For those in the dark, an initial post — here — invited readers to participate in Rick Dean’s questionnaire that he intends to incorporate into a forthcoming book.
Survey questions include:
Prior religious affiliation
Do you miss your former faith?
What initiated your loss of faith”
What arguments for the existence of God did you find particularly powerful?
What arguments against the positive existence of God do you find the most persuasive?
Mark’s gospel makes little sense if read as literal history, but it packs a powerful punch when read with a mind swept clean of all the other gospel accounts.
The punch the Gospel of Mark hit me with recently was its sentence noting John the Baptist’s baptism of Jesus. It’s bizarre if we try to read it as biography or history. But it makes for a great symbolic message about the identity and function of Jesus.
The Gospel begins with John declaring that one far greater than he is to come from God and cover his followers not with water but with the holy spirit. The preamble has informed readers that this coming one is to be the one of whom the Prophets said is the Lord himself. Everyone came out repenting and being baptized.
Then Jesus came along and John baptized him too.
And that’s it. Mark gives not the slightest hint that John baulked and said, Hey, you’re the one! Nope. It’s as if Jesus was the last in line and John routinely baptized him like all the rest.
Then up from the water came Jesus and “he” (only) saw the spirit descending to him like a dove. No one else saw this or the heavens splitting apart, and no-one but Jesus heard the voice from heaven declaring him to be God’s son.
This is strange. It is especially strange if, as many modern interpreters like to think, Jesus was originally a follower of John the Baptist.
In this post I outline the points of Burridge’s influential argument that the gospels belong to the genre of ancient biography.
Richard A. Burridge has been central to the development of wide scholarly agreement that the Gospels are biographies (or technically βιος) with the publication of his doctoral thesis, What Are the Gospels? A Comparison with Graeco-Roman Biography. To analyze their genre he compares the generic features of the gospels with Graeco-Roman biographies.
My own disagreement with Burridge
Before posting the details of Burridge’s case, I sum up my own reasons for disagreement. But you’re allowed to skip this section if you want.
I have thought that despite the extent of Burridge’s analysis, the βιος genre simply does not describe the gospels, in particular the Gospel of Mark which is my primary interest. What we recognize as ancient Greek and Roman biographies are clearly and directly “about” their subject persons.
As an atheist, naturalist, humanist or whatever, who deconverted from religion some years ago I still find myself observing humanity (and non-human fellow creatures) with new eyes. This disaster is only one of many around the world, of course, but in every one of them it is inspiring to see what we are: local Queenslanders are shown on TV announcing their group identity: “We are Queenslanders, we help each other . . .”, but then someone is traveling interstate to help and declares: “We are Australians, we give each other a helping hand . . . ” And when it’s international, we identify with each other at the broadest humanity level.
This is from pages 67 to 76 of Constructing Jesus (2010) by Dale C. Allison. Allison begins with the evidence for the twelve.
1 Corinthians 15:5 is the earliest reference we think we have to the twelve. The letter is usually dated to the mid-50s, twenty or twenty-five years after the usually accepted date of Jesus’ crucifixion. It refers to the twelve as if the readers of the letter should already know who they are. (Will discuss the Corinthians passage again later in the post.)
3 For I delivered to you first of all that which I also received: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, 4 and that He was buried, and that He rose again the third day according to the Scriptures, 5 and that He was seen by Cephas, then by the twelve. 6 After that He was seen by over five hundred brethren at once, of whom the greater part remain to the present, but some have fallen asleep. 7 After that He was seen by James, then by all the apostles. 8 Then last of all He was seen by me also, as by one born out of due time.
The Gospel of Mark uses the same designation (“the twelve”) for disciples selected to be with Jesus: Mark 3:14 f.; 4:10; 6:7
[3:14] And he ordained twelve, that they should be with him, and that he might send them forth to preach,
[3:15] And to have power to heal sicknesses, and to cast out devils:
[4:10] And when he was alone, they that were about him with the twelve asked of him the parable.
[6:7] And he called unto him the twelve, and began to send them forth by two and two; and gave them power over unclean spirits;
John’s gospel also speaks of these:
[6:67] Then said Jesus unto the twelve, Will ye also go away?
[6:70] Jesus answered them, Have not I chosen you twelve, and one of you is a devil?
[6:71] He spake of Judas Iscariot the son of Simon: for he it was that should betray him, being one of the twelve.
[20:24] But Thomas, one of the twelve, called Didymus, was not with them when Jesus came.
Then there is the story in Acts about the replacement being made for Judas. This is in Acts 1:12-26.
The book of Revelation also speaks of the twelve apostles:
21:14 Now the wall of the city had twelve foundations, and on them were the names of the twelve apostles of the Lamb.
Then there is the famous passage in Matthew 19:28 and Luke 22:28-30 (considered by many to be derived from Q) that presumes the audience of Jesus is the twelve:
Matt: 19:28 So Jesus said to them, “Assuredly I say to you, that in the regeneration, when the Son of Man sits on the throne of His glory, you who have followed Me will also sit on twelve thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel.
Luke 22:28 “But you are those who have continued with Me in My trials. 29 And I bestow upon you a kingdom, just as My Father bestowed one upon Me, 30 that you may eat and drink at My table in My kingdom, and sit on thrones judging the twelve tribes of Israel.”
All this looks straightforward enough. Why should there be any doubt that Jesus really did have a band of twelve with him? A number of biblical scholars have raised doubts, however, and Allison attempt to persuade readers their doubts are groundless. Continue reading “The Twelve: Dale Allison’s argument for their historical reality”
I was struck by a sentence by Dale C. Allison in his Constructing Jesus that began as follows:
Indeed, Jesus seems to have submitted to John’s baptism. . . . (p. 53)
Only “seems”? I did not know that any theologian and biblical scholar who accepted the historical reality of Jesus doubted it. So catch that footnote number and make a quick check. Here is the explanatory footnote:
This is rarely doubted, although see William Arnal, “Major Episodes in the Biography of Jesus: An Assessment of the Historicity of the Narrative Tradition,” TJT 13 (1997): 201-26; Leif E. Vaage, “Bird-Watching at the Baptism of Jesus: Early Christian Mythmaking in Mark 1:9-11,” in Reimagining Christian Origins (ed.. Castelli and Taussig), 280-94. Arnal and Vaage do not persuade, in part because, as Mark’s account of the crucifixion and Luke’s theological use of Jerusalem show, remembered facts may not only serve literary ends but may also be fully clothed in legendary and mythological dress. The snag here is that almost every bit of tradition is integrated into the surrounding Synoptic narratives and serves clear editorial ends, so unless we are to find only fiction in the Synoptics, observation of such integration and such ends cannot suffice to determine derivation.
This is why I like Dale Allison so much. He is equal to the most honest biblical scholar that I have encountered who also believes in the historicity of Jesus. He essentially admits his belief is a belief and does not kid himself (or his readers) that his reasoning is not circular. There are a number of other theologians who cannot face this fact about their own writings.
Theologian James McGrath challenged me to address a scholar like E.P. Sanders “point by point” and still deny the historicity of Jesus, and when I did so, including a discussion of what Sanders argues about the baptism of Jesus, McGrath belatedly responded with a weak and meek “I do not agree”. I had hoped for some serious response that included a statement of reasons for his disagreement. I would much rather engage with Dale Allison who does demonstrate an ability to give a reasoned response. Continue reading “Scholars who question the historicity of Jesus’ baptism and why they “do not persuade””
Three months ago I posted links to a questionnaire for atheists and other sceptics who had deconverted from religious faith. See /2010/10/09/questionnaire-for-sceptics/
Rick (the author of that questionnaire) has followed up with a request for feedback on his restructured Teologye.com website. This is the site where he had placed the original questionnaire, and it now maturing into something much more than when we last looked at it. One of Rick’s goals is to publish the results of the questionnaire on this site.
He would appreciate feedback on the site so has asked me to share this with blog-readers.
Two millennia ago, there was a Jewish Palestinian from Nazareth by the name of Jesus who once said: “The truth will set you free.” Sooner or later, the truth will reach people, and those who know it will be free; free from fear, free from hate, and free from vengeance.
Yesterday, January 5, 2011, Dan Gardner wrote a revealing article in the Ottawa Citizen, in which he introduces the truth to his readers about terrorism in Europe. There is nothing more compelling than the truth; facts, numbers, comparisons, and putting things in perspective. Gardner does it eloquently in his easy-to-read article.
Excerpt:
“The European Union’s Terrorism Situation and Trend Report 2010 says that in 2009 there were “294 failed, foiled, or successfully executed attacks” in six European countries. This was down almost a third from 2008 and down by almost half from 2007. So, in most of Europe, there was no terrorism. And where there was terrorism, the trend line pointed down. As for who’s responsible, forget Islamists. The overwhelming majority of the attacks – 237 of 294 – were carried out by separatist groups, such as the Basque ETA. A further 40 terrorist schemes were pinned on leftist and/or anarchist terrorists. Rightists were responsible for four attacks. Single-issue groups were behind two attacks, while responsibility for a further 10 was not clear. Islamists? They were behind a grand total of one attack. Yes, one. Out of 294 attacks. In a population of half a billion people. To put that in perspective, the same number of attacks was committed by the Comite d’Action Viticole, a French group that wants to stop the importation of foreign wine.”
While I was a believer I was fascinated by speculations that someone well-read in the Bible might conjure up by linking verses together in a way that no-one seemed to have thought of before. For example, someone might “prove” that Jesus was a well-to-do middle-class businessman by noting that he
seemed to have a particular house in Galilee that he regularly visited — so it was probably (therefore surely) his own house
was a carpenter and son of a carpenter and carpenters then were stone-masons and highly skilled in a range of tasks including stone masonry (and being perfect he would have been very good at whatever he did)
and he had a fine linen cloak of one piece of such quality that Roman soldiers preferred to gamble for it rather than tear it up among themselves
This is all nonsense, of course. It takes ambiguous data out of its original contexts and extrapolates from it to create a fiction. For example,
the gospels do not unambiguously affirm that Jesus owned a house, and there is no indication at all who owned the house, or the arrangement he had by which he came to be found there from time to time; one senses middle-class westerners reading their own life-styles into Jesus here.
The mere fact that he or his father was a “tekton” (translated “carpenter”) does not allow us to make any judgment about how successful he was financially; again one detects a western businessman making the judgement.
The cloak story was expressly said to have been a fulfilment of prophecy, so the odds are stacked against the likelihood that this was historical.
The Synaxis of the Twelve Apostles. Russian, 14th century, Moscow Museum.
Dale C. Allison in his recent book, Constructing Jesus, believes that we can learn, or at least “confirm”, what Jesus taught about the “end of the age” by looking at the careers of the Twelve Disciples/Apostles.
He begins by discussing various opinions about whether or not Jesus really did call twelve disciples at all, and if so, whether or not they constituted a formal institution of church leadership. I will look at that discussion in the next post.
So given that Jesus did indeed call “Twelve” as an ongoing institution, Dale Allison asks what was he thinking. Why did he do this?
This seems a strange question to ask if one is interested in a serious historical inquiry into the origins of Christianity. We simply don’t have any evidence to tell us what Jesus was thinking.
But Allison’s discussion is interesting because it does demonstrate for us laypeople just how biblical scholars work. They are not doing historical research by sifting the evidence. They are doing biblical exegesis. And this makes sense, since they are for most part “theologians”, not “historians” in the same sense as the likes of Arnold Toynbee or G. R. Elton or Eric Hobsbawm. Continue reading “Why Jesus chose the Twelve: Dale Allison’s exegesis”
I had thought my home town, on top of a mountain range, would be immune from the flooding that has hit so many other areas. Still trying to accept the following scenes. It’s not the steadily rising waters that have hit other places, but a flash flood that went as quickly as it came, even washing away cars in the main street, and it all happened so suddenly that some were unable to escape with their lives. I’m now living in Melbourne way down at southern end of Australia away from the flooding, but still own a house only only ten minutes walk from several scenes pictured in the linked news story. Naturally am concerned about everyone there, especially people I know, but still mostly trying to take in scenes and tragedy the city has never seen before. Devastating.
They say there is none so deaf as he who will not hear, and when it comes to Christ myth arguments there are biblical scholars who, despite their public protestations otherwise, regularly demonstrate an apparent inability to engage seriously with mythicist arguments.
Once again a biblical scholar who has been informed on his blog why he is mistaken for assuming (he has apparently never read Doherty’s most comprehensive book) that Doherty is fallaciously taking a late second-century text and using it as evidence for the matrix of emerging Christian thought in the first century. Despite being informed of his error, he continues to repeat his claim that the Ascension of Isaiah is a late document and therefore without the relevance that Earl Doherty ascribes to it.
I am a little surprised that even a doctor and professor should repeatedly publicly advertize his ignorance of the facts and the scholarship surrounding the Ascension of Isaiah.
I would like to recommend Doherty’s book as containing an excellent introduction to the Ascension of Isaiah in a 4000 plus word section from pages 119 to 126. Of course much of this is a detailed examination of the earliest layer of the text (first century), but there is also an examination of the history, origins and rescensions of the various manuscripts and layers of text within each.
This section will inform readers that the Ascension of Isaiah document we have today has come to us in three main manuscript lines, Latin, Ethiopic and Slavonic. Readers will learn something of the variations among these lines, the backgrounds to their various redactions etc.
They will also learn that the earliest document was probably a Jewish sectarian tract that was later the subject of redactions by later Christians.
Having just read the first chapter of Constructing Jesus: Memory, Imagination, and History by Dale C. Allison I can finally comment on what surely strikes most people as a curious statement to come from someone who claims to be a historian. In reviewing Allison’s opening chapter McGrath claimed that Allison was contending that
Even fabricated material may provide a true sense of the gist of what Jesus was about, however inauthentic it may be as far as the specific details are concerned.
This certainly does capture what Allison writes of his approach to finding “the historical Jesus” in the Gospels.
Allison considers the results of a wide range of studies on human memory and considers what these must mean for the accuracy of the Gospels, given the assumption that the Gospels are records of what was passed down about Jesus via fallible memories of those who had met him.
Allison even writes:
All this is why fictions may contain facts; an accurate impression can take any number of forms. Even a work as full of make-believe as the Alexander Romance sometimes catches the character of the historical Alexander of Macedon. Similarly, tales about an absentminded professor may be apocryphal and yet spot-on because they capture the teacher’s personality. The letter can be false, the spirit true. (pp. 13-14) Continue reading “Thoughts on Dale Allison’s thoughts on memory and historical approaches to the study of the Gospels”
Having covered Spong’s arguments for most of the Gospel narratives being “midrashic literature” (with one or two more posts to come) it is time to toss in some qualifiers and state my own views. I’ll anchor my thoughts around Mark Allan Powell’s review of Spong’s arguments. (The review is less securely but more cheaply accessed from here.)
There can be very little doubt that the Gospel authors did create their narrative details out of Old Testament texts.
What critics object to is the idea that entire narratives and most narrative details found in the Gospels are fabricated this way.
Spong himself insists (without argument, only by assertion) that there was some historical underlay to the Gospels. Jesus really was crucified, for example. But his silence before Pilate and his words on the cross are artfully woven by the author into the narrative from Isaiah 53 and Psalm 22. Continue reading “The rights and wrongs of Spong on the Gospels”
As an atheist, naturalist, humanist or whatever, who deconverted from religion some years ago I still find myself observing humanity (and non-human fellow creatures) with new eyes. This disaster is only one of many around the world, of course, but in every one of them it is inspiring to see what we are: local Queenslanders are shown on TV announcing their group identity: “We are Queenslanders, we help each other . . .”, but then someone is traveling interstate to help and declares: “We are Australians, we give each other a helping hand . . . ” And when it’s international, we identify with each other at the broadest humanity level.
Having just read the first chapter of