I don’t think it effects them at all. The dating of Paul is from the description of him interacting with historical personages in Acts.
And even if you just want to stick to the epistles, Paul describes meeting with James the Just (whose existence is attested in Josephus, and early Church Fathers) so they must’ve been contemporaries, which again puts Paul in the first half of the first century.
How do we know James the Just in Joseph is the same as James the Brother of the Lord in Paul? (I don’t doubt it, but I also don’t know how we know.)
Hold up on that–FSR I thought I recalled that the phrase “James the Just” was found in Josephus but it’s not. Will have to refresh my memory on this.
Okay, I had some things mixed up. Now I see that a James who is the brother of a Jesus called Christ is mentioned in both passages. Assuming the Josephus is authentic, that’d be a clencher for the question I’m asking.
This is why I found the book Zealot so interesting. Aslan goes into these arguments, and what the best arguments for and against are.
The number one argument was that the whole Christianity thing started around the time when most of the participants were still alive, and the events were within the remembering of many. This isn’t some “once upon a time in a galaxy far far away”. This was converts preaching about their messiah to the elite Jews of the communities in the immediate neighbourhood of Judea - Damascus, the Cities along the Mediterranean coast, Cairo, Greece. These were educated scholars, merchants and clergy who would have travelled to the Temple in Israel more than once, whose circle of acquaintances included people who could tell what they knew of the man and his execution. (The biggest knot of core believers, apparently, hung around the temple in Jerusalem. Not the best place to make up stories of 20 years ago.)
The body of evidence, once you scrape away the later embellishments that enhance the story - point to a wandering preacher who followed John the Baptists until he was arrested; then preached his own message of overthrowing the Roman occupiers and the corrupt Temple elite. He wandered the countryside until the day he and his followers entered Jerusalem to cheering crowds. He trashed the temple merchants and moneychangers. For this and other crimes, he was arrested and crucified so he would not disturb the existing order.
After he was executed, his followers continued to preach that he would return to right the wrongs in Israel. Paul started out persecuting these heretical deviants; but not too long after Jesus’ death, he converted, became his biggest fan, and concocted his own version of the religion. He spread it across the area, so he had to snail-mail new sermons from time to time to keep the different communities on track.
There’s just too much material, available for too long, in too many ways. The story must have a core of truth under the rubble of later embellishment. If it’s all fiction, why not have Jesus descending from heaven and zapping his enemies wholesale?
What’s Aslan’s evidence for this tidbit? I can see being able to infer from the Gospels that Jesus was a disciple of John (although it is not really implied in the Gospels, it is not necessarily contradicted). There is no doubt that Jesus had strong words for the religious leaders of the day. But I don’t recall any evidence that Jesus preached overthrowing the Romans - in fact, just the opposite. The gospels indicate that the Romans crucified him somewhat reluctantly, at the demand of the temple authorities. And part of the Jew’s disillusionment with Jesus was precisely that he did not claim the throne of David.
From a historical scholarly perspective, the gospel narratives don’t have to be taken as - well, gospel - but aside from them where does Aslan get the idea that Jesus preached political upheaval?
There’s a band called “St. Paul’s Epistles”?
Are they a Contemporary Christian Music group?
He was called the Messiah. Aslan points out that Judea of that era was crawling with Messiahs, essentially guerilla liberator gangs (culminating in one great revolt, then another). Messiah as someone mystical who atoned for our sins was a later Pauline invention. At the time, it meant a religious and political liberator, a new occupant for the throne of King David. The Romans or Herod would stamp out one, and another would rise up, in several instances the son of the previous Messiah. (Paul was arrested in 57AD being mistaken for another such, “the Egyptian”) In the context of the time, it did not mean spiritual liberator from original sin or any such mystical nonsense, but rather an aspirant to freeing the Promised Land from the yoke of oppression.
By reading what was said by various commentators - the gospels, Acts, Josephus, etc. - often it was not “corrected” with orthodox rewording in the future because that context was lost and thus the editors a century or two later did not realize these words needed “fixing” to stay on message.
It’s an interesting book, although I’m not sure I buy everything Aslan suggests. After a few years wandering the area around the Sea of Galilee, Jesus eventually makes his way to Jerusalem. He enters to triumphal cheers of adoring crowds, then trashes the merchants and moneychangers “desecrating” “his father’s” temple. The group then retreats to the garden of Gethsemane (Mount of Olives, outside the city). When the Temple guards come looking for them, the Peter or a Peter has a sword, so they were not just a bunch of holy men in desert robes.
This is the part I find weak in Aslan’s analysis. What was Jesus expecting? A dozen or so Messiahs before him had been hunted down and executed for waging war. There’s no evidence Jesus or his followers did, or they would have been hunted before they got to Jerusalem. Did he expect the population to rise in unison and toss out the invaders? Did he expect concentrated lightning fire and brimstone to hit anyone who opposed his entry and occupation of the temple? (Why “My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?” What was he expecting against a heavily armed foe?)
Aslan thinks even lines like “my kingdom is not of this world” are later edits. This is where his argument is rather weak. I don’t think he satisfactorily explains how if he was simply a Fidel-Castro-like liberator, how did he get to a cult following that hung around the Temple and peacefully preached his second coming from On High for decades after he was crucified? I wonder what the actual message really was, and how much of the Heavenly Kingdom and Redeemer for our Sins was Pauline invention versus Jesus himself? He learned his schtick from John the Baptist, who was famously washing people to purify them of the sin and corruption of life. I assume that made it into Jesus’ pronunciations in a big way.
An interesting throw-away line in the book is where it’s mentioned that the unrest in Rome that initially got the administration annoyed at the Christians may actually be Christian versus traditional Jewish community spats turning very into ugly riots as they fought in the streets over each others’ interpretation of Jesus as Messiah and the role of the law of Moses.
Nevertheless, it’s an interesting book and I recommend it for a fresh look at the time. Aslan was Muslim, became a born again Christian in his teens, then returned to Islam. (so no stoning him…) Regardless, he is a professor of that history, so when he states something he is well aware of the variety and magnitude of debate about various topics of these events - timing, interpretation and attribution of authorship, what words are later edits, etc. and often mentions those debates.
I have no doubt that some of Jesus’ followers - especially the adoring crowds who welcomed him into Jerusalem - thought him to be the political messiah who would pull down the Roman oppressors and re-establish the throne of David. It helps explain why they turned against him shortly thereafter and demanded his crucifixion.
But that’s not the same as saying “Jesus preached his own message of overthrowing the Roman oppressors.” If he ever did, we have no record of it. Instead the gospels go out of their way to make Jesus apolitical. It sounds to me much like Aslan is saying “this is what we know about other first century messiah figures; Jesus must have been like them.”
The trouble is a lot of Jesus’ message is heavily redacted to suit the next few centuries’ orthodoxy, which is based on Paul’s imaginations and fabrications.
There’s a discussion about “The Kingdom of God”, central to Jesus’ message. While this is not a phrase you find in the old testament or other writings (like the Essene Dead Sea Scrolls) there is the expression “Kingdom of Yaweh” which David means to be the throne Solomon sits on - i.e. The kingdom of God is Israel.
The message about the interpretation of “messiah”, according to Aslan, is that in it’s real meaning is “the messiah is king, his task is to restore Israel to glory and destroy its enemies.” Jesus went through geat pains to avoid saying himself that he is the messiah, since that owuld be an overt challenge to the established order that would automatically bring on the forces of the government.
Jesus quotes Daniel to Caiaphas - “The Lord says unto my lord, Sit at my right hand until I make your enemies your footstool.”
That would make sense if that was how it originally appeared in the Prophets. The “and destroy its enemies” is really not a part of the Messianic message, but is, itself, a later tradition that arose during the occupation by the Greeks and, later, Romans. Even the “restore to glory” part of the messianic message was always heavily invested with religious or spiritual attitude. If Aslan is holding out the earthly king who will smash our enemies as the “real” messiah, then we can probably discount his scholarship.
This is making me think of Trancendental Meditation advocates who have claimed that if we can just get XXX,XXX number of people meditating at once that it will stop all war. Maybe he was a Messiah with a message of overthrowing the oppressors with an increase in sanctity, purity, and goodness.
I don’t really want to repeat Aslan’s book online here. Some of it sounds logical (since I don’t know that much about the subject, and he’s an academic expert) but (a) whatever Jesus was all about, likely Paul fabricated a lot more of his own on the subject and (b) Paul’s interpretation was used to edit the existing gospels and epistles in the next century or two so we can only make educated guesses about what’s original and what’s edit.
He may have died on the cross, or was taken down and “entombed” and survived, or his followers stole the body, or if you are religious, I suppose you believe in the resurrection. Regardless, he had a message not inconsistent with his followers generally hanging around the Temple in Jerusalem, trying to convert the rest to his point of view, waiting for his imminent return seated at the right hand of God, etc. Obviously he was not a simple guerilla leader or trying to start a beer-hall putsch, he had a more spiritual and mystical message. This is the part that Aslan glosses over after getting into a lot of speculation about other details in Jesus’ role.
We’ll just never know what the message really was, unless there are more surprises where the Dead Sea Scrolls came from…
The “destroy enemies” probably goes back to Babylon or earlier.
These post are very interesting. they relate to the heart of the matter, that is: how are we sure that “revelations” received by "holy people"after Jesus are valid? Paul makes claims, based upon his revelations…although he never actually met Christ. After the death of the last apostle, we are really on shaky ground-nobody receives direct revelations after that (the Lord uses Church conclaves to decide things). So how are we to evaluate post Gospel writings?
There are a number of apocrypha - writings from around the same time or not long after the gospels, that for various reasons did not “make the cut” into the bible as agreed by a later conclave. Some were obvious fakes, some did not say the correct message. (Like the one where the child Jesus zaps his bullies dead and performs other nasty childhood tricks) What these said and why they were rejected gives a good indication what the various factions of the early church were thinking.
Some only survive in quotes by church writers who explain why these writings are wrong…
Acts 25 gives some direct and indirect info useful for dating the later part of Paul’s life.
It mentions Paul’s run-in with the Roman Procurator of Judea Festus. Generally believed to have been in charge c AD59-62. Felix was his predecessor and ruled c AD52-58 is also mentioned.
It mentions Agrippa and Bernice. Not an exact a window but reinforces the time frame.
Paul’s appeal to Caesar also puts a lower limit on the time. A provincial Roman citizen appealing to Caesar was a relatively new law.
Throw in stuff in the preceding chapters referring to Ananias, Paul being a student of Gamaliel, Paul being born a Roman citizen, etc. and you’re getting pretty solid info limiting the date range. (As far as internal references go.) Definitely ruling out anything pre-AD30.
The references to Jerusalem put an upper limit of AD70 on this due to it being sacked and rebuilt under another name.
Given that after all this Paul went to Rome for trial and execution, we can assume that a typical epistle referring to recent and upcoming visits to churches was written before all this. (He was apparently under some sort of house arrest so he preached and presumably did some writing.)
Two points here.
First for the point you claim about the Romans crucifying Jesus reluctantly.
An excellent source for this is The Origin of Satan, by Elaine Pagels, another professor at Yale. She notes that the portrayed reluctance by Pontius Pilate in the Gospels need to be taken with a grain of salt. The Gospels were written from just before the retaking of Jerusalem and the burning of the temple to a couple of decades after. She says that they must be read in that context of that war, that the gospels were written partly as war propaganda, to help differentiate early Christians from other Jews and to make Christians seem less threatening.
The portrayal of Pilate gets progressively less and less like him and the portrayal of “the Jews” gets more and more negative in the gospels, with Mark, the earliest one being the least unbelievable and getting less and less realistic in the later accounts. By the time Luke was written, there was quite the dispute between Jesus followers and other Jewish groups, and
There are a couple of very informative podcast series on the historicity of the New Testament. One by the Yale Open Campus and features Professor Dale Martin. Another is by Professor Philip Harland who has written extensively on the religions of the Mediterranean.
Both of these scholars agree that it was very likely that the Romans executed Jesus for treason: that either he or someone claimed he was a Messiah, a king.
While I haven’t read Aslan’s book yet, it sounds well within what mainstream historians would consider possible.
There were a couple of references to Christians (but not about Jesus) by Roman scholars or government leaders by either the end of the first century or the beginning of the second. The range of possible dates for the Jesus movement can’t be pushed too much later in time.
As for the question of how much earlier, I think the argument here about the content of the Pauline letters is probably the best indication that they were written after there was an established Jesus movement in Jerusalem. As pointed out by others, there were large disputes among the various followers. Another point not mentioned is the importance Paul places on gathering offerings for followers in Jerusalem. Yet another are the questions from the congregations which Paul is responding to.
If you are going to argue that Paul could have predated the historical Jesus or that there was not a historical Jesus, then you need to account for these, and other question
This is not a trivial task, and if you could actually make a convincing argument based on a fresh analysis of the available sources, then you could make your millions on book sales.
You mean Alexandria, right?
I think this part is pretty much agreed to by the serious historian.
The part about overthrowing the Romans really gets into speculation. As I noted about, most scholars accept that he was executed by the Romans for either claiming to be a king of the Jews or that someone claimed he was.
The point made in both podcasts is that there were so many various groups within the early Jesus followers that it couldn’t be just one movement. While Paul was important, it was not just him.
What would a self-proclaimed messiah figure believe? Calm, rational calculations have never been the strong point of religious zealots.
There are large debates on what can be accepted as authentic teaches of a historical Jesus, and pretty much all of them are speculative. It’s just too hard to tell
As noted above, the account of them turning against him cannot be taken as historical.
And also as noted above, the gospel accounts cannot be taken as historical.
The approach by the historians I’ve read is as you indicate. This is what we know about XX in the first century, so this is likely or not likely.
I’m quibbling that it was not all Paul.
Another important thing to keep in mind is that Christianity was not an officially sanctioned religion until Constatine (and it took a few more emperors for Christianity to really get its political legs), so there was at least 100-200 years where it was literally impossible to have some sort of global conspiracy to erase all hostile accounts (for one, not all Christians could even agree on what consisted orthodox teaching, so every enclave held onto their own version). Many of these missing documents simply got lost to mundane carelessness, war, etc.
Julius Caesar has less historical documentation, and yet most of us would agree that he was a person who existed and did the things that the records of him have him doing.