HJ Agnosticism (20): On the Scholarly Consensus

Prior to the 2008 financial crisis, many of the finest minds in the field of finance and economics thought that they knew a lot more about how things worked than it turned out that they actually knew. Sadly, many of them still think they do. One of the problems is that the portion of known economic history for which testable data exists is really quite small. So you have lots and lots of experts combing over the same forty to fifty years worth of data and extrapolating all sorts of models and predictions. I think this creates an echo chamber effect which convinces the experts that they understand a lot more than they really do.

I can see a similar problem in the field New Testament studies. We only have a handful of pieces to the puzzle that is the origin of Christianity and no matter how many scholars comb over those pieces and how many times and how finely they comb over them, there is no way to overcome the problem of the missing pieces. However, they may succeed in convincing themselves that they know more than they really do. Happily, if they are wrong, it probably won't lead to the collapse of the international banking system.

Ehrman's "Did Jesus Exist?" (3): Were Jesus and James Biological Brothers.

Bart Ehrman writes that "two points are especially key.  I think that each of them shows beyond a shadow of reasonable doubt that Jesus must have existed as a Palestinian Jew who was crucified."  (p. 144) One of those points was that no Jew would ever invent a crucified messiah.  As I noted in an earlier post, I don't find this argument convincing.  Ehrman's other key point is that our earliest source Paul claims to have known Jesus biological brother James.  I think that this argument is stronger, but "beyond a shadow of a reasonable doubt" is really over the top and I am surprised and disappointed that Ehrman would ever claim that it yields such certainty.


One of the things that bothers me about Did Jesus Exist? is how imprecise Ehrman is at times.  He is often accused of giving misleading impressions by Christian apologists, but I have always found him to be very careful to be accurate about the evidence.  However, in Did Jesus Exist? he writes  "Paul knew Jesus' brother, James, and he knew his closest disciple, Peter, and he tells us that he did." Although this post is going to discuss the question of James, I want to note how inaccurate this statement is concerning Paul and Peter.  Paul never tells us that Peter was Jesus' closest disciple or that he was Jesus' disciple at all or that he even knew Jesus or that Jesus even had disciples.  All we know from Paul is that Peter witnessed an appearance of the risen Christ. 

Moving on to James, lets look at what our first century sources tell us:

• Mark 6:3 and Matthew 13:55 both say that Jesus had several several brothers, one of whom was named James.  However, James was a common Jewish name and neither Mark nor Matthew give us any information that would help us identify a James mentioned by anyone else as being the same person.

• Luke indicates that Jesus had brothers, but he doesn't name any of them.  Luke identifies two men named James as being among the twelve apostles, James the son of Zebedee and James the son of Alphaeus.  The son of Zebedee is killed in Acts 12 and the name James comes up again in Acts 15:13 and Acts 21:18 referring to a man who is a leader among the Christians in Jerusalem.  The father of this James is not identified.  The most natural reading of Luke-Acts is that this is the earlier mentioned son of Alphaeus whose father is not identified because there is only one James still in the story.  There  is no obvious reason to think that Luke would introduce a new James into the narrative without distinguishing him somehow from the one already mentioned.

• In Galatian 1:18-19, Paul writes "I went up to Jerusalem to get acquainted with Cephas [Peter] and stayed with him fifteen days. I saw none of the other apostles—only James, the Lord’s brother."  This occurred three years after his conversion.  In Galatians 2:9, Paul refers to James as a "pillar" of the Jerusalem community.  Since Paul is perfectly clear that every Christian is a brother (or sister) of the Lord, there would be no reason to call this particular James the brother of the Lord unless Paul thought that he had some unique relationship to the Lord, e.g., he was the biological brother of Jesus.  Although it is hotly contested by mythicists, for the sake of this discussion let's accept that the most natural reading of Galatians is that this James is the natural brother of Jesus in addition to being a spiritual brother.

• Around 90 A.D., the Jewish historian Josephus wrote: 

  And now Caesar, upon hearing the death of Festus, sent Albinus into Judea, as procurator. But the king deprived Joseph of the high priesthood, and bestowed the succession to that dignity on the son of Ananus, who was also himself called Ananus... Festus was now dead, and Albinus was but upon the road; so he assembled the sanhedrin of judges, and brought before them the brother of Jesus, who was called Christ, whose name was James, and some others; and when he had formed an accusation against them as breakers of the law, he delivered them to be stoned.

  Antiquities of the Jews 20-9.  Josephus doesn't say anything about James being a Christian or leading the Christians in Jerusalem.

The issue then is whether we have reason to think that the James who was a leader of the Church in Jerusalem was the biological brother of Jesus referred to by Mark and Matthew. The relevant considerations would seem to be:

• The most natural reading of Paul is that the pillar of Jerusalem was Jesus' natural brother.

• The most natural reading of Luke-Acts is that the James in Acts 15 and 21 was not the same person as the James in Matthew and Mark.  Rather, he was the son of Alpheaus.

• Josephus doesn't help much as he doesn't give us any information that would allow us to identify his James as a leader of the Christian community.  His James could be the James mentioned by Mark and Matthew without being the same one mentioned by Luke and Paul.

The next issue is what the less obvious readings of Luke-Acts or Paul might be.  For Luke-Acts:

• Luke didn't know that the James he described was Jesus biological brother.  This is possible of course but I don't think it helps the historicists' case.

• Luke omitted the fact that James was the biological brother because he wanted to downplay James' authority for essentially political reasons.  This is plausible, but I'm not sure we can have any certainty on the point.

• Luke didn't bother mentioning that James was the biological brother of Jesus because he assumed that everyone knew it.  This is not impossible, but I don't find it very convincing.

We can also imagine alternative readings of Paul:

• Paul was merely referring to James as the brother of the Lord in a spiritual sense.  Certainly plausible even if not most likely.  Richard carrier thinks that this is the most probable although I don't completely follow his argument on this point.

• Paul is using "Brother of the Lord" as a title.  Even though all Christians are theoretically saints because they are all sanctified, sometimes saint is used in titular way to designate someone who particularly exemplifies sainthood, e.g., Saint Paul, Saint Theresa, Saint Vincent de Paul.  By the same token, it is possible that some group of early Christians were designated "brothers of the Lord" based on their spiritual qualities.  Possible, but I don't see how we can ever confirm it.

• Paul simply used "the Lord's brother" to distinguish James from other people who had the same name.  For example one James might have been known "James the Lord's brother" and another might have been "James the Lord's servant" even though everyone in the community was both a servant and a brother (or a sister) of the Lord.   After all, this same James later became known as "James the Just" even though every Christian had been justified by faith.  Perhaps one of the James in the early Christian community had gone rogue and been cast out.  Writing to the Galatians many years later, Paul simply wanted them to know that the James he had met was the good one, i.e., "James the Lord's Brother" rather than "James the Heretic."  Plausible but of course there is no evidence to establish this.

• Paul didn't write "the Lord's brother."  It was an interpolation by a later scribe who wanted to clear up any confusion about which James was being referred to.  Plausible but unverifiable.

Weighing all the evidence, perhaps we want to favor James being the biological brother of Jesus.   Paul is the earlier source.  Maybe we think that the alternative readings of Paul are less plausible than the alternative readings of Luke.  I can see this as a reasonable conclusion.

What I cannot see is anyone thinking that the issue is settled "beyond a shadow of a reasonable doubt."  That's just crazy talk.  That would suggest that we are as confident as we could possibly be and that we cannot imagine any evidence that would make us more confident.  Personally, I can think of several things.

• Luke could have referred to the James in Acts 15 and 21 as "the brother of Jesus."

• Luke could have named James as one of the brothers of Jesus who was with the apostles in the upper room in Acts 1.

• Paul could have referred to James as "the brother of Jesus" rather than "the brother of the Lord" and he could have done so several times.

• Paul could have referred to other brothers named by Mark or Matthew as "brothers of the Lord."

• Matthew and Mark could have indicated that James became a follower of Jesus.

If any of these things would make us more confident--and I believe that all of them would--then I don't see how we can possibly claim to be sure beyond a reasonable doubt now.  Their is a lack of perspective in Ehrman's assertion of confidence that I find troubling.

It's a Trap!

From: A God-Sized Puzzle
HT:  Exploring Our Matrix

Ehrman's "Did Jesus Exist?" (2); Why would he make that up?

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In the classic South Park episode All About Mormons, Joseph Smith tells various people about the supernatural comings and goings in his life. Not everyone believes him, but those who do say "Sure. Why would he make that up?" I think that the most disappointing thing in Did Jesus Exist is that Bart Ehrman resorts to a similar argument:

Before the Christian movement, there were no Jews who thought that the messiah was going to suffer. Quite the contrary. The crucified Jesus was not invented therefore to provide some kind of mythical fulfillment of Jewish expectation. The single greatest obstacle Christians had when trying to convert Jews was precisely their claim that Jesus had been executed. They would not have made that part up. (Did Jesus Exist? p. 173)

To illustrate the problems with this argument, let's recast it:

Before the Mormon movement, there were no Protestants who thought that there might be undiscovered books of scripture that were every bit as inspired, inerrant, and authoritative as the books of the Bible. Quite the contrary. The single greatest obstacle Mormons had when trying to convert Protestants was precisely their claim that Joseph Smith had found another New Testament of Jesus Christ buried in western New York state written on Golden Plates. They would not have made that part up.

If we must believe that there was a historical reality behind the concept of a crucified messiah because we think the idea would have been absurd and offensive to most Jews of the time, why shouldn't we believe that there was a historical reality behind the Golden Plates?

According to Ehrman this is one of the especially key points that "shows beyond a shadow of reasonable doubt that Jesus must have existed as a Palestinian Jew who was crucified."  (P. 144)  I'm sorry Dr. Ehrman.  I love your stuff, but this can't be a good argument.

In support of this claim, Ehrman makes the very same kind of argument from silence for which he berates the mythicists.  "We do not have a shred of evidence to suggest that any Jews prior to the birth of Christianity anticipated that there would be a future messiah who would be killed for sins--or killed at all--let alone one who would be unceremoniously destroyed by the enemies of the Jews."  (p. 170)  Should we expect to have evidence of what every single Jew prior to the birth of Christianity anticipated?  How could we possibly know such a thing.

Let me suggest what seems to me to be a perfectly plausible scenario. 

There is a devout Jew named Saul living in the first century who really really wants a messiah to come and overthrow the Romans.  Every time he hears about someone claiming to be the messiah, he gets his hopes only to have them dashed when the Romans crush the troublemaker.  He struggles to understand why this keeps happening again and again.  Then one day, a thought pops into his head, "Maybe this is part of God's plan."  He searches through the scriptures and he finds all those same verses that Christians always cite as prophecies of Jesus' passion.  One night he has a dream in which he sees an exalted heavenly being who tells him "I had to suffer for Israel's wrongdoing but now God has raised me up and I'll be coming back to kick some Roman ass."

Voila!  There's your crucified messiah without there having to be any specific historical person behind it.

Do I think that's what happened?  I don't know, but I don't see how we can possibly know beyond a shadow of a reasonable doubt that it couldn't have happened.  The scenario that Ehrman and others lay out basically amounts to Jesus' followers stumbling onto the idea of a crucified messiah as a result of grief induced hallucinations that they experienced after his crucifixion.  I find that perfectly plausible.  What I find implausible is the idea that historians can be so sure of what every first century Jew thought as to be certain that no one could have possibly stumbled on the idea in any other way.

Bart Ehrman's "Did Jesus Exist?" (1)

I got my copy of Did Jesus Exist?:  The Historical Argument for Jesus of Nazareth yesterday and I'm enjoying it a lot.   I am happy to say that the article Bart Ehrman wrote for the Huffington Post two weeks ago does not fairly reflect the arguments in the book.  Although he is convinced that Jesus was a historical person, the book does not paint all doubters with nearly as broad a brush as the article.  More importantly, while the article made it sound like historians have a lot more evidence for the existence of Jesus than they really do, I think the book fairly describes the evidence and arguments upon which Ehrman at least is actually relying.  

One of the things I have admired most about Ehrman's books is the way that he lays out the evidence upon which he bases his conclusions.  Even if you disagree with those conclusions, you come away with a good overview of the main points of contention and the arguments that each side is making.  After reading Misquoting Jesus: The Story Behind Who Changed the Bible and Why, I found that I was able to follow debates between scholars of textual criticisms and ask reasonably intelligent questions.  I think that anyone who reads  Did Jesus Exist? will get similar insights into the historicist/mythicist debates.

Despite my appreciation of the book and Ehrman, I don't think it is going to be enough to push me off the fence of historical Jesus agnosticism.  While Ehrman is reasonably respectful of Robert Price, G.A. Wells, and Richard Carrier, he does make a lot of mythicism look very foolish.  My problem is with his positive arguments for Jesus' existence.  They seem to me to rely far too much on hypothetical reconstructions of the sources behind the gospels using techniques which scholars invented for the specific purpose of reconstructing the sources behind the gospels.  The evidence still seems awfully speculative and conjectural and the arguments somewhat circular.

Ehrman honestly acknowledges that we do not have the kind of sources for Jesus that historians would like to have and he points out correctly that the absence of these sources doesn't disprove Jesus' existence because we wouldn't reasonably expect to have such sources for a person of Jesus' social status.  The upshot of this according to Ehrman is that historians need to find other ways of establishing Jesus' existence.  To me, however, the upshot of not having the kind of sources historians like and not expecting to have them is that we probably shouldn't expect to have a great deal of certainty about the question.  If there is a problem with the application of techniques that are generally accepted as reliable when considering historical questions, how much confidence can we have in techniques that are developed specifically for determining the historicity of stories about Jesus?

There are many mythicists who have been quick to accuse Ehrman of selling out or knuckling under to religious orthodoxy, but I don't see any reason to question his integrity.  I don't think that his conclusions are driven by a vested interest in the existence of a historical Jesus.  I do think, however, that he may be said to have a vested interest in the methodology of New Testament studies and I think he may be overestimating the degree of certainty that can be achieved by the application of those techniques.  I hope to look at some of those techniques in upcoming posts.

HJ Agnosticism (19): A Very Silly Claim

The blogosphere is buzzing over Bart Ehrman's new book, Did Jesus Exist?:  The Historical Argument for Jesus of Nazareth.  Historicists are crowing and mythicists range from disappointed to outraged.  Unfortunately, my copy hasn't arrived yet so my ability to comment on Ehrman's arguments is limited.  From what I have seen, however, I doubt that Ehrman will push me off the fence of historical Jesus agnosticism.

There is one claim that I see repeatedly in comment threads that I can address though.  It goes like this:  "There is much more evidence Jesus existed than just about any other historical character from that period."  I hope that Ehrman doesn't make this claim in his book because it is profoundly silly.

Consider for a moment the kinds of people that you would typically find discussed in a book about the history of ancient Rome.  There would be emperors and kings and generals and senators.  There would be people whose activities had a widespread impact on prominent and literate people of their day.  They would be people who were well known to prominent and literate people of their day.  These are certainly not the only people who lived in ancient Rome, but they are the kinds of people who leave a mark in the historical record.  You are far less likely to find discussions of particular slaves or peasants unless it is someone like Spartacus who attracted the attention of the prominent and literate people of his day by leading a rebellion.

The kind of people you are least likely to find discussed are people who passed their lives unnoticed by anyone outside a relatively small group of illiterate peasants.  There can be no doubt that many such people existed, but they tend not to have left individual or unique marks in the historical record.  When it comes to such people, we tend to be limited in our knowledge to the general conditions under which they lived.  We tend to be ignorant of the specific things that particular people said and did. That's the problem with our evidence for the existence of a historical Jesus.  To the extent that historians think he existed, they think that he hung out with a group of illiterate peasants.  To the extent that he attracted any attention during his life from anyone in a position of prominence, he was just another troublemaker put to death by the Roman Empire.

When Jesus first enters the historical record, it is because--to put it crudely--his ghost appeared to someone.  The man who first puts Jesus in the record didn't know him, didn't say where or when he lived or died, and said little to nothing about what he said or did during his life.  Paul's sole concern was with the theological significance of supernatural events that occurred to Jesus after his death.  I can't think of anyone else who made that kind of initial mark in the historical record about whose existence I would be confident 

Historicists like to point out that the earliest extant writings about Jesus were composed nearer to the time he lived than those for other people about whose existence we are confident.  While its true that the earliest biographies that we have for Alexander the Great were written hundreds of years after his death, their authors tell us that the got their information from biographies that were written by Alexander's contemporaries.  Where does our earliest extant source for Jesus say that he got his information?  Divine revelation.  Where do the subsequent sources tell us they got their information?  They don't say.

Does any of this provide proof that Jesus didn't exist?  Of course not.  But it should be enough to deter those who believe he did from making glib claims about how much more convincing the evidence is than for others of that time.