Review of "Misquoting Jesus" by Bart Ehrman

 

I have read a couple of books recently about the problems involved in reaching back into the first century AD in search the truth. This book was well-written and lucid but Dr Ehrman started from a fundamentalist standpoint and it struck me over and over again that, despite all, he's still there. His search was always for "first sources"; implying that those first sources therefore possess a "quality of truth" that are then gradually eroded by layer upon layer of human error. The fact that those first sources are forever lost to us creates a sense of near-despair - like a priceless heirloom destroyed for ever. Surely, this is the Fundamentalist view: not being able to get back to the text God actually intended means that His intentions will always allude us.
I found the chapters showing the way that scripture has been manipulated in the light of theological errors along the way (Gnosticism, adoptionism, Arianism, Docetism etc) inspiring because it helped me to form a view exactly opposite to the author. God is no more present in those first sources than He is in the manipulations. Or, put another way, God is just as much present in those manipulations as He is in the first sources. Just as the Spirit of God was at work through those original apostles so is He at work through all the scribes, scholars and theologians down the ages. Similarly though, just as the apostles were men with personal agendas and limited views trying to make sense of strange and difficult mysteries so are the scribes, scholars and theologians that follow them. All trying sincerely to understand but also weighed down by ego and ignorance.
I read a book recently which suggested that Jesus' body, after His crucifixion, was most likely thrown. along with the other criminals, into a lime pit. At first this horrified me but gradually it dawned on me that, whatever happened to His body, He rises again through the literary efforts not only of those who followed Him and believed in Him but also of those who came before. (Namely, the Prophets and more especially the Psalms.)
Ehrman talks much about the literary nature of the Christian and Judaeic faiths and it is through our discernment of these writings that we learn most about God.
The Word.
Not just the first words but all of them. The Bible is just a book until we sit down and actually read it ourselves. This way we become a part, an essential part no less, of that neverending story.

thoughts on the gospels.

A fine sunset against a  silhouetted landscape put Christmas cards in my mind. I accept that Luke´s Christmas story (and the crucifixion stories) are largely embellished.
The fact remains: Jesus was born somewhere and he was certainly crucified by Pilate.
The gospel writers were men of faith. Luke had an idea about the real meaning of Jesus´ life and he tries to make his gospel mirror this. His Christmas story is not the humdrum reality of a peasant baby´s birth but an attempt to recognise the universal reality of the meaning of this particular birth and how it should be proclaimed now. He has all of the Jewish prophets and psalmists in his mind as he does so. The resulting text radiates hope and faith.

John Crossan suggests that Jesus was crucified alongside other criminals and that his body, far from being embalmed and buried in a wealthy man´s new tomb, was more likely thrown in a lime pit and thereby destroyed. When I first read this I did panic a little but then I thought about all the parts of the crucifixion texts that have never made sense to me.
How did the gospel writer know what Jesus was praying in the Garden of Gethsemane? How did he know what happened between Pilate and Jesus after the arrest?
The answer is, of course, that he didn´t.
The events of that night are unknown to all except those who were actually there. Again, though, the gospel writers were men of faith; clearly convinced about the true importance of what happened and the significance of this man Jesus. They write, not in order to mislead, but in order to elucidate; to make clear the links that they have themselves been making over the decades since his death between those events, that mission, and the prophets and psalmists of their scriptures.
Mr Crossan also suggests that Jesus died without witnesses; that the disciples and the women were unlikely to have been there at all during those final hours. That seems to me to be less certain and, so far as I recall, he doesn't make clear why he believes this. Would they have been in danger if they had visited Golgotha and viewed from a distance? 
If Mr Crossan is correct that the earliest documents pertaining to Jesus were simply his sayings - without mention of either his crucifixion or his resurrection then it seems unlikely that the resurrection took place in the way suggested. Again, this came as something of a shock to me - despite the fact that the bodily resurrection of Jesus in the way described has always been a stumbling block.
After some thought on this, however, I was both relieved and, later, overjoyed. Again, the gospel writers are men of faith who have come to acknowledge Jesus as the Messiah prophesied through prayer, discussion and studying scripture. If Mr Crossan is correct about the lime pit then Jesus would have simply disappeared to his followers. Instead of throwing in the towel and going back to their fishing, they stayed in, or around, the holy city, visiting the temple; practising their faith. They continue to read the scriptures, remember the things that Jesus had said and done and no doubt talk much together; gathering for prayer and meals and thus piecing together, little by little, the overwhelming truth. The scriptures and the psalms all foretold what would happen; the facts of Jesus' life and teaching engraved on their minds. A dawning realisation.
This was resurrection. The road to Emmaus - discussing the scriptures and eating a meal. And here it is clear to me the profound link that comes between meals together and the appearance of Jesus. He appears to them through the scriptures as much as through the meal itself. 

Mr Crossan is also convinced that there was no Last Supper; no grand design by Jesus for the events that unfolded that night. If the Last Supper had taken place it would have been of paramount importance in the earliest documents relating to Jesus. This is not the case.
Again, I was a little shocked by this initially.
It means that I have to reevaluate the part played by Jesus' followers after his death. The last supper, then, happens after the crucifixion. They meet. they greet, they eat, and they remember. Over and over. Thus ritual is created little by little. By the time that the gospels are finally composed it has become almost written in stone and is thus weaved into the fabric of the wondrous tapestry which is the four gospels. Full of conjecture, faith, exaggeration, amazement, quirks, qualms, and, being human, slander too. Flawed documents all. Just like the older scriptures then. 

Instead of creating more doubt in my mind though, I breathe a sigh of relief.
Jesus as the Anointed One is not merely the Chosen One of God. He is the Chosen One by his church also. We chose him together. We choose him together! The disciples believed and so we come to believe. This is the ultimate gift of the Spirit.

John of the Cross

"We must silence the lowly human senses that lead us to false conclusions about God and keep us blind to His constant work and movement all around us.
Coming to a place of inner stillness we can perceive the first true-dawning light of the spirit."

Dark night of the Soul Bk 1. Ch 6.

Birth of Christianity by John Crossan

the God of Justice.

In "Birth of Christianity" on page 182
"And how does one know that God is just? Because God stood against the Egyptian Empire to save some doomed slaves. God does not simply prefer Jews to Egyptians. God does not simply prefer slaves to masters. The only true God prefers justice to injustice, righteousness to unrighteousness, and is therefore God the liberator."


Jesus asks the disciples, at one point in some of the gospels, to go out two by two (animals into the ark?) without money or spare clothes to the villages and to stay (in one house only) wherever they are welcomed and to eat whatever they are given and to heal the sick. It's just crossed my mind that they are NOT asked to "preach the good news" but only to heal the sick.
The way the author of B of C puts it is a revelation.

"Jesus' primary focus was on peasants dispossessed by Roman commercialisation and Herodian urbanisation in the late '20's. The itinerants as the just-recently-dispossessed destitute and the householders as the possibly-soon-to-be-possessed poor are brought together into a new family, a companionship of empowerment that is the kingdom of God. It does not break families apart but regroups those families torn apart already (or soon to be torn apart across the generations.)

Also, on page 321,
"Whenever, in the New Testament, you read the term "poor" in English, it is "destitute" in Greek."
It's a fundamental difference. 

Again, on page 282,
"a God who opposed systemic evil not because it was systemic but because it was evil."
Suddenly, the"Kingdom of God" makes sense!

Star men

A quote from "Star Men", a BBC programme about British astronomers who went out to USA as a part of the Brain Drain in the 60s and did some amazing work over the next 40 years.
50 years on they go back with a film crew.
One of them says, "Death is a part of life. It's an inevitable part of life. It's THE way that new things get going and you don't get cluttered by all this memory of what's gone on in the past."