Biblical Studies

2017-06-05

Plato and the Hebrew Bible: Homicide Laws

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by Neil Godfrey

After the introduction (covered in my previous post) Russell Gmirkin divides chapter three of Plato and the Creation of the Hebrew Bible, “Biblical, Ancient Near Eastern and Greek Laws” into thematic sections:

laws relating to homicide,
laws relating to assault,
to theft,
to marriage and inheritance,
to sexual offences,
to slavery,
to social legislation (concerning resident foreigners, widows, orphans, the poor, disabled persons, etc.),
to livestock,
to property crimes and agricultural law,
to commerce,
to military law,
to treason,
to “religious” or laws concerning the sacred,
and finally general ethical laws.

Each section documents details the three sources of laws — biblical, ANE and Greek — and concludes with a comparative discussion.

Near Eastern law codes included Hittite laws, the law codes of Eshnunna (LE), Hammurabi (LH), Ur-Nammu, Neo-Babylonian and Middle Assyrian laws and palace decrees and the Telepinu Edict. Points of Greek law are drawn from the writings of Plato, Aristotle, Lysias, Demosthenes, Xenophon, among others including Aeschylus and Andocides.

The chapter extends to 109 pages and includes 369 endnotes and a bibliography of over 140 titles.

This post looks at one of the above sections and Russell Gmirkin’s observations on the extent of the biblical laws’ similarity or otherwise to counterparts in the Near Eastern and Greek worlds.

All three geographical regions unsurprisingly stress the importance of lex talionis, of vengeance and deterrence as intended purposes of their legislation with respect to murder or even accidental killing.

But there are a number of significant points Greek and biblical law share that are nowhere found among our surviving evidence for laws in Mesopotamian and Asia Minor civilizations. These Greek-biblical similarities include

the recognition of different psychological states in determining appropriate punishments
the idea of blood pollution in the land
the responsibility of the relatives of the victim to initiate prosecution of the murderer
the possibility of at least temporary sanctuary in a temple
and the option of exile
stoning by the community
the killing of an animal responsible for killing a person
killing a burglar entering a house at night was justifiable homicide (ANE law required the execution of such a burglar but it is not stated that a house-owner himself could justifiably kill the burglar in the act)

“State of mind”

On the first point, the recognition of “state of mind” factors in determining penalties, Gmirkin writes:

Plato’s Laws contained an innovation on the Athenian laws for intentional homicide by distinguishing premeditated and unpremeditated homicide. Plato held that those murders committed with cold premeditation received a greater punishment in the form of a longer term of exile than those commit ted on impulse with no forethought, despite an equal degree of malice (Plato, Laws 9.866d-869e; cf. Chase 1933: 168-9,171-2; Loomis 1972: 93—4; MacDowell 1978: 115; Gagarin 1981: 35).

Here is part of Plato’s explanation:

For murder is committed in passion by those who, on a sudden and without intent to kill, destroy a man by blows or some such means in an immediate attack, when the deed is at once followed by repentance; and it is also a case of murder done in passion whenever men who are insulted by shameful words or actions seek for vengeance, and end by killing a man with deliberate intent to kill, and feel no repentance for the deed. We must lay it down, as it seems, that these murders are of two kinds, both as a rule done in passion, and most properly described as lying midway between the voluntary and the involuntary. None the less, each of these kinds tends to resemble one or other of these contraries; for the man who retains his passion and takes vengeance, not suddenly on the spur of the moment, but after lapse of time, and with deliberate intent, resembles the voluntary murderer; whereas the man who does not nurse his rage, but gives way to it at once on the spur of the moment and without deliberate intent, has a likeness to the involuntary murderer; yet neither is he wholly involuntary, but bears a resemblance thereto. Thus murders done in passion are difficult to define,—whether one should treat them in law as voluntary or involuntary. The best and truest way is to class them both as resemblances, and to distinguish them by the mark of deliberate intent or lack of intent, and to impose more severe penalties on those who slay with intent and in anger, and milder penalties on those who do so without intent and on a sudden. For that which resembles a greater evil must be more heavily punished, that which resembles a lesser evil more lightly. So our laws also must do likewise. . . . .

Examples follow:

If a man with his own hand slay a free man, and the deed be done in rage without deliberate intent, he shall suffer such other penalties as it is proper for the man to suffer who has slain without passion, and he shall be compelled to go into exile for two years, thereby chastising his own passion.

Compare Exodus 21:13

¹²“He who strikes a man so that he dies shall surely be put to death. ¹³However, if he did not lie in wait [i.e. there was no premeditation], but God delivered him into his hand [i.e. indicating this was an instance of intentional homicide], then I will appoint for you a place where he may flee.

The explanatory phrases I have added are from Gmirkin’s endnotes.

Exile

We also have in this example a reference to exile as a form of penalty, something unknown in our records of ANE laws. Continue reading “Plato and the Hebrew Bible: Homicide Laws”

2017-06-02

Mosaic Laws: from Classical Greece or the Ancient Near East?

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by Neil Godfrey

[These Laws] will show your wisdom and understanding to the nations, who will hear about all these decrees and say,

“Surely this great nation is a wise and understanding people.”

What other nation is so great as to have their gods near them the way the Lord our God is near us whenever we pray to him?And what other nation is so great as to have such righteous decrees and laws as this body of laws I am setting before you today?

Deuteronomy 4:6-8 (NIV)

In the previous set of posts on Russell Gmirkin’s Plato and the Creation of the Hebrew Bible we surveyed the broad constitutional framework of the Pentateuchal laws in comparison with Classical Greek and Ancient Near Eastern legal collections. Those posts are

In the third chapter, “Biblical, Ancient Near Eastern and Greek Laws”, Gmirkin undertakes a comparison of specific laws covering various social relations. Scholars have studied in depth the Hammurabi Law Code of Babylon in the light of the Pentateuchal laws but Gmirkin asks if it is valid to question whether ancient Greek legal codes also have relevance to the Bible.

Gmirkin draws attention to the Deuteronomy passage quoted above and asks us ot consider its international setting. Different nations are expected to observe and study Israel’s laws, comparing them with their own and with other law codes. It sounds as if the Deuteronomist had enough knowledge of other law codes to be confident that his stood head and shoulders above the rest.

Such a game-plan sounds quite odd and we know of nothing like this among the ancients of the Near East.

But we do know that elites among the Greeks did indeed write about doing just such multi-national comparisons of law codes. Is that relevant? Does that practice give meaning to Deuteronomy 4:6-8?

We have records from among the Greeks that when a new colony was to be founded or when a new government had been installed that legal experts would consult with other “nations” about their laws as preparation for drafting their own.

Gmirkin’s observation: Continue reading “Mosaic Laws: from Classical Greece or the Ancient Near East?”

2017-05-31

Early Christianity Looked Like a Philosophical School

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by Neil Godfrey

Continuing from the previous post on Stanley K. Stowers’ chapter, “Does Pauline Christianity Resemble a Hellenistic Philosophy?” . . .

To pre-empt predictable objections Stowers begins with three riders:

His comparison study does not make claims about origins; he is not arguing that Christianity began as a Hellenistic philosophy.
Comparison or similarity does not mean sameness; he is not arguing that Pauline Christianity was a philosophy.
Similarities with philosophical schools do not exclude similarities with other social groups.

With that ground cleared, following are seven similarities Stowers identifies.

1. Hellenistic philosophies saw themselves as distinctive sects, each focused on a central value/good

There were, for example, Stoics, Cynics and Epicureans. Each of these had its own attitude toward life and idea of what is the single umbrella good to which one must strive.

Stoics taught that virtue was “the answer” to the question of life. Everything else, all the other values and attachments deemed to be good were subordinate to “unitary good” of virtue. Family, possessions, would always take second place in the event of any conflict in following the ideal of virtue.

For Epicureans the ultimate good was freedom from pain and friendship. And so forth.

For Paul, the single, overriding good was “life in Christ”. Other values such as marriage, the household, business, ethnicity, were secondary. Even the commandments of God in the Jewish scriptures were superseded by Christ.

Yes, Paul’s stress upon worship of only one God and not many, and his “apocalyptic intensification” of these beliefs was Jewish, but Paul ripped them away from their ethnic, cultic and legal Judean contexts.

2. Hellenistic philosophies were contrary to conventional thinking

Ordinary civic virtue and conventional values were not the way to “happiness” or the “good life” according to Hellenistic philosophies.

The philosophies taught new ways of thinking, new motivations and desires to cultivate. Asceticism was valued.

In this context Stowers believes it no accident that the founders of the Hellenistic schools were not married and that Jesus and Paul were not married either. Paul challenged both Gentile and Judean norms of culture. The wisdom of God was set in opposition to both Greek and Jewish values.

Again, the structural similarities with the philosophies are obvious. (p. 91)

3. Hellenistic philosophies led to a new life, a new orientation of the self, a conversion

Stoics taught that the conversion was instantaneous.

For a more detailed discussion of the similarity between Paul’s idea of conversion to a life in Christ and the Stoic conversion see:

Paul and the Stoics – 1 (2009-11-04)
Christian conversion – an idea crafted by Paul from ancient philosophy (2009-11-08)

Other philosophies apparently ridiculed this Stoic idea of the way to attain virtue and taught, on the contrary, that virtue could only be attained gradually, over time, through a series of graduated steps.

Stowers adds that there is, moreover,

a literary tradition that becomes most prominent in the early empire in which writers give vivid descriptions of the turmoil and changes in the soul of those who convert to philosophy. Paul uses exactly the same language for conversion to the gospel. (p. 92)

4. Hellenistic philosophies required techniques to master and remake one’s self

Continue reading “Early Christianity Looked Like a Philosophical School”

Michael Licona Asks, “Why Are There Differences in the Gospels?”

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by Tim Widowfield

[Edit: When first published, this post credited Michael Bird instead of Michael Licona for this book. I can’t explain it, other than a total brain-fart, followed by the injudicious use of mass find-and-replace. My apologies to everyone. –Tim]

We have to dig deep to find something nice to say about Michael R. Licona’s new book, Why Are There Differences in the Gospels? Perhaps the best thing I can come up with is that he didn’t insert the word apparent to soften the blow. Other apologists will tell us why we needn’t worry about “apparent differences” or “seeming contradictions.” Not Licona. He acknowledges the differences and says he wants to find out how they got there.

Poor Ancient Historians

In his foreword, Craig Evans notes the variations among the evangelists and asks:

How is this to be explained? Should these discrepancies be regarded as errors? Were the Gospel writers poor historians? Have they told the truth about Jesus?

Such is the strange and mysterious world of NT scholarship. How can we explain these bizarre questions?

According to some of today’s most prolific writers in biblical scholarship, the evangelists — the authors of the canonical gospels — were historians and writers of Greco-Roman biographies. They reach these conclusions via embarrassingly obvious cherry-picking, which leaves them with a pile of incongruous evidence, which they feel compelled to explain away. Continue reading “Michael Licona Asks, “Why Are There Differences in the Gospels?””

Earliest Christianity Did Not Look Like a Religion

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by Neil Godfrey

I have long been intrigued by the second century “church father” Justin Martyr identifying himself as a philosopher, not a “priest” or elder or bishop or other ecclesiastical type of title. He left it on record that he came to Christianity after surveying a range of other philosophies, not religions.

Other posts addressing publications by Stanley Stowers:

Passing references to Stowers in

Time-warp forward to 2001 and the chapter titled “Does Pauline Christianity Resemble a Hellenistic Philosophy?” by Stanley K. Stowers in Paul Beyond the Judaism/Hellenism Divide (edited by Troels Engberg-Pedersen) and we find a rather solid explanation for Justin’s identification, I think.

Stop thinking of the “Jewish Synagogue” as the model for Paul’s churches

One of the first points Stowers sets down is that

We must remember that first-century Jews were Judeans. Interpreters should not, in principle, segregate Judeans from Greeks, Romans, Egyptians, and so on by creating something suspiciously like a modern religion called Judaism. Even Jews who lived permanently in Rome or Alexandria were Judeans living outside of their traditional homeland and therefore similar to Syrians, Greeks, or Egyptians who lived abroad. (p. 83)

(Steven Mason makes the same point with his preference for the word Judeans in place of Jews in A History of the Jewish War, A.D. 66-74.)

What Stowers is trying to get through to us is that we need to jettison any notion that when Jews were meeting in synagogues they were in some sense being astonishingly different from anyone else, and it therefore follows that scholars should be very careful before suggesting that Paul’s churches (and gentile Christianity itself) grew out of the synagogue.

A synagogue is a meeting place or meeting practices of Judeans. In our language Judeans were an ethnic people. Unfortunately the idea of “the synagogue” as a Jewish church still haunts much scholarship. (p. 83)

Judean worship was similar to the worship of other gods

Stowers argues that before 70 C.E. Jewish worship, even in the Diaspora, was centrally focussed on the temple in Jerusalem. The great temple festivals, tabernacles, pentecost, passover, were celebrated by Judeans throughout the empire. These were agricultural festivals that celebrated the gifts of produce and livestock that God gave his people, of success in trading and in acquiring the blessings of children.

Temple time with its agriculturally oriented calendar shaped the calendar of the Jews (sic) in general. Pilgrimage to Jerusalem for the festivals and sacrifices was a major feature of the period. Many Judeans of the Diaspora directly participated in the temple cultus sometime during their lives. The temple tax that supported the daily sacrifices in the temple and the first fruit offerings that signified the ancient pattern of reciprocity and divine giving of productivity were among the major yearly efforts of Diaspora communities. (p. 84)

What of the place of the scriptures? It is generally agreed that the reading of scriptures was a very important for the religious life of Judeans. For Stowers,

The Torah, Prophets, and Psalms are . . . absolutely dominated by the centrality of the temple, priesthood and cult. The epics and myths of Judeans were about land, people, and socio-economic reciprocity with God and other Judeans. . . For Judeans, unlike for Christians, to study scripture was to be oriented toward an actual temple, a place where reciprocity with the divine was enacted in the imagined exchange of produce from the land and shop, womb and market. (p. 85)

Judean religion was focused on the idea of reciprocal exchange with God. God blessed his people; his people offered sacrifices and gifts and communal worship in return. And the temple was the focus of this exchange. Stowers writes that the religion of a Judean living 500 miles from Jerusalem differed little in principle from the one living 20 miles away.

Other cultural groups, those from places other than Judea, throughout the empire, recognized these Judean religious customs as counterparts to their own.

The dominant activities of the temple were sacrificial offerings of grain and animal products. Judeans shared these practices with Greeks, Romans, and most peoples of the Mediterranean world. Josephus proudly proclaims that Judeans share the practices of sacrificing domestic animals with “all the rest of humanity” (Ag. Ap., 2.137). (p. 85, my bolding)

Pauline Christianity did not look like a typical religion

Continue reading “Earliest Christianity Did Not Look Like a Religion”

2017-05-29

3 Common and 1 Surprising Reason for Paul’s Silence on the Historical Jesus

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by Neil Godfrey

I recently drew upon a chapter by William O. Walker, Jr. in Some Surprises From the Apostle Paul to argue for the likelihood of interpolations in Paul’s letters: Why Many Interpolations in Paul’s Letters are Very Likely.

But that was only one late chapter in Walker’s book. Explanation 4 below is another “surprise” he writes about:

Paul on the Historical Jesus

Just one detail: Commenting on the passage in Romans (that some think is an interpolation, by the way!) that Jesus was descended from David, W points out that

“this may be more of a theological affirmation than a historical fact: in the minds of some, the Messiah was supposed to be a “son of David,” so Paul, like some other early Christians, may have simply assumed that because Jesus was the Messiah he must have been descended from David.” (Kindle version, loc ca 384)

Walker points to what most readers here know: that Paul says precious little about the historical Jesus. I won’t address the points that Walker interprets as references to a historical Jesus but will list some of his evaluations of the proposed reasons for Paul’s “relative silence”.

Explanation 1: Paul could presuppose his readers already knew the basic fact of Jesus’ life; no need to repeat what they already knew

W’s objection 1

To say that [Paul] must have talked [previously] about the life and teaching of Jesus really means little more than that [the scholar] himself, if he had been in Paul’s position, would have talked about the life and teaching of Jesus. In other words, [the scholar] thinks Paul should have talked about the life and teaching of Jesus. Be we certainly do not know that Paul did in fact talk about the life and teaching of Jesus when he was present in the churches; he may have, but we do not know this. (loc ca 442)

W’s objection 2

Even when Paul wrote a very lengthy letter to the church at Rome — a church he had never previously personally visited — he still had next to nothing to say about the life and teaching of Jesus.

W’s objection 3

Paul could assume that his readers already knew about the death, resurrection and expected parousia of Jesus, yet he talks a great deal about these, especially his death and resurrection.

W’s objection 4

Many times (e.g. eating meat sacrificed to idols, importance of love, not seeking vengeance, not judging one another) an appeal to a teaching of Jesus could have bolstered his own argument.

I believe in Jesus Christ, God’s only Son, our Lord,
who was conceived by the Holy Spirit,
born of the Virgin Mary,
suffered under Pontius Pilate,
was crucified, died, and was buried;
he descended to the dead.
On the third day he rose again;
he ascended into heaven,
he is seated at the right hand of the Father,
and he will come to judge the living and the dead.

Explanation 2: Paul was so focussed on the cross that everything else about Jesus simply paled into relative insignificance

W is more sympathetic to this explanation for Paul’s silence on the historical Jesus. As a comparison he directs our attention to the Apostles’ Creed which likewise

shows at least an equal lack of interest in the life and teaching of the historical Jesus.

Recall that the Creed jumps straight from Jesus’ birth to his suffering and death.

Explanation 3: Paul says little about Jesus because he knows very little about his life and teaching

Again W is somewhat sympathetic to this explanation. He even reminds us that Paul spent very little time with those who had known Jesus and in Galatians 1:12 declares

that the gospel he preached came to him not from a human but rather “through a revelation of Jesus Christ.” (loc ca. 487)

(Be still, my pounding brain. Do not ask why a good number of scholars will insist, when talking with outsiders who ask questions, that that Galatians passage means that Paul was saying he really did get his gospel from human traditions.)

Explanation 4: Paul feared the teaching and example of Jesus would be seen as a new Law to be followed to earn salvation by works

W’s fourth explanation is a new one to me, “a surprise from the apostle Paul” indeed. In a subsequent chapter in the book Walker discusses the current debate among scholars over Paul’s meaning of “justification”. One “surprising” point he makes is that Paul does not talk about “repentance” or “forgiveness”. Though we are familiar with these fundamental requisites of the Christian conversion and life from the gospels, Acts and the Pastoral epistles, they are alien to Paul’s thought.

For Paul, salvation is a gift from God and cannot be earned. Walker suggests that Paul may well have not wanted to appear to have given his followers any excuse to replace the Mosaic law with a new law or standard of conduct from Jesus.

I might discuss W’s argument in more depth in a future post. It is the point of his second chapter in Surprises.

I do really like the idea of a Christianity without focus on repentance. Godless atheist that I am, I cannot deny that I have come to view that repentance and need constantly to strive for perfection thing as responsible for a lot of messed up, guilt-ridden lives.

—o0o—

One might object that Paul does set down a lot of rules of conduct in his letters so why wouldn’t he point to Jesus as a model or why would he dismiss entirely the need for good works as a condition for salvation. In response I seem to have some recollection that most of the “laying down of the law” passages in Paul have been argued (by Winsome Munro) to be later pastoral interpolations into Paul’s letters. (e.g. Pastoral interpolation in 1 Corinthians 10-11)

—o0o—

2017-05-27

Why do professional scholars blog this sort of vacuous nonsense?

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by Neil Godfrey

A number of biblical scholars appear to be afflicted with something akin to the Red Scare or the Yellow Menace of the old Cold War days. They don’t need to know much about communism to know that it’s bad and evil and a threat to everything decent and that it appeals mostly to benighted minds in undeveloped nations. Similarly with rumours they hear about those who suggest there are valid reasons to question the historicity of Jesus: they don’t need to know much about it, only that it is a threat that supposedly only appeals to godless amateurs.

Now Jonathan Bernier is a very intelligent man but he sometimes writes about things of which he is evidently poorly informed. Indeed, he offers no evidence of having ever read any work of Price or Doherty or Brodie or Carrier or Wells yet claims to offer insights into mythicist motivations and reasoning that he suggests they themselves may not have considered.

I am referring to a blog post he published on 22nd April (Eastern Standard Time, Australia) titled Mythicism as Christian Mythology. (His blog is Critical Realism and the New Testament. I have had this post in draft for some time but see that now I am about to post about his article JB has removed it. C’est la vie.)

Without offering any citation of, or reference to, any mythicist author Bernier begins his criticism thus:

the standard mythicist appeal to comparative mythology. . . .

The mythicist argument is that the accounts about Jesus are just like those of all sorts of other gods or heroes in the ancient world. . . .

The mythicist argument that the accounts about Jesus are just like those of all sorts of other gods or heroes posits a process that we don’t tend to find elsewhere.

“Accounts of Jesus are just like those of all sorts of other gods?” Where did he get this idea from? Scoffing gossip and rumours repeated in staff wine and cheese parties?

Several of the works I have read by Christ Myth authors inform me that they draw upon mainstream critical biblical scholarship to explain the origins of many of the gospel narratives. Well recognized common literary practices (mimesis, intertextuality) among Greek, Roman and Jewish authors of the day are the primary explanations for the accounts of Jesus among authors like Price, Doherty, Carrier, Wells, Fitzgerald and others.

Next comes the sinister atheism association. Mythicists are equated with atheists, and of course we know by contrast that most good biblical scholars are in their own way exploring and defending their godly faith, don’t we. (Tongue in cheek.)

I think it well and good to describe it [mythicism] as a peculiar form of atheist Christology. . . . .

if they indeed do not think that God exists in the first place. . . .

If that is the case, given that their attested interests in this matter tend to relate to their atheism. . . .

Something fundamental about their apprehension of the world and themselves is at stake. . . .

Price calls himself a Christian atheist . . . . And the more I think about it, the more that I wonder if that term should not be applied to all mythicists.

Thomas Brodie, Tom Harpur, you are both hereby excluded from those who argue for a Christ Myth foundation for Christianity. Your problem is that you are not atheists like Robert Price and you remain stubbornly Christian, so your Christ Myth arguments do not count.

Moreover, prominent mythicist authors who have expressed the highest respect and even admiration for Christianity, even though some of them no longer call themselves Christian, have no place in Jonathan Bernier’s very narrow, most ill-informed, state of the literature. I’m thinking of names not only like Price, Brodie and Harpur above, but also Couchoud, Brandes, Rylands, Detering, Carotta, Freke and Gandy, van der Kaaij among others. To assume that mythicism can only be spawned by god-hating atheists who seek to wipe Christianity from the face of the earth only points to an ivory tower removal from all awareness of the real world.

Then there is the motivation. Mind-reading once again leads the way.

Continue reading “Why do professional scholars blog this sort of vacuous nonsense?”

2017-05-26

“True stories that didn’t happen” — OMG!, do stop the silly word games

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by Neil Godfrey

Bart Ehrman has been blogging about the quaint way too many biblical scholars (himself included) play games with the meaning of “myth” in relation to the gospel narratives. The message strikes me as being something like saying Aesop’s fables are true stories because they contain useful lessons.

Why can’t they just say, yes, Aesop’s fables and the Bible stories are fables or myths or fairy tales but they contain valuable lessons or moral guidance?

Why try to give the stories a fabricated status of “truth” simply because they supposedly contain what some people consider worthwhile lessons?

Why Many Interpolations in Paul’s Letters are Very Likely

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by Neil Godfrey

Some Surprises from the Apostle Paul by William O. Walker, Jr. contains an interesting chapter about interpolations. Walker does not agree that most scholars should remain sceptical regarding many proposed interpolations in Paul’s letters.

They see no way to identify such interpolations with any certainty, and they tend to regard arguments for interpolation as highly speculative and almost inevitably circular in nature. (Kindle ed, loc ca 1575)

Walker disagrees. He argues that there are “sound a priori grounds for assuming the presence of interpolations — probably many interpolations — in the Pauline letters but also that such interpolations can sometimes be identified with a fair degree of certainty.”

Interestingly there is one set of passages that Christ mythicists sometimes rely upon that Walker believes were probably not penned by Paul so maybe that little detail might encourage some of us to open up to the possibility he might be right. 🙂

Walker points to two reasons we should expect to find interpolations in Paul’s letters.

Scholars have identified numerous interpolations in other ancient texts — “Homeric, Classical, Hellenistic, Jewish and Christian.” We know of interpolations in letters by ancient philosophers to their followers. Even in the Gospel of Mark we have the little disputed interpolation of the final chapter, 16:9-20; and in the Gospel of John there is the episode of the woman taken in adultery found in 7:53 – 8:11. And in the gospels of Matthew and Luke we find that huge chunks have been interpolated into the gospel of Mark. So if we know for a fact that texts were very often expanded with inserted material then we should surely be surprised if Paul’s letters proved to be the exception.

Walker’s second reason for expecting interpolations throughout Paul’s letters involves what we know of their literary history: Continue reading “Why Many Interpolations in Paul’s Letters are Very Likely”

2017-05-22

Part 2: Why Luke traced Jesus through Nathan rather than Solomon

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by Neil Godfrey

This post is a direct continuation from Why did Luke trace Jesus’ genealogy through David’s son Nathan and not Solomon?

Unfortunately we cannot track down the beginning of the Jewish tradition that the messiah was to emerge from David via his son Nathan. Marshall Johnson considers suggestions that it began in the days of the later Maccabees with priests challenged the legitimacy of monarchical rule but finds them flawed.

Zechariah 12:10-14 “And I will pour out on the house of David and the inhabitants of Jerusalem a spirit of compassion and supplication, so that, when they look on him whom they have pierced, they shall mourn . . . . The land shall mourn, each family by itself; the family of the house of David by itself, and their wives by themselves; the family of the house of Nathan by itself, and their wives by themselves; the family of the house of Levi by itself, and their wives by themselves; the family of the Shim′e-ites by itself . . .

So according to Marshall we can do nothing more than rely on the scant evidence we do have that indicates that at the time the “Old Testament” book of Zechariah was written the family of Nathan had significant prominence in Judea. Who that Nathan was at that time we do not know. He could have been David’s son or he could have been the prophet. What we do know is that at some point the Nathan in Zechariah 12:12 was identified with both the son of David and the prophet. Marshall believes that the best we can do at this point is accept Eusebius’s explanation that Nathan was given his place in Luke’s genealogy of Jesus as a result of a difference of opinion among Jews over the ancestry of the Messiah. See the previous post: Matthew’s genealogy represented one school of thought; Luke’s genealogy represented another school of thought that believed the “curse of Jeconiah” in the book of Jeremiah made any messianic line through David’s royal line impossible. Jeremiah 22

24 “As I live, says the Lord, though Coni′ah the son of Jehoi′akim, king of Judah, were the signet ring on my right hand, yet I would tear you off 25 and give you into the hand of those who seek your life, into the hand of those of whom you are afraid, even into the hand of Nebuchadrez′zar king of Babylon and into the hand of the Chalde′ans. 26 I will hurl you and the mother who bore you into another country, where you were not born, and there you shall die. 27 But to the land to which they will long to return, there they shall not return.” 28 Is this man Coni′ah a despised, broken pot, a vessel no one cares for? Why are he and his children hurled and cast into a land which they do not know? 29 O land, land, land, hear the word of the Lord! 30 Thus says the Lord: “Write this man down as childless, a man who shall not succeed in his days; for none of his offspring shall succeed in sitting on the throne of David, and ruling again in Judah.”

The best available explanation for Luke tracing the line of the messiah through Nathan, therefore, is that there was a division of viewpoints among Jewish scribes over the possibility of David’s royal line yielding the messiah and Luke expressed the alternative school of thought to the one represented in Matthew. Johnson also believes that the internal evidence in the Gospel of Luke indicates that the author had a strong motive to want to give Jesus a prophet as an ancestor. Nathan, identified as a prophet as well as son of David, therefore, takes on a special significance in this gospel. So what is the evidence that the author or final redactor of Luke-Acts had a particularly strong interest in giving Jesus the messiah descent from a prophet?

1. “There is throughout the Lukan corpus an appeal to the prophets of the OT as witness to the validity of the ministry of Jesus”

The OT prophets are regularly labelled as “prophets of old” (προφήτης των άρχαίων), setting Jesus apart as the new prophet:

— Luke 9:8, 19; Luke 1:70; Acts 3:21.

OT prophets are frequently referenced, sometimes called “holy”:

— Acts 3: 18, 24; 7: 42; 10: 43; 13: 40; 15: 15; 26: 27; Luke 18: 31; 24: 25, 27, 44

Individual prophets referenced, and most notably David is listed as one of the prophets:

— Isaiah: Luke 3:454: 17; Acts 8: 28; 28: 25; cf. 7: 48 — Joel: Acts 2: 16 — Samuel: Acts 3: 28; 13: 20, 27 — Moses: Luke 24: 27; Acts 3: 22 — Elijah: Luke 1: 17; 4: 25-6; 9: 8, 19, 30 ff., 54 — Elisha: Luke 4:27 — David: Acts 2: 30

Luke includes the prophets in the end-times banquet (unlike Matthew): Luke 13: 28

Luke 10:24 “For I tell you that many prophets and kings desired to see what you see, and did not see it, and to hear what you hear, and did not hear it.” Continue reading “Part 2: Why Luke traced Jesus through Nathan rather than Solomon”

2017-05-21

Why did Luke trace Jesus’ genealogy through David’s son Nathan and not Solomon?

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by Neil Godfrey

I’ve set out the genealogies at the end of this post but I think anyone interested in reading this post will already be aware of the differences between the family trees of Jesus in the Gospels of Matthew and Luke. Matthew’s genealogy looks “right” since it leads to Jesus through David and his son Solomon. But Luke’s looks odd. No Solomon. None of the famous kings of the Old Testament. It’s as if Luke followed the family line of Jesus through the back doors and side alleys or secret closets on the trail of some nobodies. David’s son is named as Nathan. The only Nathan most of us know about is Nathan the prophet who confronted David over his murder of Uriah and adultery with his wife.

An interesting explanation for this oddity in the Gospel of Luke is offered by Marshall D. Johnson in The Purpose of the Biblical Genealogies (2nd ed, 2002).

Before we look at that explanation we need to note the evidence for the genealogy being “less than reliable” as a historical record.

[I]s this list a Lukan construction, or was it shaped in some prior tradition which Luke has incorporated? And, if the latter is true, then to what extent can we expect to find here a congruity with Luke’s purpose in writing the history of Jesus and the earliest church? . . . [I]t cannot be assumed that the lists as we have them in Matthew and Luke were taken over without modification or redaction from the Palestinian Jewish-Christian church.

There are two indications which seem to support this view:

(1) Repetition of names in the list after David, some of which appear to be anachronisms, possibly suggesting that this list had its own history. Among these repetitions are: variations of Mattathias (five times), Jesus (twice), Joseph (three times), Simeon (Semein), Levi (twice), and Melchi (twice). The question of anachronism enters the picture here in light of the history of the usage of Jewish personal names. Jeremias points out that the use of the names of the twelve patriarchs of Israel as personal names cannot be traced to pre-exilic times; thus, ‘when Luke, in the early period of the kings, names in succession Joseph, Judah, Simeon, and Levi as the sixth to ninth descendants of David, it is an anachronism which proves the pre-exilic section of the genealogy to be historically worthless’.1

1 Jeremias, Jerusalem, pp. 330-1, notes that the first occurrences of the names Joseph, Judah, and Simeon as personal names among the Israelites or Jews are to be found in Ezra, Nehemiah, and I Chronicles, while the name Levi occurs as a personal name first among the Maccabees and in NT times.

Material since published in the Corpus Papyrorum Judaicarum has tended to confirm the view that these names, together with the name Jesus (Joshua), were not commonly used among the Jews until the Ptolemaic and especially the Roman periods. It appears that there was a steady increase in the use of Hebrew biblical names from the Ptolemaic to the Roman periods, including the names Joseph and Jesus.

Thus, the Lukan list most probably does not derive from an actual genealogy of Joseph or Mary, but should be considered in light of the generally midrashic use of this Gattung in Judaism. This means that it is legitimate to inquire into the purposes for which it was constructed and for its inclusion in this gospel.

(pp. 230f, my formatting)

In the list below I have underlined the repeated names and coloured red the sequence of four anachronisms.

The second indication that the list has been shaped by the author of the gospel is it’s unusual location in between the baptism of Jesus and his temptation in the wilderness:

(2) The genealogy is incorporated into a framework similar to that of Mark, that is, between the account of Jesus’ baptism and his temptation. This is to say that Luke was not led to include the genealogy at this point merely because of a sequence found in his sources. Moreover, the break in the ‘Markan’ sequence at this crucial point would seem to suggest that Luke had some specific purpose in mind for the genealogy as well as for its position. (p. 231)

So why Nathan?

The reason Luke traces Jesus’ ancestry through Nathan, Marshall Johnson argues, is to emphasize the prophetic nature of Jesus’ ministry and the prophetic mission of the church arising from his work. Nathan was traditionally known as a prophet of notable significance.

That’s his conclusion. So what is his argument to support it?

Marshall Johnson begins by exploring references to Nathan in early Jewish and Christian traditions. He cites four passages:

1. Zechariah 12:10-14

¹⁰“And I will pour out on the house of David and the inhabitants of Jerusalem a spirit of compassion and supplication, so that, when they look on him whom they have pierced, they shall mourn for him, as one mourns for an only child, and weep bitterly over him, as one weeps over a first-born. ¹¹On that day the mourning in Jerusalem will be as great as the mourning for Hadad-rim′mon in the plain of Megid′do. ¹²The land shall mourn, each family by itself; the family of the house of David by itself, and their wives by themselves; the family of the house of Nathan by itself, and their wives by themselves; ¹³the family of the house of Levi by itself, and their wives by themselves; the family of the Shim′e-ites by itself, and their wives by themselves; ¹⁴and all the families that are left, each by itself, and their wives by themselves.

All four names appear in the pre-exilic section of Luke’s genealogy of Jesus.

In a later rabbinic Aramaic version of the above Zechariah passage, the Targum on Zechariah, Nathan is identified as both the son of David and the prophet.

But that’s a late document, so is there any evidence that such an identification had an earlier provenance? Continue reading “Why did Luke trace Jesus’ genealogy through David’s son Nathan and not Solomon?”

2017-05-18

Motivations of a “Mythicist”

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by Neil Godfrey

From the Preface to The Evolution of Christianity by L. Gordon Rylands, 1927 (with my highlighting in bold):

The purpose of this book is to state as clearly and as concisely as possible, and to co-ordinate, the results lately obtained along different lines of inquiry by investigators of the origins of Christianity. The subject is wide and complex, and different inquirers have necessarily specialized in different directions. Sufficient results have now been secured to make a co-ordination possible and useful. I wish to say emphatically that the book is in no sense an attack upon religion in general, or upon Christianity in particular. There are, in fact, men who believe that the disappearance of the historical Jesus will have the effect of making religion more spiritual and more free. Professor Schmiedel has affirmed that his inmost religious convictions would suffer no harm even if he felt obliged to conclude that Jesus never lived; and I have no doubt that when advanced theologians have accepted this conclusion, as they have accepted many others which for a long time were bitterly resisted, they will discover that, nevertheless, Christianity can continue to exist. Kalthoff, indeed, argued that when an ideal—or, to use his expression, a prophetic—Christ has been substituted for the theological Christ, Christianity will be liberated from bonds which hinder its spiritual and ethical development, and will be capable of being raised to a higher plane.

The motive which prompted the writing of this book, however, was not to support that or any other point of view. I undertook the study of which it is the fruit solely with the desire of discovering the truth. And it should be obvious that that endeavour can be successful only in the absence of ulterior motive and of the wish to establish any particular conclusion. I was attracted to the subject of the book by its importance and fascination as a purely historical problem. So far as I had any bias at all, it was in favour of the historicity of Jesus, since I had not previously seen sufficient reason to doubt it; but I found this hypothesis untenable. And the farther I went the more impressed I became with the inadequacy of theologians and traditionalist critics, with whom the search after truth seemed to be subordinate to the maintenance of a particular point of view. So far as textual criticism is concerned, indeed, the work that has been done is admirable ; but in the treatment of the historical and mythological problems involved theological scholars have been lamentably superficial, if not sometimes wilfully blind. (pp. vii-ix)

Continue reading “Motivations of a “Mythicist””

2017-05-04

How John the Baptist Was Reshaped by Each Gospel

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by Neil Godfrey

The following is adapted from a 1975 article by Morton S. Enslin, John and Jesus. Enslin argues that the evidence in the gospels does not support the common view that Jesus began his career as a disciple of John the Baptist. In fact Enslin argues that when we examine the gospel narratives in sequence it is far more probable that the paths of John and Jesus never crossed.

Enslin, relying upon the account of John in Josephus, believes John was a preacher who stood completely apart from Christian origins. This presumed historical John was considered to be a powerful threat to the authorities who had him executed.

From this starting point Enslin sees the evangelists writing alongside an independent John the Baptist movement and each one (at least after Mark) in succession contrives in his own way to make this John more “Christian”.

The Gospel of Mark

John suddenly appears without explanation. He is preaching a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins.

John did baptize . . . and preach the baptism of repentance for the remission of sins. (Mark 1:4)

Jesus appears and is baptized.

There is no hint that John recognizes Jesus as the greater one who is to come after him.

After emerging from the water God announces to Jesus (no one else apparently hears) that he is his son:

Thou art my beloved son…. (Mark 1:11)

Continue reading “How John the Baptist Was Reshaped by Each Gospel”

2017-05-01

160 Scriptural Quotations and Allusions in Mark 11-16

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by Neil Godfrey

As an addendum to the previous post I refer here to Howard Clark Kee’s list of scriptural quotations, allusions and influences in the second half of the Gospel of Mark, chapters 11 to 16. Kee points out that

Even a casual glance at the margins of the Nestle-Aland text of Mark will suggest that in the passion section the number of quotations from and allusions to scripture increases sharply as compared with the first ten chapters of the book. When to the categories of quotations and allusions is added the less precise factor of ‘influence’, the links between the Jewish biblical tradition and the later chapters of Mark become even more numerous and potentially significant. . . .

Of the approximately 160 allusions to scripture in Mk 11-16, nearly half are from the prophets (exclusive of Daniel), a fourth are evenly divided between Daniel and the Psalms, slightly fewer than an eighth are from the extra-canonical writings (mostly from what are known as Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha), and the remainder are from Torah, the historical books and the other writings.

(Lee, Howard Clark, 1975. “The Function of Scriptural Quotations and Allusions in Mark 11-16” in E.E. Earle and W.G. Keummel (eds) Jesus and Paulus, Geottingen, Vandenhoeck und Ruprecht. pp. 165-188)

I have set out Kee’s list of quotations and allusions in three posts:

Chapters 11-12

Gospel of Mark’s use of Jewish scriptures for Jesus’ Jerusalem entry narrative

Chapter 13

The little apocalypse of Mark 13 – historical or creative prophecy?

Chapters 14-16

Jewish Scriptures in Mark’s Passion and Resurrection Narratives

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“State of mind”

Exile

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1. Hellenistic philosophies saw themselves as distinctive sects, each focused on a central value/good

2. Hellenistic philosophies were contrary to conventional thinking

3. Hellenistic philosophies led to a new life, a new orientation of the self, a conversion

4. Hellenistic philosophies required techniques to master and remake one’s self

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Poor Ancient Historians

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Stop thinking of the “Jewish Synagogue” as the model for Paul’s churches

Judean worship was similar to the worship of other gods

Pauline Christianity did not look like a typical religion

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Paul on the Historical Jesus

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1. “There is throughout the Lukan corpus an appeal to the prophets of the OT as witness to the validity of the ministry of Jesus”

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So why Nathan?

1. Zechariah 12:10-14

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