Erhman references it as someone else’s idea in How Jesus Became God. You can do a word search on Amazon and the passage is on page 157, and cites:
John Dominic Crossan, “The Dogs Beneath the Cross,” chap 6 in Jesus: A Revolutionary Biography.
Erhamn certainly is a debatable figure–He’s an atheist and I’m a Christian. And he does get handwavey on certain issues. But he also seems to have a good grasp of the scholarship around him, the historican and academic landscape. He writes at my level, distilling people who write far above my level. It’s helpful.
What’s crazypants about what kopek is referencing is that we only found most of the “Apocrypha” in 1945. So between the 3rd and 4th centuries, when they burned everything, and the modern age, scholars weren’t able to engage in the “debate” over Christianity fully. What would be going on if that stuff was never discovered? To reference the Walter Scott shooting tape as non-politically as possible, I think it’s relevant to the OP’s question. Without direct evidence, we only know what people saw, and a lot of that shit goes unreported, or lied about, or misinterpreted. Now give or take 80 years, between Jesus and the first Gospels.
If we’re assuming all the tales of Jesus’s life are true, we kinda have to believe that all the tales from the Old Testament are true, too. At that point, you kind of have to go all-in and, really, once you’re accepting burning bushes, the Flood, parting the Red Sea, Lot’s wife… immaculate conception really isn’t that much of a stretch.
If you don’t believe in the Virgin Birth—that Mary became pregnant by the Holy Spirit—why is Mary’s pregnancy an issue? Why the need to theorize about her “sneaking out at night”—why not just assume Joseph made Mary pregnant in the normal way? The prupose of the Virgin Birth story/doctrine is not to address the question “How did Mary get pregnant?” but “What’s so special about Jesus?”
This one’s also kind of a special case: unlike the resurrection and all the other things people believe(d) about Jesus, this one can’t be traced back to his followers claiming to have seen it for themselves. It’s the one story where, even if it actually happened, the answer to the thread title’s question can’t be “Because they saw it for themselves.”
This is not a new idea: Matthew’s gospel mentions it (though of course not to say that’s what actually happened).
I don’t know why the resurrected Jesus didn’t appear to more people to publically demonstrate that he had risen. I assume Christian theologians and apologists have addressed the question, but I don’t know what their answer(s) are.
Isn’t this view refuted by the fact that so many people have believed these miracles? It’s a demonstrable fact that plenty of people did and do find “that theory useful to their existence.” It sounds like you’re starting from the premise that people “can’t” believe something and then asking why they do/did.
People used to embellish their hero tales. Not just sacred/religious ones, but any form of hero tales. We have remnants of that tradition in the form of some myths and tales told about US Presidents, in fact. I was informed in elementary school that George Washington never told a lie, that statement illustrated by the cherry tree tale. And Daniel Boone killed a bear when he was only three. Admittedly those things are merely absurdly unlikely, not physically impossible, but it’s still really part of the same trend. There did not exist the desire for unembellished honesty and historical accuracy; it was more important to pump up your heroes and generate an appropriate level of awe in your listeners. And there was a far less developed sense of what is and is not possible, so the risk of generating contemptuous dismissal instead of awe was pretty low.
On the subject of ancient superstition in general, there’s a story that has sort of stuck with me, about the Roman emperor Domitian, and how he was murdered.
Apparently, Domitian had been told by an astrologer what the day and hour of his death would be. Naturally, this freaked the emperor out, and as the fateful time approached, he took all kinds of precautions to avoid the danger.
Now, Domitian was not a popular man, and he had his share of would-be assassins. Some of them were on his closest staff, and they found a workaround. On the day of his foretold demise, when Domitian asked what time it was, they lied, and told him that the hour of doom had already passed, when it was in fact just approaching. Happy and relieved that the prophecy had seemingly been bogus, Domitian relaxed his guard and retreated alone to his bedroom, where the assassins got to him and killed him.
Brilliant! Except, you know, if someone wanted Domitian dead, why not just stab him at some other day and hour? Because, it seems. sometimes that’s not really how the logic is applied to this sort of thing.
The Catholic Church certainly did. When they elected Jesus as a god in the Council of Nicea, they very conveniently did NOT include the Gospel of Judas, which tells an entirely different story.
This stuff shows how pervasive the myth is. Look at all the “History” Channel shows giving physical explanations for the parting of the Red Sea and stuff. Imagine a world where respected historians spend their time researching weather patterns along the Potomac to give a rational explanation of how George Washington could throw a dollar across it. Where the real explanation is “the story is just made up.”
Once again, the story could be traced back to Joseph seeing the angel for himself.
I mean, if I saw an angel, I’d be very impressed; back then, folks were suitably impressed even if they saw one in a dream, which (a) nowadays jumps out as unutterably stupid when you read it right there in Matthew 1, but which (b) was blandly offered up with an absolutely straight face back in the day: Why did Joseph believe? Here’s why! Which makes perfect sense, right? Because this is, in fact, how people circa 4 BC react to that kind of thing: seeing something miraculous happen in a dream spurs them to belief and action exactly as if they’d seen it in person while wide awake!
Because certainly Judas did not write that Gospel. It’s a Gnostic document, written as a theoretical conversation between Judas and Jesus, written at least 150 years after Christ died.
However, it’s still worthy of study as an interesting offshoot of early Christianity. You can buy it and the other apocryphal texts in any well stocked Catholic bookstore. http://www.zenit.org/en/articles/the-gospel-of-judas
OTOH, note that Matthew likely didnt write that Gospel. It certainly could be based upon the *logia *collected by Matthew.
John was the “author” of his Gospel, but even there he likely dictated it to his followers and it was edited by them. Note to mention John was a very old man by then, and thus his memories are not entirely trustworthy.
wiki: *According to some, the Gospel of John developed over a period of time in various stages,[34] summarized by Raymond E. Brown as follows:[35]
An initial version based on personal experience of Jesus;
A structured literary creation by the evangelist which draws upon additional sources;
The final harmony that presently exists in the New Testament canon, around 85–90 AD.[36]
Within this view of a complex and multi-layered history, it is meaningless to speak of a single “author” of John, but the title perhaps belongs best to the evangelist who came at the end of this process*
That’s a very hefty commendation. It’s good when we can admire writers with whom we don’t necessarily agree.
Well, you do have the scholarship, starting apparently in the 1850s, of analyzing word patterns in the Bible. This is what led to the notion of the various documents that were assembled together to become Genesis. In theory, anyone could have done that, as far back as Constantine. But in practice, it was only undertaken so very, very recently.
Later discoveries gave additional impetus to this scholarship, to be certain. Nag Hammadi doesn’t really assist any theological viewpoints, but it’s historically fascinating.
Sure. So?
wiki: It is traditionally believed that John was the youngest of the apostles and survived them. He is said to have lived to an old age, dying at Ephesus sometime after AD 98.
So John wrote his about 60 years after the Crucifixion.
Here’s even a doubting source:
Because of the reference to the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem in 70 CE (Mark 13:2), most scholars believe that Mark was written some time during the war between Rome and the Jews (66-74). Most early dates fall around 65 CE and most late dates fall around 75 CE.
Mark was written from contemporary sources, and Matthew & Luke from the Q source. :Q source - Wikipedia
We have numerous people writing their memoirs decades after much of the interesting stuff happened. Maybe from some notes, sure. “Q” seems to be those notes for all but John.
Oddly the first Gospel may be Thomas (likely not written by Thomas at all) which apparently contains quotes and sayings first put down to pen only a few years after the
Crucifixion., or even during His life.
Some of it has to do with the origin of myths – many of them DO have roots in actual events. (Like King Arthur could’ve been based on an actual person) It’s like, “such and such happened, and then people later added on to the story.”
My example was of a myth based on an actual person. There are three possibilities - the miracle happened from supernatural causes, the miracle happened from very unlikely but natural causes, or that someone made it all up to increase the reputation of a real and famous person. We know the last possibility happens all the time, and seems far more likely than the other two.
But leaves the History Channel with a hole in its schedule. And it explains why there will never be a Skeptics Channel.
A variation on “someone made it up” is that some miscommunication happened. Person A said, “He got out of the boat and walked to shore,” and person B understands this to mean, “He walked on top of the water.”
No one actually “made up” the story, so much as it evolved out of primitive communications in an isolated region.
I had read that by the time of the Council of Nicea, there was an immense amount of pseudo-gospel writings around, and that one of the objectives of the council was to examine and remove those thought to be spurious. Do many of these writings survive today? what do modern bible scholars think of them?
What’s the problem? There were Christians before the gospels were written.