Category Archives: bible

Did Jesus exist?

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I commented on Stephen Law’s blog that “To deny that [Jesus] was a solid historical figure is to my mind a certain indication that standards of rationality have been left behind.” He disagrees, and I have commented further as follows:

Amazing. Now where to begin?

First, a distinction between believing that Jesus was a historical figure and believing, eg, in the resurrection or other miracles. The latter is, obviously, much more open to debate and that _isn’t_ what I’m asserting here.

My assertion is that nobody sane doubts that Jesus was an historical figure, ie that there was an itinerant Jewish teacher called Jesus who lived and was crucified in Palestine 2000 years ago. To deny this is good prima facie evidence that non-rational factors are at play in forming a judgement, the same sorts of non-rational factors that Stephen criticises as being parallel to believing in fairies. Denying that Jesus was an historical figure, is, I contend, an equally egregious intellectual error.

So, that’s the assertion, and bringing in red herrings like Bert flying around the room is just muddying the water – effective rhetoric but nothing more substantial. Biblical criticism has historically spent a lot of time discriminating between the (supposed) “legendary” bits (= ‘flying around the room’, miracles generally) and a more robust historical core. Dismissing _all_ of the historical evidence on the basis of a philosophical disagreement about what is humanly possible plays to prejudices nothing more.

Why am I so blunt on this? Well, a bit of autobiography first – I have studied this subject at undergrad and postgrad level – indeed you could say I have a professional interest in it – and I suspect that’s something not widely shared amongst this readership. But is this just special pleading from biased sources? (Stephen: “I know lot’s of Biblical scholars think there’s good evidence for Jesus’ historicity. Trouble is, they tend to be true believers! That’s I’m not too impressed by arguments from authority in this context.”) No, for the simple reason that the formative tutor for me in NT studies was himself an atheist who was quite prepared to see the miracle stories as largely made up. He isn’t an exception, there are lots of Biblical scholars and scholars in related disciplines (Ancient Near Eastern history) who share the consensus that Jesus was an historical figure. I repeat – point to someone with expertise in the subject matter who disagrees!

But in a more mind-boggling comment Stephen goes on to say “I wouldn’t, and don’t, rely on Biblical scholarship either way here” – so how and why is your position fundamentally distinct from that of a Creationist vis-a-vis evolution? Creationists display no regard for the consensus of opinion within the relevantly qualified community, you’re displaying no regard for the consensus of opinion in this relevantly qualified community (an opinion, I repeat, shared across Christian, agnostic, atheist etc).

Now that is why I believe that to assert “I just don’t know whether the historical figure Jesus existed” is at best disingenuous. It is not the product of a dispassionate search for the truth, and it is not, I believe, a viewpoint that any reasonably informed and neutral observer would ever hold. I repeat – it simply shows, as with creationist argumentation, that common standards of rationality and respect for truth have been left behind.

~~~

Postscript on the minor points – a) oral cultures, contra to Anticant’s point, were very good at preserving the fundamental integrity of testimonies; b) the references to Jesus aren’t just the four gospels, there are also the various epistles, especially Paul’s, written within 20 years of the crucifixion; c) the “received wisdom” being quoted here (eg from wiki sources) tends to reflect the state of Biblical scholarship at least one generation ago, and nearer three; d) the idea that the gospels are fundamentally eye-witness perspectives is, if not quite a consensus at the moment, certainly a defensible and respectable position to hold (see, eg, Bauckham’s book, ‘Jesus and the Eye-witnesses’).

On the Socrates analogy, I’d need to check, but I’m pretty sure that the gospels stand up well in comparison (eg how do we know that Plato i) wrote what is attributed to him and ii) wrote down what Socrates actually said, as opposed to putting words into his mouth? compare the different presentations of Socrates across the different authors); the distinction between an oral and a literary culture is also relevant (let alone the different linguistic paradigms).

Now there are lots of people in the blogosphere who know much more about these things than me, so I’m going to link to several of them, and ask if they want to join in the conversation!

Bread of Life (5): The offence of John 6

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John 6 begins with the feeding of the 5,000, then there is a little break and movement and then Jesus gives a sermon in Capernaum. Jesus says, “Unless you eat the bread which is my flesh you have no life in you.” Is this a reference to the Eucharist or is this to be understood symbolically? Is it, for example, a question of beliefs, that eating the flesh means coming to him and drinking his blood, drinking wine is about believing in him?

Generally, when Jesus realises that he is being misunderstood, he is not an incompetent teacher! He does correct people when they get the wrong end of the stick. For example with Nicodemus, Christ says “Unless you are born again then you don’t enter the Kingdom” and Nicodemus says, “How can you be born again, can you come again from your mother’s womb?” So Jesus goes on and says “Unless you are born from above.” He clarifies what he means. When the disciples ask him ‘what do you mean avoid the leaven of the Pharisees?’, again he unpacks what he means, that here he was speaking in a figurative fashion. However, there are other occasions when he is at first understood to be saying something literally and people take offence. For example, in John 8 when he says, “Before Abraham, I am” – he was there, he was saying he is ancient and the Jews object, they take offence. Jesus sees that they take offence but he re-emphasises it to drive home the point, which is when then says “Before Abraham was, I am,” which is such a bold and provocative and virtually blasphemous thing for him to say in the context, because he is expressing his identity with the Father. When Moses says to God, “What shall I say to the people so that they know I come from you?”, God says, “Tell them I am.” This is the name of God and so when Jesus says “Before Abraham was, I am,” he is expressing something powerful, he is emphasising. When Jesus is misunderstood as being literal when in fact he is being figurative, he corrects the mistake; but when he is understood as being literal and people take offence because he is telling the truth, then he really redoubles the point, he emphasises it, he escalates it.

So what is going on in John 6? Is it that he is being misunderstood and then he corrects, or is it that he is being understood rightly, the people take offence and then he redoubles his emphasis? After the feeding of the five thousand, after all the themes have been set in motion and when the Jewish people take offence (as have some of his disciples) Jesus repeats and redoubles the emphasis on what he is teaching. He says four times, “Eat my flesh”, and as he is re-emphasising it he changes his language. In Greek the word for eat is phago, and as he is re-emphasising he changes the word to use the Greek trogo, which means chew. He doesn’t just say “Unless you eat my flesh,” he says, “Unless you chew my flesh.” So you can see how he is really just hammering this home.

There’s another factor to consider, that the figurative language of ‘eat my flesh’ did have an existing meaning at the time – as it still does – and it meant something very, very hostile. To say to someone “I will eat your flesh,” is to say to someone, “I will kill you.” There is an existing figurative meaning that’s in Scripture, e.g. in Micah 3. But that was the figurative sense. I am persuaded that Jesus meant himself to be taken literally, which is why the Jewish people take offence, because in Leviticus it says, “You shall not drink the blood because the blood has the life.” That’s even for animals, let alone a human being. So it is doubly offensive, and those who take offence at it fall away. This is the only example in Scripture when disciples turn away from Christ over a matter of doctrine. Jesus is teaching them and they find it impossible to cope with. It is also where Judas turns. There are all sorts of things embedded in this narrative!

David Ford: "If you have the Bible in one hand, what do you have in the other?"

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The clergy of the Chelmsford Diocese gathered together today at the Cathedral to hear David Ford give a talk about the Bible. Some notes available if you click ‘full post’.

Ford began by telling an anecdote about a train journey he had recently shared with Prof Nicholas Lash and Prof Eamonn Duffy, when he had asked them what the answer to the title question should be – Lash said ‘a glass of wine’, and Duffy riposted with ‘an Armalite rifle’…

The origin for the question was Karl Barth’s comment that the Bible should be read with a newspaper in the other hand – in other words we should relate what we read in Scripture to what we engage with in our world on a daily basis. After a brief discussion of Hans Frei, which I couldn’t quite hear well enough to determine how relevant it was(!) Ford said ‘What we most need in our church today is a wise interpretation of Scripture’ – which I thought was spot on, and this was really his theme.

Ford remarked that we clergy use Scripture professionally every day, and suggested three things that needed to be ‘in the other hand’.
1. Scholarship directly related to Scripture, of which there is an abundance to be used.
2. Interpretations of Scripture from Christian history (eg Augustine, Luther etc) so that we become aware of how texts have been understood in history, and therefore the need to re-read Scripture in the light of every new situation.
3. Contemporary theology, which is itself refreshed by contributions from 1. and 2.

This last was crucial, he argued. There are different grammatical moods available in Scripture, including the interrogative, indicative, imperative and subjunctive – but also, most crucially, an optative mood. In other words, our understanding of Scripture has to remain open-ended, constructed around a desire for something that we have not yet achieved. He said that we are on a road, in via, now we see through a glass darkly etc – and therefore the fundamental mood of our faith is desire and longing. It is therefore essential that we don’t wrap up our interpretation of Scripture in a tight package of indicatives and imperatives – something vital to faith would thereby be missed.

At the heart of any interpretation of Scripture is a relationship with the living Christ, and Ford discussed the Emmaus story in this light – that as Christians we bring a particular ‘resurrection hermeneutic’ to the text, and that this allows something new to be discovered – Christ explained the Scripture to the disciples and then their hearts burned within them. What is allowed, encouraged even, is a creative engagement with the text that allows new things to form. The best example of this was John’s gospel which begins with a Christian midrash on a Jewish text.

Lying behind the title question was the theme of how to live as a Christian in our contemporary society, and Ford said a little about Charles Taylor’s recent book on the secular age, commenting on how secular thought has its own set texts and axioms. There was a digression to discuss an American Jewish author whose name I didn’t quite catch (possibly Michael Fishbane??) but this brought Ford to his next major point – that we have to study and interpret the bible in the context of our worship and liturgy. He insisted that we must daily be exposed to reading and being read by Scripture, and that the Daily Office was irreplaceable, radical and basic. It is only by repetition that we become sufficiently immersed in Scripture and enabled to understand it. He remarked that one of the best forms of Anglican theology was the collect, eg from the BCP, and he read out the ASB collect for Pentecost which he regretted having lost:

“Almighty God, who on the day of Pentecost sent your Holy Spirit to the disciples with the wind from heaven and in tongues of flame, filling them with joy and boldness to preach the gospel: send us out in the power of the same Spirit to witness to your truth and to draw all men to the fire of your love; through Jesus Christ our Lord, Amen.”

He remarked that Scripture is full of cries, of pain and joy, and that the hallmark of wise interpretation was the ability to understand those cries.

Finally he ran through some other possible answers to the title question: an empty hand; a blessing; someone else’s Scripture; a quinquennial report (he had been a church warden for five years so knew about these); poetry, novels, radio local newspapers etc; a computer mouse and a diary.

On that very last point Ford finished with an impassioned cri de coeur for clergy to take more seriously the responsibility of preaching. He asked how much time we give to our sermons, and whether we mark out particular time for it in our diaries. It is sometimes the only contact that people have with the world of the Bible, and people have died for our ability to do this, so ‘please please please take this incredibly seriously’. We should have as our aim in preaching that people should leave with their hearts burning within them…

In questions he recommended some authors: Ellen Davis (three books of hers, especially this one); Luke Johnson; Richard Hays; Tom Wright; Richard Bauckham and, with warm endorsement, Rowan.

A really solid talk, and it was good to catch up with a number of fellow clergy.

Bread of Life (2): Passover

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So what’s going on when Jesus initiates this feast?

Well, what’s the sort of thing going on in the background, what are the traditions that he is drawing on as he shares this supper? The first one of course is Passover. Was the Last Supper a Passover meal? It’s ambiguous. The Synoptic Gospels, Matthew, Mark and Luke say it was, John and possibly Paul say it wasn’t. John is fairly clear in specifying that the meal takes place on the day before Passover – John’s gospel has this slightly different chronology because he is having Jesus killed at the time that the lambs for the Passover meal will be killed, he’s really emphasising Jesus as the Lamb of God, which is one of the main themes in the Johannine literature, “the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world”. So that’s John’s emphasis, the Synoptics say that the Last Supper itself is the Passover meal and that Jesus is killed the next day. However, whether it’s on the day before Passover or whether it is the Passover meal itself is, in a sense, secondary. All of the witnesses agree it is in the context of the Passover, the great festival being celebrated in Jerusalem. And Paul says quite clearly, “Christ our Passover has been sacrificed for us, so let us celebrate the feast.”

So what is Passover? I am sure you are all very familiar with the story of Exodus, with the Hebrews being taken out of the land of slavery and you have got the ten plagues, Pharaoh refuses to let his people go, and the people of Egypt suffer because of his stubbornness and in the end there is the slaughter of the first-born and so on. God says to Moses, “Tell the people of Israel to slaughter a lamb without a spot or blemish and to daub the blood of the lamb on the lintels and mantels of the doors of their house.” And then when the Angel of Death comes, who is going to kill all the first born in the area, the Angel of Death will pass over those houses which have been daubed with the blood of the lamb, so those who have identified themselves by this marker, become exempt from the death which is coming. That’s the core symbolism of Passover: the lamb is slaughtered and those who identify by the blood of the lamb do not then share in the death.

Of course there are other aspects: you are meant to eat it standing up, the meat is meant to be roasted, it is meant to be done with bitter herbs and so forth, it is meant to be done in haste because it happened to the people just before they were about to escape, and so the whole story of Exodus, of the people being led out of slavery into freedom into the Promised Land, this captures the moment of God’s activity, when God acts to redeem the people. As you will know, Passover, even now in the Jewish faith, is so crucial, this is very much the marker for the community.

For our purposes an important element is that this meal begins as the literal marker so the Angel of Death passes by, but it is maintained and renewed. When the people, the Hebrews, come together for their Passover, it is one of the principal ways in which their community is maintained as they keep telling the story. It is a memorial of the salvation but it is also an expression of identity with those who are saved. In other words it is not just past tense. It is not simply, “Hey we are the people and God acted a long time ago,” it is a re-enactment, “we are the people today whom God is redeeming”. It is a present tense process. Does that make sense? It is not just telling a good story, it is actually re-enacting. When it says in Scripture how you are to celebrate the Passover there is a role for the youngest child who can speak in the service, and the youngest child says “Why is this different from any other night?” “This is the night when we were freed,” “what is the meaning of this service?” You shall say to them, “It is the Passover sacrifice of the Lord.” Not this was the Passover, it is the Passover. Just to emphasise it is an ongoing thing.

So that’s one root and a very important root, the Passover meal that remembers and retells and re-enacts God’s saving activity to the people of Israel bringing them out of the Egypt.

Johannine inerrancy

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I really shouldn’t fire off a post like that just before going off on holiday 🙂

This, in slightly more formal terms, is my argument. It’s a train of thought, it hasn’t had all the wrinkles removed, I might conceivably change my mind…. and so on. Click ‘full post’ for text.

1. There is a major difference in the presentation of Jesus from the synoptics to John. Specifically the character of Jesus exhibited through the great ‘I am’ monologues is difficult to tie together with the character presented in the other three gospels. It is not academically exceptional to treat the synoptics as providing a more solid historical framework.

2. I’m happy to accept that much (not all) of the material presented as coming out of the mouth of Jesus in John’s gospel was not originally spoken by Jesus of Nazareth.

3. I see these monologues as divinely inspired. That is, I see them as teaching eternal truths about Jesus’ identity. I see them as revelation. I believe, for example, that it is true that Jesus is the way, the truth and the life.

4. I would therefore be happy to talk about the inerrancy of John’s gospel. What I would mean by this is that John’s gospel contains no errors concerning the nature of the living Word. It is a finger which truly points to the moon.

5. I would distinguish this form of inerrancy from a form which emphasises an inerrancy of ‘fact’. I see the concept of ‘fact’, used in this context, as at best misleading, at worst idolatrous. This concept of fact – by which is meant something like empirically verifiable data – was developed as a consequence of the scientific revolution. I don’t see those ‘facts’ as the most important material for guidance in our life; rather I see them as trivial.

6. Some background thoughts: the people alive at the time of Jesus did not fully understand who he was. It is possible that Jesus himself, prior to the resurrection, did not fully understand every aspect of who he was (part of his being fully human perhaps). John’s gospel is a fulfilment of the other three; it draws out more fully the implications of the other three; you could say that the other three – indeed the entire rest of the Bible – is pregnant with John, and John’s gospel is the baby. Except I’d rather say that Jesus is the baby, and John’s gospel is the inerrant witness to that baby.

7. Any language about inerrancy – treated positively – is a conservative position. Yet #2 above is anathema to more conservative understandings of John’s gospel. I want to argue (have argued elsewhere) that to defend the status of John’s gospel in terms of ‘fact’ (= enlightenment epistemology) is to falsely elevate that epistemology above the much more important spiritual truths which John’s gospel inerrantly conveys. The inerrancy does not consist in the gospel being factually robust but in truly pointing to the living Word.

8. “But these are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name.”

The status of John’s gospel

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Doug has some interesting things to say about John’s gospel here, principally he argues that “Jesus didn’t run round saying all those “I am …” claims that he makes in John’s gospel. The speech of Jesus in the gospel is largely a stylised representation of Jesus’ significance, given narrative form within the newly established genre of gospel.”

I agree with this. That is, I don’t read John’s gospel as primarily an historical document (I think the synoptics are primarily historical, with the theology more or less thrown in). What I do think John’s gospel is, however, is divinely inspired. I think that it tells the truth about Jesus, and it uses the monologues to portray that truth dramatically. I realised the other day, when pondering the question of inerrancy, that as soon as you let go of the modernist mind-set, and allow inerrancy to mean something other than the Enlightenment-era construct of historically demonstrable fact, then I would want to argue quite strongly for the inerrancy of John’s gospel (and, flowing from that, the inerrancy of Scripture as a whole).

Which is a deeply conservative conclusion from what might seem a liberal premise. Yet it’s only a liberal premise if you are, yourself, completely conditioned by Modern liberal prejudice.

Such is the world we live in.

Do we know more than Jerome about the Bible?

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Chris referenced Jerome in the comments, and I suggested that we (as a community) now know more about ancient languages and the Bible than he did. Well, I have to confess I don’t know too much about Jerome, and I am certainly no linguist (I leave that to the good looking half of the family).

What I have in mind is this:
1) we have access to more texts than the Ancients did (eg Dead Sea scrolls and so on);
2) we have access to archaeological evidence that the Ancients didn’t have;
3) I suspect we also have a more nuanced understanding of language (although I may well be wrong on that); and
4) I’m pretty sure that we benefit from a larger and deeper pool of people studying these languages and the relevant texts (eg thousands of PhD students).

So I would want to stand by the general point, although I’m happy to be proven wrong about Jerome in particular.

I’d be very interested to know what John, Doug and Peter have to say on this, as they all know much more about it than me.

The Passion (BBC)

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A few thoughts:
– overall very pleased with it, very enjoyable, loved the grittiness and realistic portrayal of the lesser characters, especially Caiaphas and Pilate;
– I thought Joseph Mawle was effective as the lead;
– didn’t like the over-emphasis on the kingdom being within – definitely a secular influence there;
– similarly, was disappointed that there weren’t any healing miracles portrayed;
– I found the treatment of the ‘I am the son of God’ language historically clumsy and implausible; I’m happy for Jesus to have an overwhelming consciousness of God as his father, but this seemed to have been strained through 3rd century theology and didn’t work. That is, I don’t think the claim ‘I am the son of God’ would have been understood in a Trinitarian sense at the time – it would have been understood as meaning ‘I am the true king of Israel/ I am the true high priest’, each of which would have been enough to generate antagonism;
– delighted with the last episode and the presentation of the resurrection, probably the best thing about the whole film and possibly the best presentation of the resurrection I’ve seen. I especially liked the way in which it is portrayed as initially confusing via the use of different actors, and then slowly the disciples ‘get it’ both in terms of recognising who Jesus is and taking forward the implications in their own lives (the washing of the feet).

4.5 out of 5