguments by rhetorical amplification into unbased absurdities . . . or as J. Lieu put it to ‘out-Marcion Marcion’.724. . . . Using Galatians Marcion had not made a historical statement that prior to Paul, the Apostles had fabricated Gospels or that Judaizers had tampered [correcting “tempered”] with their Gospels before it reached Paul or Tertullian. All that is Tertullian drawing consequences on assumptions purely made for rhetorical reasons here, but interestingly both the assumptions and their consequences are often used in scholarship to reconstruct Marcion’s opinion.725

724 J. Lieu, Marcion and the Making of a Heretic (2015), 192.

725 See E. Norelli, ‘Marcion et les disciples de Jésus’ (2008), 11; Tertullian’s simplifications are also sometimes used to criticise my critical reading of Tertullian, see, for example, J. Carleton Paget, ‘Marcion and the Resurrection: Some Thoughts on a Recent Book’ (2012), 94, n. 47; J. Lieu, ‘The Enduring Legacy of Pan-Marcionism’ (2013), 559.  (Vinzent 2015, 388)

So what does Tertullian say that leads Vinzent to think Marcion believed he wrote the first gospel and that our canonical Matthew, Mark, Luke and John plagiarized it? (The year references are to V’s works where he presents his sources and arguments — though the same point may be presented in more than one work.)

Tertullian, after going through almost every passage in Marcion’s gospel (he referred to it as “his gospel” and to Marcion as a “gospel-maker”) was “a thoroughly Marcionite text”. (This claim would appear to stand in tension against T saying elsewhere that M had interpolated another gospel to make it conform to his teachings.) T (and others) indicate that M introduced a “new form of discourse/literary work”, seemingly suggesting that M was the first to put together the Lord’s sayings with narratives. (2014, 91-93)

T informs us that M did not put his name to his gospel as its author, nor did he even give his work a title. Both of these features are required for the market, for publishing and archiving. It therefore appears that Marcion did not intend his gospel to be published. It was a tool used in his classes or “school” — comparable to other “schools” of Christians and philosophers of the day. (2014, 97; 2015, 72 ) Moreover, when T faults M for not adding his name to his gospel, we must infer that T indeed assumes the text of the gospel was by Marcion. (2016, 375)

But despite M’s intentions, his gospel did become widely known. (Followers of teachers in the various schools would be free to go from one to the other, comparing and debating ideas.) Others did respond to M’s unpublished gospel with their own versions that were meant for publication. But those authors disagreed with Marcion’s gospel that portrayed Jesus as opposing the God of the Jewish Scriptures. Their gospels were written not as “antitheses” of the Jewish Scriptures but as their “fulfilment”.

Marcion was forced to respond to those “plagiarizing” gospels. He wrote explicit criticisms of those four gospels in his Antitheses, a writing that also introduced a new copy of his own gospel, which he now titled simply “Gospel”, and a collection of ten letters of Paul. This was the first “New Testament”. (2014, 100, 277) V further suggests that M’s use of the title “Antitheses” makes sense if his work was a response to the published four gospels. (2023, 162)

M criticized the four gospels of tampering with the true gospel, of adding passages that contradicted Jesus’ message. T responded by declaring that the four gospels pre-dated M’s own gospel and therefore were more authentic. T accused M of cutting out passages of an earlier gospel — he thinks it was the Gospel of Luke he used. (The Latin word used by T, “videtur”, is “usually a reference to an uncertain statement” (2023, 43).) The text T mostly uses for comparison with M’s gospel is in fact the Gospel of Matthew. (2016, 378 and 396ff; 2014, 148; 2023, 44)

A key passage is Tertullian’s Against Marcion IV 3,2. Vinzent has referred to this passage in several of his works and only once in passing in his introduction to Resetting the Origins of Christianity (2023, 161). Here T denounces M’s criticisms of the four gospels. The key passage:

[2] But Marcion has got hold of Paul’s epistle to the Galatians, in which he rebukes even the Apostles themselves for not walking uprightly according to the truth of the gospel (cf. Gal. 2:14), and accuses also certain false Apostles of perverting the gospel of Christ (cf. Gal. 1:7; 2:14): and on this ground Marcion strives hard to overthrow the credit of those gospels which are the Apostles’ own and are published under their names [sc. John and Matthew], or even the names of Apostolic men [sc. Luke and Mark], with the intention no doubt of conferring on his own gospel the repute which he takes away from those others.

Details:

connititur ad destruendum Marcion strives hard to overthrow / destroy
statum the credit / standing / established position / authority / validity
eorum evangeliorum of those gospels
quae propria which belong to
et sub Apostolorum nomine and under the name of / bearing the name of the Apostles
eduntur are brought forth / are published / are issued / are put into circulation
vel etiam Apostolicorum or even of apostolic men / persons
ut scilicet fidem quam illis adimit suo conferat. so that, namely, he may transfer to his own [gospel/text] the credibility (or authority) that he takes away from those [others].

It is clear from the above that Marcion knew of the four gospels, Matthew, John, Luke and Mark. T understands that Marcion believes that these four gospels usurped the authority of his own gospel. T will argue that since the four gospels appeared before Marcion’s did, that those four must be more authoritative than Marcion’s. It may be suggested — but I cannot right now locate where V made this observation — that T’s argument assumes M believed that his gospel (though unpublished) had been the original one. Note that Tertullian does not say the apostles themselves wrote the gospels, but that the gospels were written “under their names” and were true to their own gospel preaching.

There is more to add and clarify in future posts as time permits. I may return to edit the above post but will indicate updates in the opening line.

Since I have been keen to find all published critiques of Vs argument for my formal studies, I had the misfortune of coming across Richard Carrier’s online rebuttal: Was the Entire New Testament Forged in the Second Century? Unfortunately Carrier misreads the Tertullian passage, or fails to read the Latin behind what he imputes into a certain translation; he certainly did not bother to investigate V’s actual argument, admitting he hadn’t read it all — but none of that prevented him from characterizing V of being “illogical and factless” here.

Vinzent, Markus. Marcion and the Dating of the Synoptic Gospels (Studia Patristica Supplements): 2. Peeters, 2014.
——. Tertullian’s Preface to Marcion’s Gospel. Peeters, 2016.
——. “Marcion’s Gospel and the Beginnings of Early Christianity.” Annali Di Storia Dell’Esegesi 32, no. 1 (2015): 55–87.
——. Writing the History of Early Christianity: From Reception to Retrospection. Cambridge University Press, 2019.
——. Christ’s Torah: The Making of the New Testament in the Second Century. Routledge, 2023.
——. Resetting the Origins of Christianity: A New Theory of Sources and Beginnings. Cambridge University Press, 2023.

2026-04-18

Doing History Backwards — and Discovering Christian Origins (or not)

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by Neil Godfrey

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vinzent 189x300The usual way of doing history is to start with the ancient sources and move forwards. So for Christian origins we might start with the canonical gospels, sift out what is not plausible (e.g. rising from the dead), massage a little what seems plausible for the times of the story setting (e.g. a would-be messiah was crucified by the Romans and hallucinations about a dead person reappearing), add the epistles of Paul and Book of Acts to tell us that preachers went out preaching the gospel to the world, and bingo! Christianity is born. Today we have the gospels and letters from within a generation of Jesus and his apostles and we can study them to work out how things started out to explain what we have today.

But here’s another way of doing history.

Start with what we think we know, what we’ve learned, about the Gospels and Epistles of Paul. Start with our common understanding that these were among the earliest documents of Christianity. Start with our knowledge that the gospels were competing (or complementary) accounts of the historical Jesus, mixed with a bit of mythical embellishment. Start also with our notion of the common knowledge that Paul wrote letters to his early churches.

Then work back.

Okay, we are clear about what our beliefs about the sources are. Now let’s work back and see what others thought about these gospels and letters. Why do we think the things we do about them? Did we inherit our views from earlier writers? What did those earlier writers say? We can leapfrog over generations and go back to late antiquity and learn that the Church Fathers definitely assured their readers that the four gospels were “true” accounts of Jesus; and that Paul’s letters, as we know them, were indeed written by a first century Paul.

Okay, but let’s keep moving back in time though our mental time-machine.

We read now that Church Fathers protested that there were many letters of Paul doing the rounds and that many of these were outright forgeries! We further learn that some sects had shortened forms of the letters and that the only true letters were the larger, more wordy texts.

We learn that there were many gospels doing the rounds. But only four of these were genuine.

Let’s keep working backwards:

Let’s say the year is 140 CE. Some figure in Rome is declaring that he has a gospel and ten letters by Paul. That one gospel is anti-Jewish and the letters reject the idea that the Jewish Scriptures are authoritative. At the same time opponents to this figure are saying they have other gospels that are pro-Jewish and more than ten letters of Paul, and that all the letters of Paul respect the Jewish Scriptures.

So we have claims and counterclaims about authentic and false gospels and epistles. How is anyone to decide which is which?

Keep rolling back in time:

Nothing. Blank.

So how do we get further back in time? We can, if we want, return to the first option above. We can begin with what we think we know about the gospels and the letters.

We re-read the gospels and see that their story is set in the mid first century CE. The letters have Paul’s name on them so obviously they are written by the same Paul we read about in Acts. Let’s re-start there. Our beliefs, the traditions, must have come from somewhere. They must have had some basis in fact, yes?

To get back further in time, then, we assume that what the second century texts wanted us to believe about the origins of Christianity were true. Instead of asking, Why did the authors of these texts we read about in the second century want us to believe the gospel narratives were true, we ask, So given that we know these gospel stories have some basis in truth…..

They might have been “true” just as some factions in the second century believed. That’s where our beliefs come from, after all. But …..

How can we tell?

Should we do history forwards? Or backwards? Should we first examine our inherited beliefs about the sources? What happens if we set apart our beliefs and re-frame them as hypotheses to be tested?

Indebted to Markus Vinzent for the notion of “doing history backwards”.

  • Vinzent, Markus. Writing the History of Early Christianity: From Reception to Retrospection. Cambridge University Press, 2019.

2026-04-12

Overlapping Judean-Christian “Son of Man” Interpretations (Daniel 7)

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by Neil Godfrey

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the unburied bodies of the two witnesses and the rejoicing people google art c910f7 1024 300x164
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A while ago I posted a case for the two witnesses in the Book of Revelation referring to two of the leaders of the second Jewish war, or the Bar Kochba war of 132-135 CE. (Part A, Part B, Part C, Part D). For most of us who have been long immersed in the view that ancient Christianity must always have opposed violent Judean rebels against Rome, the view that the two witnesses could possibly refer to Simon Bar Kochba himself and the high priest at the time must seem outrageous. In partial defence of the possibility of that interpretation I would point to certain divisions among Christians at that time: some were very pro-Judean, pro-Old Testament, pro-Torah, while others appear to have been opposed to any form of “Judaizing” and Torah observance. Christians were not a monolithic identity; but nor were Judeans before the rabbinic era.

A prominent rabbi at the time of the Bar Kochba war was remembered in rabbinic literature as holding views that are strikingly similar to those we associate with Christianity. I refer to a “Son of Man” dispute. Who was the “Son of Man” one reads about in the Book of Daniel?

One verse reads: “His throne is sparks of fire” [Dan. 7:9] and another [part of the] verse reads, “until thrones were set up and the Ancient of Days sat” [Dan. 7:9]. This is no difficulty: One was for him and one was for David.
— As we learn in a baraita [non-Mishnaic tannaitic tradition]: One for him and one for David; these are the words of Rabbi Akiva. Rabbi Yosethe Galilean said to him: Akiva! Until when will you make the Shekhina profane?! Rather. One was for judging and one was for mercy.
— Did he accept it from him, or did he not?
— Come and hear! One for judging and one for mercy, these are the words of Rabbi Akiva. (BT Hagiga 14a) (Boyarin 140)

Rabbi Akiva is better known for having entered rabbinic tradition as a contemporary of Bar Kochba and as a leader who (erroneously) proclaimed Bar Kochba to be the Messiah. Another of this rabbi’s “mistaken views” (according to later rabbinic teachings) was his claim that the Book of Daniel’s image of one like the Son of Man amidst clouds of heaven approaching the Ancient of Days pointed to a heavenly Davidic King with a throne beside God’s. That is, Daniel’s image was of David as the Messiah and “Son of Man” who sat at the right hand of God. The same rabbinic tradition quickly disputes Akiva’s view, condemning Akiva for daring to think a man could also be a divine figure. The rabbis left on their record that Akiva eventually changed his mind and was restored to “orthodoxy”.

A modern Jewish scholar, Daniel Boyarim, alerts us to a similar claim being put in the mouth of Jesus in the Gospel of Mark:

The crux is his identification of David, the Messiah, as the “Son of Man” who sits at God’s right hand, thus suggesting not only a divine figure but one who is incarnate in a human being as well. “I am [the Messiah] and you shall see ‘the Son of Man’ sitting on the right hand of power and coming in the clouds of heaven” (Mark 14:62). Hence, his objector’s taunt: “Until when will you make the Divine Presence profane?! Rabbi Akiva is seemingly also projecting a divine human, Son of Man, who will be the Messiah. His contemporary Rabbi Yose the Galilean (perhaps a more assiduous reader of the Gospels) strenuously objects to Rabbi Akiva’s “dangerous” interpretation and gives the verse a “Modalist” interpretation. Of course, the Talmud itself must record that Rabbi Akiva changed his mind in order for him to remain “orthodox.” (140)

The rabbinic record does not explicitly say that Akiva equated Bar Kochba with the “Son of Man” messiah of Daniel 7. It only tells us that Akiva proclaimed Bar Kochba as the messiah; it elsewhere records that Akiva identified Daniel 7’s heavenly Son of Man figure with a Davidic Messiah.

I find this little datum interesting. Perhaps of related interest, too, that it is a Galilean rabbi (Joseph) who is made to refute Akiva.

See also

https://vridar.org/2018/12/17/early-rabbinic-traditions-that-the-messiah-was-to-suffer-per-isaiah-53/
https://vridar.org/2010/07/30/did-a-davidic-messiah-have-to-be-a-descendant-of-david/

Boyarin, Daniel. Border Lines: The Partition of Judaeo-Christianity. University of Pennsylvania Press, 2006.

2026-04-05

How Gnostic Myths Arose from The Gospel Narrative?

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by Neil Godfrey

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My studies have led me to another item I think will be of a wider interest: a hypothesis to explain the origin of a “heavenly Christ” myth. It is from Christoph Markschies’ Valentinus Gnosticus? (1992). Valentinus, Marcion and “proto-orthodox” Christian leaders migrated to Rome after the Bar Kochba war and engaged in discussions and debates over their respective interpretations of Christianity1. For those of us who have been familiar only with the literal readings of the gospels we cannot help but wonder how such dialogue could have taken place. Were not Marcion and Valentinus “gnostics” who taught a non-human Jesus? How would “orthodox” teachers have enough in common to discuss anything with them? Well, Markschies offers an explanation. Here is a translation of the key passage:

. . . . We therefore ask first which person is here designated by the name “Jesus,” since the Valentinians are known here to differentiate: they distinguish Jesus, the Savior born of Mary, who effects the διορθώσεις [= the restoration] of this world (τὰ ἐνθάδε) [= the things in this world; these are Plato’s words], from two other figures called “Jesus Christ”: from that Christ who restores the outer Sophia and then takes his place in the Pleroma, and a third, the consort of the outer Sophia. “Εἰσὶν οὖν κατ’ αὐτοὺς τρεῖς Χριστοί.”⁵⁹ . . . . . the Jesus described [in a third century fragment] is only an image of the actually important Christ figure . . . . [translation of pp 92f]

A third “crisis-point” of Valentinus’ theology was probably Christology. . . . The uniqueness and historical contingency of the “Christ-event” posed serious problems. A theory which Valentinus presented at the decisive points of Christology was, for the educated of late antiquity, a contradictio in adiecto: the Logos could not suffer a slave’s death. The students, if they wished to make theology accessible to the “educated” among their hearers, had to remove the offense that the crucified cult-founder represented. Here too, as in the question of the fall of sin, they once again hypostatized the historical processes in order to move away from the actual historical Christ-event onto the archetypal level of the world of ideas, into the aeonic world—so that the emergence of the three Christ-Jesus figures [see side box] can be understood on the three levels of the cosmic drama. The decisive act does not take place on this earth (and thus on the historical level), but already in the “ideal cosmos,” in the realm of the Aeons. The “actual” Christ acts (outside Sophia) and then takes his place in the aeonic world, in which the other Christ figures are his images and perform on other levels exactly what their prototype has already done.

This thesis concerning the emergence of Valentinian gnosis from Valentinus’ theology proves itself when one can answer a further important question: why is it that among the students there arises, relatively consistently, such a mythical intensification of theology, whereas myth still seems to play no role at all for Valentinus himself? First, one must make clear what function myth had in this period: in Valentinus’ lifetime a whole series of philosophical schools promised initiation into the mysteries of God, soul, and immortality with the help of myth. Nothing would be more unhistorical than to want to separate philosophy and theology here by means of our modern distinctions. The introduction of myth made—however paradoxical it may appear today—the teaching of the Valentinians attractive in the first place for certain philosophically interested circles: “ἦλθε καὶ ὁ φιλόσοφος ὡς ἐπίσκοπος, πῶς ἐστίν. [Quote from Aristotle, =  “Then the philosopher also came as a bishop—what is he like?”] At the same time, myth increased the orienting function of the theory, since through it, on the one hand, matters became more vivid, and on the other hand even the “unutterable words” (ἄρρητα ῥήματα = [unspeakable words]) concerning the highest principles were illustrated and thereby became “sayable.” The deterministic tendencies of this displacement onto the level of principles simultaneously relieved human beings in their everyday decisions. The myth of the pupils of Valentinus offered the greatest possible relief, since everything that happens in this world is already predetermined by the processes in the world of ideas. I am ready—provided I am a pneumatic—to be so; the human being is thereby largely relieved of ethical responsibility⁷³. Valentinus’ theology evidently did not yet possess this high degree of relief and orientation.

Markschies then explains how the pupils of Valentinus apparently came to expand and elaborate on his own original teachings, thus producing the quite complex gnostic system discussed at length by Irenaeus.

There is nothing here about a “crucifixion in heaven”, as some suggest (and as I have sometimes wondered) was the original meaning in certain passages in Paul’s letters. But it seems to me that according to Markschies the spiritual meaning of the crucifixion was taught through the myth relating to Sophia. Where this hypothesis fits in relation to passages in Paul such as his claim that the cosmic powers crucified Jesus I can only speculate.

Continuing Markschies ….

Between the highly interesting precision based on Plato’s Timaeus at a high philosophical level—which elevates him above many contemporaries . . . .—and the somewhat helpless-comic solution he offers for the problem of the suffering Jesus, there exists a contrast and indeed a difference in level. If one interprets this contrast against the background of the engagement with Hellenistic philosophy within theology—which shapes the entire history of the early Church—one will have to agree with A. v. Harnack, who described as the main problem that of “premature scientification”: Valentinus had already developed certain approaches to solving the classical problem-fields, but—as far as the fragments allow this judgment—no consistent theory; in some areas he perhaps even performed genuine theological pioneering work. In this deficiency lies the inner reason for the transition into the “mythological heresy” of the pupils. They develop their theology of mediation already with an (implicit) method, namely that of consistent (popularizing) Platonization.

. . . .

Naturally, the interpretation presented here of the inner reasons for the development from Valentinus to the Valentinians remains a hypothesis. But it best explains, in my view, a historical finding that clearly reveals continuities between Valentinus and his school and at the same time equally clear discontinuities.

This explanation is the reverse of Earl Doherty’s view that the crucifixion narrative was a product of neoplatonic ideas and later “mythologized” into an earthly story.

One might assume that the Markschies view presupposes a historically “true” narrative, but I would not rush to that conclusion. We need to keep in mind that all of this suddenly breaks into the scene in the wake of the Bar Kochba War and Trajan’s massacres preceding that. The Gospel of Mark Jesus is clearly (to me at least) a personified figure of Israel, a “son of man” figure from Daniel placed in a narrative with a theological meaning. Marcion’s Jesus is a clear antithesis of the Judean god. These are all theological figures. Historical origins cannot be assumed.

1 “‘Christian'” teachers and schools emerge in Rome around the mid-second century ce, after the Bar Kokhba revolt, and as a consequence of it.” (Livesey 200), and “In my study on Marcion I have pointed out that, prior to the end of the second Jewish war of the years 132–135, we do not know of early Christian teachers who sojourn, live, or teach at Rome. From what early Christian authors tell us, it was the disaster of the Bar Kokhba war that moved people and made them re-locate from Palestine and Samaria to Asia, and further to Greece and Rome.” (Vinzent 96)

  • Livesey, Nina E. The Letters of Paul in Their Roman Literary Context: Reassessing Apostolic Authorship. Cambridge University Press, 2024.
  • Markschies, Christoph Johannes. Valentinus Gnosticus? Untersuchungen zur valentinianischen Gnosis: mit einem Kommentar zu den Fragmenten Valentins. Mohr Siebeck, 1992.
  • Vinzent, Markus. “Orthodoxy and Heresy: Misnomers and Misnamers.” Forum: Foundations and Facets. Third Series 10, no. 1 (2021): 91–108.

2026-04-03

The Abomination of Desolation in Jesus’ Prophecy – More Scholars Who Support Its Surprising Identity

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by Neil Godfrey

Filed under: Biblical Studies, New Testament
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Bronze head of Hadrian found in the River Thames in London 199x300
Bronze head of Hadrian found in the River Thames in London. Now in the British Museum. – Wikipedia

I’ve come across more items of a more general interest in the course of my formal studies these last few days: a very old and a very publication favourably arguing that the “abomination of desolation” can only refer to a statue set up in the Jerusalem temple by Hadrian in the 130s CE.

Some readers here will be aware of Hermann Detering’s proposal that the “abomination of desolation” that was to be “standing where it ought not” referred to the time of the Bar Kochba War, 132-135 CE, and the Roman emperor Hadrian’s supposedly setting up of a statue of Jupiter/Zeus in the Jewish Temple. See Little Apocalypse and the Bar Kochba Revolt.

Well, Hermann Detering’s name and the article I discussed in the above link appeared recently (2024) in a footnote of a book chapter by Étienne Nodet, “Destructions du Temple de Jérusalem”. But what was most interesting was that Nodet was pointing out that the same view (that the prophecy in Mark 13 and Matthew 24 refers to Hadrian erecting a pagan statue in the Jerusalem temple) was made as early as 1845 by none other than the great, pioneering New Testament scholar, Ferdinand Christian Baur! New Testament scholars have followed a good many of Baur’s leads but this particular one fell between the cracks.

Nodet introduces an alternative possibility that the statue erected in the temple was actually a statue of Hadrian himself. In the light of Thomas Witulski’s research there is probably no major difference between Jupiter and Hadrian: see the post, Hadrian the God.

I have translated Nodet:

Finally, one must mention a collection of ancient traditions entitled Chronicon Paschale, which indicates that Hadrian destroyed the Temple, which had been rebuilt⁴². Taken in isolation, such information would carry little weight, but it combines with a statement by Jerome: he affirms that an equestrian statue of Hadrian was erected at the site of the Holy of Holies and that it is none other than the “Abomination of Desolation” prophesied by Jesus (In Matth. 24:15); this must evidently be connected with the statue erected by Apostomos⁴³.

. . .

Étienne Nodet
Étienne Nodet

In Luke’s version, without profanation, the prophecy may refer to the war of 70, but in Matthew–Mark, the “Abomination of Desolation” of Daniel signifies a formal profanation of the Temple, alluding to the idol erected by Antiochus IV mentioned above. To situate the prediction of Jesus, one must eliminate the attempt of Caligula to have his statue placed in the Temple, since his death at the beginning of 41 interrupted this project⁴⁶, as well as the assault of Titus and the fire of 70, since that was not strictly speaking a profanation. One must therefore return to Jerome’s interpretation of a prophecy of Jesus, which had already been proposed by F. Baur in 1845, but, like modern scholars, he rightly considered that it had been composed after the fact⁴⁷. The consequences for the dating of the Gospels are obvious, but little used.

42 Cf. L. Dindorf, Historici graeci minores, Leipzig 1870, vol. I, p. 474. The sources on the causes of the Bar Kokhba revolt are sparse, but there was certainly a profanation of the Holy of Holies, cf. E. Schürer, The History of the Jewish People, vol. I, pp. 535–542, hence an analogy with the Maccabean revolt.

43 There are good reasons to think that shortly after the foundation of Aelia Capitolina an equestrian statue of Hadrian was erected in the Holy of Holies or in its place; see D.-M. Cabaret, La topographie de la Jérusalem antique: essais sur l’urbanisme fossile, défenses et portes, du 2e s. av. au 2e s. ap. J.-C., Louvain 2020, pp. 260–288. [my note: Apostomos was the name given in rabbinic records to Hadrian]

. . . .

46. The affair, recounted by Philo and Josephus, is presented in detail by E. Schürer, The History of the Jewish People, vol. I, pp. 394–397.

47. See F. C. Baur, Kritische Untersuchungen über die kanonischen Evangelien, ihr Verhältniss zueinander, ihren Charakter und Ursprung, Tübingen 1851, p. 122; he was little followed, no doubt because of his personal discredit, but one should note the detailed study by H. Detering, “The Synoptic Apocalypse (Mark 13 par.): A Document from the Time of Bar Kokhba,” Journal of Higher Criticism 7 (2000), pp. 161–210.

F.C. Baur 241x300
F. C. Baur

Here is Baur’s discussion, again translated. For Baur, Matthew was living at the time of the Bar Kochba war and wrote of what he understood to be the culmination of the tribulations before the end, while Luke wrote of the first war, 66-70, and the beginning of sorrows.

If Jesus cannot have spoken as the evangelist has him speak in chapter 24, then the question deserves all the more to be considered whether the event which is here presented as the sign of the Parousia is in fact the destruction of Jerusalem at all.

According to the presentation, the discourse of Jesus is connected with the destruction of Jerusalem, which is yet to occur; but the discourse itself does not intend to give a description of that destruction, but rather to set forth only the signs of the Parousia, which takes place only after the destruction of Jerusalem and presupposes it.

If one now asks whether the phenomena indicated in relation to the sign of the Parousia fit the time of the destruction of Jerusalem, one must almost throughout give a negative answer. The commentators unanimously observe that before the destruction of Jerusalem neither false messiahs nor significant wars among nations, such as are meant in vv. 6 and 7, can be demonstrated. Nor is anything more precise known about persecutions of Christians through which many Christians might have been led into apostasy.

How perfectly, on the other hand, does all this fit the Jewish war under Hadrian! At that time it was that Bar Kokhba was generally regarded by the people, who flocked to him in crowds, as the Messiah who was to free them from the yoke of Roman rule, and rabbis such as Akiba gave every support to belief in him. Not only in Palestine did a general uprising of the Jews occur—which the Romans were able to suppress only with the greatest exertion in a war that seems to have lasted several years, in which Jerusalem had first to be reconquered (around the year 134)—but the spirit of unrest spread everywhere where Jews were in the Roman Empire and broke out in secret or open attacks on the Romans; and the support which Bar Kokhba received alone must prove how deeply the nation was involved in his undertaking. “Almost the whole world,” says Cassius Dio (LXIX, 14), “was set in motion by the uprising of the Jews.” Münter, Der jüdische Krieg unter den Kaisern Trajan und Hadrian (1821), p. 66.

What the discourse of Jesus contains about persecutions of Christians also receives thereby a new light. Bar Kokhba treated the Christians, who did not wish to take part in the uprising against the Romans, with the greatest cruelty, as is reported by Justin Martyr (Apol. I, 31), Eusebius of Caesarea (H.E. 4.6), and others; and according to the assertion of the Talmudists, many at that time are said to have denied the Christian faith. Münter, ibid., p. 55.

Still more remarkable, however, is how in this connection even the βδέλυγμα τῆς ἐρημώσεως (“abomination of desolation”) first seems to receive its proper meaning. The interpreters who think only of the destruction of Jerusalem under Titus have not yet succeeded in taking the expression in a sense corresponding to its precise wording.

Baur then addresses the arguments of those who attempted to place the prophecy in the time of the first destruction of Jerusalem (70 CE):

If, according to Heinrich August Wilhelm Meyer, the phrase refers generally to the abominable devastation on the temple site which historically occurred through the Romans at and after the conquest of the temple, then one may rightly say with Wilhelm Martin Leberecht de Wette that the term does not fit this at all. But if, with de Wette following Hugo Grotius, one thinks of the Roman army with its standards, which were an abomination to the Jews, then Meyer can object that the words contain nothing pointing to this. Nor is it clear why precisely the standards should be singled out as something so especially abominable, and even in this way the expression is not exhausted, since one cannot assume that the Roman standards remained planted on the temple site after its destruction.

But only the events of Hadrian’s time can make sense of the prophecy, Baur continues….

The expression receives its adequate meaning only through the report that Hadrian, precisely at that time, during the aforementioned Jewish war, either before or after it, set up the statue of Capitoline Jupiter on the place where formerly the temple of Solomon had stood (εἰς τὸν τῷ θεῷ τόπον ναὸν τῷ Διΐ ἔθηκεν, Cassius Dio LXIX.12; Jerome, Commentary on Isaiah 1.2: ubi quondam erat templum et religio Dei, ibi Hadriani statua et Jovis idolum collocatum est), from which Jerusalem also received the pagan name Aelia Capitolina.

How striking, then, is the expression used by the evangelist if the statue of the pagan god stood as a permanent monument on the very site where formerly the true God was worshipped! This was the truly abominable aspect of the devastation already accomplished, with which for the Jew and Jewish Christian everything was connected that made paganism as such abhorrent. This extreme, the worst that could happen, is therefore highlighted by the evangelist as the most evident signal of the catastrophe now fully unfolding.

To grasp the discourse at its central point, one must place oneself entirely on the standpoint of the event as presented by the evangelist. The form of prophecy brings it about that everything spoken of here is presented as something still future. Yet it cannot have been purely future, since what had already happened determined him to direct his gaze into the future and to perceive in the present the future developing within it.

But where, one must ask, in his presentation does what has already happened separate itself from what is yet to happen? Since he places the Parousia, which comes at the end of all things, in such an immediate relation to the θλῖψις (tribulation)—as v. 29 proves—and since he expressly says (v. 22) that for the sake of the elect the days of this tribulation were shortened, then at the time of composing this discourse the μεγάλη θλῖψις (“great tribulation”) cannot yet have run a long course; accordingly, that βδέλυγμα τῆς ἐρημώσεως can scarcely yet have been set up in the holy place.

But even this assumption is not necessary. According to Cassius Dio (ibid.), the great uprising of the Jews broke out precisely because Hadrian had already begun to carry out his plan to rebuild the destroyed city as a Roman colony and to erect the image of Jupiter in place of its temple. The uprising intervened, but it was foreseeable that after its suppression what had already been decided would be carried out all the more decisively—as indeed, according to Eusebius (H.E. 4.6), the founding of Aelia followed immediately after the end of the war.

What if, then, we assume that the author wrote in the midst of the uprising? Only thus do we fully understand how he could point with such emphasis to the βδέλυγμα τῆς ἐρημώσεως as the decisive turning point of the catastrophe now unfolding. As certainly as he, as a Christian, could regard Bar Kokhba only as a false prophet, so certainly could he not doubt the victory of the Romans; but as a Jewish Christian he could see in the profanation of the holy place by a pagan idol only the worst that could yet happen. If it comes to that, then there can no longer be any doubt that now the μεγάλη θλῖψις begins, upon which the Parousia immediately follows.

It is clear to see how, from this point, his entire conception of this great catastrophe is shaped. It divides for him, through the erection of the βδέλυγμα, into two periods: the one being the ὠδῖνες (“birth pangs,” v. 8), the other the θλῖψις μεγάλη itself. As he proceeds from definite phenomena given in reality, so in the second period the same fundamental conception appears again, only in its highest intensification. The general flight, in which each thinks only of saving himself, can only be a time of unrest and wars like the first period; and just as that period has its driving principle in belief in a false Messiah, so in the second period the most characteristic feature is that ψευδόχριστοι and ψευδοπροφῆται (“false Christs and false prophets”) seek to lead all into error and delusion.

This feature stands out so clearly in the description of the two periods that, if one must choose between the time of the first destruction of Jerusalem and the time of Bar Kokhba, one can only decide for the latter.

Admittedly, Luke in the parallel passage (chapter 21) can only have meant the first destruction of Jerusalem. But what does that prove for the explanation of Matthew? At this point we perceive only the different standpoint of the two evangelists, partly in relation to belief in the Parousia, partly in relation to the events then occurring in Palestine. For the non-Palestinian writer these events could not have had the same interest in themselves; moreover, he saw the expectation of the Parousia fulfilled only in the still-future βασιλεία τοῦ θεοῦ. And just as for him the increasingly universal inclusion of the Gentiles belonged essentially to this kingdom, so for him the first destruction of Jerusalem had all the more the significance of a divine judgment (21:23), which, in the same measure that it testified to the rejection of messianic salvation by the Jews, guaranteed the inclusion of the Gentiles in the kingdom.

While Luke thus had the interest of fixing the beginning point of the great catastrophe—whose course extended from the destruction of Jerusalem to the Parousia—for the author of the Gospel of Matthew everything in his conception was concentrated at the point where the tribulation, whose pressure he felt keenly in the immediate present, could end in its highest intensity only with the Parousia of Christ.

If the interpretation of Matthew 24 attempted here is correct—as I do not doubt—then we would thereby have a very definite date for the composition of our canonical Gospel of Matthew: it would fall in the years 130–134, and I would not know what could be objected against this assumption.

If, according to this assumption, even the oldest of our canonical gospels—which the others already presuppose—cannot be placed any earlier, then it also provides a standard for the age of the others, and one can all the less be surprised that the data for determining the time of their origin do not reach further back.

Baur, Ferdinand Christian. Kritische untersuchungen über die kanonischen evangelien, ihr verhältniss zu einander, ihren charakter und ursprung. With Internet Archive. Tübingen, L.F. Fues, 1847. http://archive.org/details/kritischeuntersu0000baur. — pp 605-609

Nodet, Étienne. “Destructions du Temple de Jérusalem.” In Aux Origines Judéennes Du Christianisme Études En L’honneur De Simon Claude Mimouni Pour Son Soixante-Quinzième Anniversaire, edited by José Costa, David Hamidović, and Pierluigi Piovanelli. Bibliothèque de l’Ecole des Hautes Etudes, Sciences Religieuses. Brepols Publishers, 2024. — pp 467-486

2026-03-25

When Historians Use Bayes’ Theorem and When They Don’t

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by Neil Godfrey

Filed under: Historical Methods and Historiography, Uncategorized
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historiographicreasoning

Bayesian reasoning is already used explicitly in some historical sciences such as phylogeny (Felsenstein 2004, 288–306), archaeology (Buck et al. 1996), cosmology (Hobson 2010), and historical linguistics (Greenhill et al. 2020) to justify inferences of probable knowledge of history. In the historiography of the human past, Richard Carrier (2012, 2014) attempted to apply Bayesian reasoning to inferences from the texts of the New Testament. In the philosophy of the historical sciences, Elliott Sober (e.g. 1988), has applied Bayesian probability for understanding phylogenic reasoning, as Wallach (2018) applied for understanding inferences in archaeological science.

Most practicing historians undoubtedly have never heard of Bayes’ rule, know little about probability theory, and therefore have not considered whether or not they have been practicing Bayesian methods. Nevertheless, most historians usually follow Bayes’ rule tacitly, without being aware of it. The relation between the inferences historians make and Bayes’ rule is comparable to the relations between natural speakers of languages, who have not studied them, and the rules of grammar they usually follow tacitly, without being able to articulate them. If somebody violates the rules of grammar, other speakers would notice it, and could correct the mistake, without necessarily being able to articulate the grammatical rules they enforce. (Tucker 2025, 20)

Earlier, Tucker wrote of Bayes’ theorem being used to evaluate hypotheses:

The Bayesian model is still the best explanation of the actual practices of historians. When there is sufficient evidence to determine a particular common cause hypothesis, historians evaluate the prior probabilities of competing particular common cause hypotheses that characterize the common causes of a variational group differently, according to whether the hypotheses are coherent with established historiographic beliefs, the laws of nature, as well as internally coherent (Kosso, 1993, p. 5). (Tucker 2004, 120)

A hypothesis in history might propose an explanation for certain past events, or it might propose an estimate of the impact of certain persons or events in history. One can validly use Bayes to judge between competing hypotheses that seek to explain President Kennedy’s assassination, but one does not need Bayes to determine if there was a historical President Kennedy in the first place. There are much simpler ways to check that datum. One does not need Bayes to decide if everything we read in the Bible is true. Tucker also explained (in his review of Richard Carrier’s use of Bayes):

I do not think it is necessary to resort to heavy Bayesian artillery to demolish literalist soft targets. A more economical solution is to dismiss literalism on the grounds of misunderstanding the evidence. . . . It is more parsimonious to interpret the evidence as a metaphor. (Tucker 2016, 134)

Tucker continues by addressing the same confusion I have posted about elsewhere — Carrier’s confusion of hypotheses with the sources/data/evidence. Carrier approaches history the way positivists used to do in the olden days, approaching it like an empirical science that differs only from other sciences insofar as it has comparatively less data to work with. Again, Tucker:

Richard Carrier understands historiography as a historical science like “geology, cosmology, paleontology, criminal forensics” (105). Historical sciences use evidence to support hypotheses about historical events such as the Big Bang, the origins of the solar system, asteroids hitting the earth, the evolution and disappearance of species, and who committed a crime. Historical sciences rely more on observations than on experiments and infer particularities more than generalities. In Carrier’s view, science and the historical sciences are not identical but are continuous and mutually dependent with a quantitative difference: in his opinion, historiography has less data and so is less reliable. (Tucker 2016, 130)

Most historians learned long ago that history is not like a science at all, and would not be like a science even if it had mountains more data. No, it is better to simply treat Jesus as an unknown quantity, as a figure who is only attested in writings that are independently attested long after he was supposed to have lived, with most of those writings presenting him as a theological figure or a figure of second and third hand beliefs. There is no evidence at all for the historical Jesus of the kind we have, say, for the historical Alexander or Julius Caesar. We no more need Bayes to determine the existence of Julius Caesar or Alexander or the ancient city of Rome than we do to determine the historicity of President Kennedy, as mentioned above. In those cases we have information that can be determined to have originated in the life-times of those persons. Historical Jesus scholars have had to rely on hypotheses and trust in very late corroborated sources to argue that their information can be traced back to a historical Jesus. That is not the case with the likes of Alexander or Julius Caesar — or President Kennedy.

  • Tucker, Aviezer. 2025. Historiographic Reasoning. Cambridge University Press.
  • ———2016. “The Reverend Bayes Vs. Jesus Christ,” History and Theory 55 (1): 129–40.
  • ———2004. Our Knowledge of the Past: A Philosophy of Historiography. Cambridge University Press

2026-03-24

Understanding Why Narratives about Jesus Differ — and Some Implications

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by Neil Godfrey

Filed under: Ancient Literature, Biblical Studies, History and Biography, New Testament
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millsHere is another snippet from my studies research that also has a place here . . . .

Ian Mills has a newly published book, The Hypothesis of the Gospels: Narrative Traditions in Hellenistic Reading Culture, that explains one important facet of the literary culture in which the gospels were written. It is a distillation from his 2021 PhD thesis, Rewriting the Gospel: The Synoptics Among Pluriform Literary Traditions.

“Hypothesis” in the title is a transliteration of the Greek word used by ancient authors to describe a well-known basic story outline that could be taken up and rewritten with variations by other authors. Ancient poets and playwrights, for example, would sometimes write different accounts of a legendary tale or myth, and as long as they retained “the essential characters, settings, and events of a particular narrative” they were free to make any changes they saw fit. The “most basic elements” of a story were its “hypothesis”. Order of events might change; even “who did what” might change; scenes might be added; and so forth. It was understood to be a kind of literary competition. An author would attempt to write a better or more relevant version of a well-known story. In other words, the authors of our gospels belonged to a wider literary culture that was familiar with the practice of re-writing basic stories.

Plato and Xenophon wrote quite different biographies of Socrates, for example:

These rough contemporaries of Justin, Irenaeus, and Clement report the same basic reading of Plato and Xenophon. Overlapping accounts of Socrates, they agree, are evidence of literary rivalry between their authors. . . . These readers all share the assumption that writing a book on an established hypothesis is a conventionally competitive act. (155)

The gospels . . . reflect a certain competitiveness inherent in writing on an established hypothesis. (Hypothesis, 149)

How often have we heard or read that the differences in the accounts of Jesus are the result of authors being exposed to different oral traditions. Well, now we have a good reason to rethink that assumption. If an author felt confident enough to write a better account of Jesus for any reason, then we have our explanation for why different gospels sometimes changed the order of events, sometimes added or subtracted certain episodes, and so forth.

I did not see Mills make this implication of his study explicit in The Hypothesis of the Gospels but he did point out in his earlier thesis that there is no need to call upon oral tradition to explain what are clearly features common to the literary practices extant at the time the gospels were composed. The gospels are well-known for consisting of blocks of mini-anecdotes. There is no need to assume these encapsulate what had been passed on orally since authors of the day wrote like that in other narratives — including “biographies” of philosophers or teachers.

The episodic structure evinced in the gospels was a creative choice that grew increasingly popular across various genres in the first and second centuries CE. The organization of Jesus’ ministry into discrete pericopes, therefore, does not justify the form critical view of the gospels as compilations of independently circulating oral traditions. (Rewriting, 198)

There is one other point I would like to add to Mills’ study. If well known narratives could be rewritten to the extent we find among ancient authors, then surely it follows that those basic narratives were not “set-in-stone truths”. They were tales or myths or literary creations that were open to rewriting. Mills does say that even the genre of history in ancient times contained basic narratives that could be written but the examples he points to are the Trojan War and the Theban Cycle. My understanding is that those particular histories were so distant in time, stretching back to the “age of heroes”, that those tales were indeed subject to diverse version histories. I am not so sure more recent “real” histories would have been open to rewriting of that kind. The second century Lucian, for example, savagely mocked historians as potential liars. That’s something I would like to read a bit more about. Maybe I should start with this old post: https://vridar.org/2019/11/25/two-more-reasons-ancient-historians-fabricated-history/

  • Mills, Ian N. 2021. “Rewriting the Gospel: The Synoptics Among Pluriform Literary Traditions.” Ph.D., Duke University.
  • Mills, Ian N. 2025. The Hypothesis of the Gospels: Narrative Traditions in Hellenistic Reading Culture. Fortress Press.