Interestingly, Richard Bauckham (who holds that the gospels are based directly on eyewitness testimony) and Bart Ehrman (who argues that they are not) agree that Jesus never actually delivered The Sermon on the Mount. Instead, they agree that Matthew's account of the sermon serves as a device for him to present a collections of saying attributed to Jesus. They differ, however, on attempting to determine whether or not each individual saying orginated with Jesus himself.
When you're speaking to a crowd, a hillside or mount makes for a natural amphitheater. We always imagine Jesus on the top looking down. Maybe the listeners were higher so the could see Jesus. I would guess there were many sermons on various mounts and one would have heard these sayings again and again.
ReplyDeleteGood point about many sermons on mounts. Repetition is a tool that teachers make use of, I think it is likely that Jesus said a lot of things more than once when he wanted them to sink in.
DeleteThanks David, that was interesting. I hadn't thought much about the Sermon on the Mount being very concentrated, but it certainly was.
ReplyDeleteMade me think about a coffee break conversation I had with a co-worker a number of years ago. It was about the Visitation, specifically the Magnificat. I can't tell you how the subject came up, I don't remember. This particular guy was an engineer who was always wrestling with the seeming contradictions between faith and reason (he was a Lutheran). Anyway he maintained that Mary didn't actually say the words of the Magnificat. In that we were in agreement, at least that she didn't say them at that particular time. But I maintained that she actually did visit Elizabeth. And that Elizabeth probably did say that the baby leapt in her womb. Now as a mother I know that at six months gestation babies pick up on the mom's emotions and can be quite active, so I don't know that it means that John at that moment recognized Jesus. But Elizabeth would have remembered that he gave her quite a kick at that moment. We remember things when we have a reason to.
Unfortunately, I have trouble with podcasts because of my hearing. I will have to see if I can find Bauckham’s book. I am quite familiar with Ehrman’s work already.
ReplyDeleteRe Mary’s visit with Elizabeth. One reason I changed to an EC parish was because they have women priests. Women don’t necessarily interpret scripture through the same prism that men do. One homily that I’ve never forgotten was on the Visitation. The priest was a single mom, divorced, with a young son. She knew all about being pregnant, giving birth, and raising a child on her own. Celibate male Catholic priests and the church itself always give this passage a positive spin, using it as some kind of “proof” of the unborn Jesus’s divinity. In her homily, she focused on the real world likelihood that the two women were giving one another moral support. The reality that - mixed with the joy of being pregnant - there also was fear. All women who have been pregnant are aware of an undercurrent of fear. Not every pregnancy ends happily. Mary was very young, living in a religious culture that would have punished her very harshly, perhaps with stoning, if Joseph had decided to blow the whistle on her. Would he stick with her? Would he live long enough to help raise the child? He was quite a bit older apparently and life spans were much shorter then than now for most people. Elizabeth was an older woman ( how old?), pregnant for the first time. She was probably well aware of the many problems that can occur with a late in life pregnancy - both the higher maternal and infant mortality, and more birth defects in the babies born to older mothers. I once typed up my mother- in- law’s family tree, written in longhand. It went back to the 1630s in Massachusetts. It was hard to miss the realities of life for women in those days - the numbers of deaths during childbirth. The dates of death being the same as the date of birth of her last child. Often the same dates of death for both mother and child. Elizabeth knew the dangers. On top of that, her husband had lost the ability to speak. Would his speech ever be restored?
All the “ joyful” mysteries must have been mixed emotionally for Mary. The annunciation- the fear of the unknown even while saying OK. The visit with Elizabeth. The birth in a place very unsuitable for giving birth - unsanitary, with minimal assistance, etc. The visit to the temple for the circumcising. The Jewish moms I know close their eyes and ears during the bris ceremonies of their sons. Then the prediction of a sword through Mary’s heart. Just what a new mom wants to hear. Her son disappearing when they were traveling. This is a potential terror that every mom has - that a child will simply disappear. He was found, but was rather disrespectful and rude to his parents, not apologetic at all.
Only celibates would fail to see that all of these events involved complex emotions for Mary - some happy, some not so happy.
And we don't even have to go back that far to see that births didn't always have a happy ending. I think the statistic prior to modern medicine was that one in fifteen pregnancies/ childbirths ended in the death of the mother, or the baby, or both.
DeleteBoth my grandmother and my mom had a baby who only lived a short time after birth. They were full term or nearly so. Probably now they would have been in the NICU and been saved.
I can identify with the Finding in the Temple. When our older son was about 10 he wandered off from us while we were in a large shopping mall. After a frantic few minutes we found him in a video game place. His words? "I wasn't lost. I knew where I was." I didn't shake him, but I had the urge to.
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DeleteNo neonatal deaths in my family in the last couple of generations before mine. But one of my brothers was born with brain damage due to a lack of oxygen during a complicated delivery. Our eldest son was born with pneumonia. In an earlier generation he probably would have died. He spent 9 days in the NICU before coming home with us.
I think the statistic prior to modern medicine was that one in fifteen pregnancies/ childbirths ended in the death of the mother, or the baby, or both.
DeleteIn some of the poorest countries, in Africa, the maternal death rate was one in eight as recently as in the last decade. Too many pregnancies in too short a time span. Access to birth control in the last ten years has helped to improve this horrible situation.
Agree on the need for women sorting out Scripture. Or for being deacons, priests, etc., for that matter.
DeleteMy grandmother had eleven, two died as toddlers of measles within a week of each other back in Poland. Two were stillborn in the USA. Seven survived.
Being cesarean, I would probably not be here without medical intervention.
I fortunately the anti- vax movement has spread beyond Covid vax resistance. A lot of people have forgotten that measles can kill. The local news this week reported a measles case in our county - the first in many years. Extremists on both the left and right are now pushing to drop vaccine requirements in schools.
DeleteUnfortunately ….
DeleteSome people in our state are pushing to drop vaccination requirements for school. Fortunately they haven't succeeded.
DeleteHowever they did succeed in getting the state to drop the helmet requirement for motorcycles. I was surprised, that has been in effect for decades. Apparently they don't care about increased fatalities or people who will require care the rest of their lives because of head injuries.
Everyone, including many scholars, need to get rid of modern notions of reading and writing books.
ReplyDeleteIn the first century, most people heard books rather than read them. In a wealthy household, a slave who could read and write, would have read the book aloud for his owner and those who were present.
Ancient works are not easy to read because there was no punctuation or spaces between words. Reading and writing were mostly done by slaves.
When someone read a book alone, they read it aloud even if no one was around.
When a book was written it was likely dictated. For example, when Paul wrote a letter, he likely spoke in the presence of his colleagues who were going to deliver the letter while a slave took down dictation Likely Paul spoke a few sentences; his colleagues made a few comments while they repeated the sentences since that is eventually what they would be doing when they delivered the letter. Then Paul like said, “OK how about if I said it this way instead?” When he got it right, we would say to the slave. “Ok write that down.”
A similar process likely took place in the composition of the Gospels. A writer would dictate a few sentences to a small audience of persons who were familiar with sayings and stories. They would give him feedback as to whether he had “gotten it right.” Besides personal recollections there were likely some written stories and sayings or notes about them. In the case of Matthew and Luke they had a copy of Mark and Q (which were likely read out by a slave when needed).
All of these people were talking from their experience of hearing others preach about Jesus and his words. That was what happened when Christian’s met. Some of those were eyewitness stories; most were stories by people who had heard stories.
This is a much different situation than the old “telephone” idea of passing a story onto someone who retells it. There were always people around who have heard stories and engaged in the process of telling stories and sayings by amplifying and correcting them.
All the narrative structure is the framework either of the author or of other story tellers. There were not any journalists following Jesus around recording his words and events.
Were their slaves who sometimes recorded some of speeches of Jesus?
Saint Augustine did not write his sermons, rather some wealthy members of his congregation brought their slaves who recorded what Augustine said in a kind of “short hand.” He often had banter with his congregation. Most of the sermons that we have, have redacted all the local references and color to center upon the theological thinking. But some that did not get redacted have been discovered.
Jesus traveled a lot so he could not have depended upon local wealthy men to have their slaves record his teaching; but some of it might have happened. Jesus had some wealthy women who did follow him. Could their slaves have recorded what Jesus said. Maybe? So maybe there were a lot of “Jesus notes” floating around among the women. Remember the Christian gospels were mainly written with pages like modern books rather than as scrolls. Maybe that is how things got started.
Bottom line reading and writing in the ancient world were far more social processes that the personal individualist way reading and writing that is done today. So, the NT documents from the very beginning were products of a very social process. Questions like what did Jesus really say and do are not very meaningful.
"This is a much different situation than the old “telephone” idea of passing a story onto someone who retells it. There were always people around who have heard stories and engaged in the process of telling stories and sayings by amplifying and correcting them."
DeleteThanks for that, Jack. Amazing (to me) is the idea that they relied on slaves for literacy. It was the opposite of pre-civil war era in the US when it was against the law in the south to teach a slave to read and write.
As I recall, Paul was a slave. He was highly educated also to do his work, which may have included reading and writing tasks.
DeleteKatherine, when England ruled Ireland, there was a time when it was against the law to teach Catholics to read and write. One of my Irish great- grandfathers did not learn to read until he was in the US. He was about ten when he got here.
DeleteApparently Paul was a Roman citizen. Were slaves ever considered citizens by the Romans? He was beheaded instead of other, worse, execution methods. I believe that was reserved to citizens.
DeleteHello - Paul wasn't a slave. But he did have at least one follower (Onesimus) who was a slave.
DeletePerhaps in the back of Anne's mind was the opening line of Romans: "Paul, a slave of Christ Jesus, called to be an apostle . . . . "
DeleteThe footnote in the NAB reads as follows:
* [1:1] Slave of Christ Jesus: Paul applies the term slave to himself in order to express his undivided allegiance to the Lord of the church, the Master of all, including slaves and masters. “No one can serve (i.e., be a slave to) two masters,” said Jesus (Mt 6:24). It is this aspect of the slave-master relationship rather than its degrading implications that Paul emphasizes when he discusses Christian commitment.
There now seems to be a (misguided?) attempt to remove the words master and slave from the English language. For example, the master bedroom is now to be called the primary bedroom.
I'm always amused how attempts to engineer niceness into language and purge nastiness eventually turn out. The word "cretin" comes from the french "chrétien" or "christian" used to emphasize the humanity of the disabled person. But nobody wants to be called a cretin now. Except maybe the Cretans.
DeleteYou can't engineer mastery and slavery out of society by banning the words. Slaves have already been renamed. Consider Walmart "associates".
Synchro's were analog electrical devices which transferred the rotary physical position of one to the other. The two devices were referred to as "master" and "slave". Rotate the shaft of the master ten degrees, the shaft of the slave moved ten degrees to the same position.
DeleteNow digital electronics and stepping motors perform the same function.
According to Titus 1:12 Paul didn't have a very high opinion of Cretans. Maybe they stiffed him on a fee for tent making, or something.
DeleteHaha. I like your biblical exegesis, Katherine.
DeleteStanley, it’s hard to keep up with the latest politically correct terminology at times.
DeleteGiven the many variables involved in the creation of the gospels, most of which opened the door for inaccuracies, why does the church insist on accepting every word as , hmmm, “gospel” Truth?
ReplyDeleteIt’s somewhat amusing that school and library book bans in some places are now including the Bible - too much sex and violence!
ReplyDeleteA caveat, are we going to believe any historic works? Say, of Josephus or Pliny the Elder? For that matter are we going to believe more modern histories, some of which also relied on oral accounts? Then there are the ones in our present day who are outright willing to lie about events that were recorded on camera and television footage.
ReplyDeleteI would assume that most of it, ancient and modern, should be viewed as not totally accurate. Wiki has a summary on the issues related to determining the historical validity of the gospels
Deletehttps://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historical_reliability_of_the_Gospels
One of my fellow Jesuit novices, who liked history, said it was form of gossip.
DeleteIf by history we mean a narration of events such as we experience on TV or in the newspapers, then I doubt that we can reconstruct an equivalent past. However, what we see on TV and in the newspapers in not the whole truth and nothing but the truth. In many ways it is just the tip of the iceberg about which we can continue to improve our knowledge.
However, if by history we mean a deeper understanding of the life and times of Jesus, and the origins of Christianity then modern archeology has helped a lot. Decade by decade we are getting a better understanding of life in those times.
Greenleaf maintained that true leadership simultaneously rethinks the past, the present and the future as the situation evolves. Christianity has always been involved in that process. It has always been recreating the past to envision the future and reform the present. That was largely what happen at Vatican II. The past that has been extolled has often been an idealized past.
Off topic newsflash. Opus Dei Catholic and convicted Soviet spy Richard Hannsen has died in prison. The more I read about this guy, the stranger he gets. Among other things, he installed, unknown to his wife, a secret video camera so his friend could watch he and his wife have sex.
ReplyDeleteYes. Disgusting. I read a lot about him way back because of overlap in places he and his family hung out and where we often were. Places like soccer fields where kids teams played etc. He lived a few blocks from one of my sisters and we probably drove right past his house many times. Also I was very interested because the son of a good friend of a friend of mine was the younger assistant who was assigned to him to secretly spy on him so that they could prove that he was the mole. According to my friend, the young FBI officer was traumatized by the assignment and he gave up his career at the FBI afterwards.
DeleteWhen he started selling documents to the USSR he was in New York. Apparently he confessed this to his Opus Dei priest regularly. I guess he felt absolved and the priest apparently kept absolving him of the sin - and crime- over and over.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eric_O%27Neill
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breach_(2007_film)
Wow, I never heard of this guy. But apparently he was a piece of work. The article doesn't say if he died of natural causes.
DeleteThree Soviet sources were executed because Hanssen ratted them out. He was totally non-ideological. Just did it for money or maybe some perverse excitement.
DeleteYeah, Anne, doesn't surprise me that you'd be within three degrees of separation from this guy, given your location. Closest I came to a master spy was the Israeli spy Ben-Ami Kaddish who worked at my facility. I didn't know him (huge place), but knew someone who was in his car pool. He says Kaddish was always sleepy in the morning. Probably from photographing documents all night.
Yes, everyone in the DC area pretty much knows someone who knows someone in the news. I imagine it’s the same at other govt facilities. Since spy news is always big news here I remember the Israeli case.
DeleteI finally found some time yesterday to listen to the audio segment. It ties in with a comment I made in another thread recently about Bauckham's book Jesus and the Eyewitnesses: it's a critique of the branch of scripture interpretation known as Form Criticism.
ReplyDeleteI don't know enough about Erdman to know whether he is considered (or whether he considers himself) a form critic. But their conversation about the historicity, or lack thereof, of the Sermon on the Mount is a good illustration of what Bauckham would consider a genuine contributions and, possibly, an excess of form criticism. Erdman expresses surprise that Bauckham agrees that the Sermon on the Mount isn't a transcription of an actual sermon given by Jesus*. I am not sure how familiar Erdman is with Bauckham's work, but if he read the book, he shouldn't be surprised :-). Bauckham goes to some length in the book to acknowledge that, however the scripture as we know it today was compiled, some of it consists of collected sayings. Bauckham credits the form critics with this insight (which is now a pretty well-established view of the Gospels), and offers some ideas on how eyewitness accounts would have led to these collections of sayings being recorded.
Erdman seems prepared to go much farther than Bauckham - he seems to suggest that there may be no particular resemblance at all between the contents of the Sermon on the Mount and anything Jesus actually said. Bauckham would consider that view an excess of form critics.
The Sermon on the Mount contains many beautiful sayings, not least the Beatitudes, and some challenging sayings, including the prohibition of nearly all divorces. It constitutes instructions for Christian discipleship. If Jesus didn't actually speak those words, are we bound to follow any of it? Is it ok to divorce? Is it ok to worship both God and Mammon? Is it ok to judge others? These things all are prohibited in the Sermon on the Mount.
*As an aside: it seems that transcriptions were made of public speeches given in the ancient world; some of Augustine's sermons apparently were captured by scribes. But I don't think there is evidence of this happening with Jesus's public ministry.
Small correction- it’s Ehrman, not Erdman. I have listened to a number of his lectures, given at the University of North Carolina, Chapel,Hill. They are part of the Great Courses. I can download them from my public library. I’m planning on getting his lecture series on How Jesus Became God. https://www.thegreatcourses.com/courses/how-jesus-became-god
DeleteI’m quite sure he would be familiar with Bauckman and other Bible scholars. The controversies will continue on forever. Or maybe another cache of ancient writings will appear that sheds more light at some point. The Dead Sea Scrolls certainly changed a lot of ideas.
One extremely important point has not come up in this discussion so far, though I presume Bauckham deals with it elsewhere. All we have of the sayings and teachings of Jesus is in Greek, a language Jesus may have known a few words of at best, but certainly not the language he preached in. So assuming those who heard Jesus preach, remembered what he said, and passed it along by word of mouth did so in Aramaic. Exactly how did it get translated? I have no doubt that we have a substantial amount of original and authentic teachings of Jesus, but the handing down of teachings heard in one language and eventually written down in another surely could not have been flawlessly accurate.
DeleteI don't know enough about Erdman to know whether he is considered (or whether he considers himself) a form critic.
DeleteAs I understand it (and of course I could be wrong), I don't think any biblical scholars today would be classified (or self-identify) as form critics. Early practitioners (originators) of the method (for example, Rudolf Bultmann) might be so identified, I suppose, but form criticism is just one of many tools in the scholarly toolkit. Also, I notice Wikipedia says, in the entry for form criticism, "While enjoying near-dominant support in both Old and New Testament studies during the 20th century, form criticism has been the subject of increasing criticism in the academic community in recent decades and its influence on the field is waning."
Erdman seems prepared to go much farther than Bauckham - he seems to suggest that there may be no particular resemblance at all between the contents of the Sermon on the Mount and anything Jesus actually said. Bauckham would consider that view an excess of form critics.
I think you have misinterpreted Ehrman. As I understand him, he is saying that, the Sermon on the Mount being a compilation, it is reasonable to take it item by item and make judgments which items likely originated with Jesus and which likely did not. It is unclear to me exactly what Buckham's position is. Do his arguments guarantee all individual sayings in a compilation as authentic words of Jesus?
If Jesus didn't actually speak those words, are we bound to follow any of it?
Of course for Catholics, the Bible is "inerrant," which apparently doesn't necessarily mean the Sermon on the Mount can't be a compilation. In fact, probably the majority of contemporary Catholic biblical scholars agree with Erhman and Bauckham that Jesus did not, in one long presentation, preach everything Matthew attributes to him. I personally don't know how to reconcile a claim of biblical inerrancy with even the kind of scholarship in the USCCB-approved New American Bible.
I don't think we as Catholics believe in biblical inerrancy in the same way that most Evangelical Christians do, "sola scriptura". Catholic belief is also based on Tradition and the teaching authority of the church. I am assuming Tradition to mean the writing of the church fathers; the patristic period ending with the death of John of Damascus in the mid 700s. Apparently the eastern Orthodox belief is that the patristic period is ongoing.
DeleteWell, it’s possible that teachings based on Tradition are even less reliable than teachings based on scripture. The reliability of teaching authority of the church is also pretty questionable.
DeleteAs the passage that Ehrman (sorry about getting his name wrong in a prior comment) and Bauckham discussed was the Sermon on the Mount, here is what the Catholic church proclaimed at Vatican II about the Gospel texts:
Delete"The Church has always and everywhere held and continues to hold that the four Gospels are of apostolic origin. For what the Apostles preached in fulfillment of the commission of Christ, afterwards they themselves and apostolic men, under the inspiration of the divine Spirit, handed on to us in writing: the foundation of faith, namely, the fourfold Gospel, according to Matthew, Mark, Luke and John.(cf. St. Irenaeus, "Against Heretics" III, 11; 8: PG 7,885, Sagnard Edition, p. 194.)
19. Holy Mother Church has firmly and with absolute constancy held, and continues to hold, that the four Gospels just named, whose historical character the Church unhesitatingly asserts, faithfully hand on what Jesus Christ, while living among men, really did and taught for their eternal salvation until the day He was taken up into heaven (see Acts 1:1). Indeed, after the Ascension of the Lord the Apostles handed on to their hearers what He had said and done. This they did with that clearer understanding which they enjoyed (John 2:22; 12:16; cf. 14:26; 16:12-13; 7:39) after they had been instructed by the glorious events of Christ's life and taught by the light of the Spirit of truth. (cf. John 14:26; 16:13) The sacred authors wrote the four Gospels, selecting some things from the many which had been handed on by word of mouth or in writing, reducing some of them to a synthesis, explaining some things in view of the situation of their churches and preserving the form of proclamation but always in such fashion that they told us the honest truth about Jesus.(cf. instruction "Holy Mother Church" edited by Pontifical Consilium for Promotion of Bible Studies; A.A.S. 56 (1964) p. 715.) For their intention in writing was that either from their own memory and recollections, or from the witness of those who "themselves from the beginning were eyewitnesses and ministers of the Word" we might know "the truth" concerning those matters about which we have been instructed (see Luke 1:2-4). "
That last sentence regarding the importance of eyewitnesses is quite consonant with Bauckham's views. FWIW, Bauckham is not Catholic.
The daily Mass readings for this week include readings from Tobit, which biblical scholars recognize as a work of fiction, a story with some points, rather like the parables of Jesus. Of course it is one of the deuterocanonical works not included in most Protestant Bibles. I liked the part where Tobit is being pretty difficult and unreasonable and his wife gives him a piece of her mind.
DeleteSorry, I should have mentioned, in the previous comment, that the quote is lifted from Dei Verbum, the Dogmatic Constitution on Divine Revelation.
DeleteFWIW, it seems to me that, of the four Constitutional documents of Vatican II, Dei Verbum is the one that is referenced the least in discussions among Catholics (such as those we undertake on this blog). It's too bad; there is a lot of good stuff in it. It's also, by far, the shortest of the four Constitutions! I take it that the nature of divine revelation is not a particular "hot button" among Catholics*, so there is less reason for us to immerse ourselves in it.
* Or perhaps the nature of sacred scripture and divine revelation is no longer as much of a "hot button" between Catholics and other Christians as was the case at the time of the 2nd Vatican Council. I would assume that Dei Verbum was written with one eye on ecumenical dialogue, which was one of the most important initiatives of Vatican II. I sense that ecumenism has lost steam in recent decades. I don't think denominational identity is as important nowadays as it was back in the early 1960s.
"I liked the part where Tobit is being pretty difficult and unreasonable and his wife gives him a piece of her mind."
DeleteMy wife highlighted that passage to me yesterday, too, with a few choice comments of her own!
" I am assuming Tradition to mean the writing of the church fathers; the patristic period ending with the death of John of Damascus in the mid 700s."
DeleteI thought I had read somewhere once that St. Isadore was the last of the Patristic Fathers. But I think the way that the history of the church often is divided into different eras - Patristic, Medieval, Reformation and so on - is more pertinent to history than to the theology of divine revelation. I think the theology would be: the apostles were Jesus's witnesses; the bishops are the successors to the apostles; and just as the apostles faithfully witnessed to Jesus's words and deeds, the bishops continue to safeguard that deposit of faith today.
David wrote, regarding the collection of sayings which are comprised by the Sermon on the Mount:
Delete"It is unclear to me exactly what Buckham's position is. Do his arguments guarantee all individual sayings in a compilation as authentic words of Jesus?"
I think he would say that these individual sayings were recalled by those who witnessed Jesus's ministry; and those eyewitnesses were critical to the process of compiling what we now know as the four canonical Gospels.
Form critics might agree that the sayings trace back in some way to eyewitnesses, but might also argue that the process of transmitting these sorts of recollections from one person to another very quickly leads to garbling and inaccuracies, and so we would be justified in questioning whether Matthew's account of the Sermon on the Mount really is a reliable record of what Jesus taught during his ministry (regardless of whether Jesus said all those saying in a single setting, or whether Matthew 5-7 is simply a compilation of many things Jesus said at various times).
Bauckham takes issue, from a number of different angles, with the assertion that the witness of eyewitnesses is so easily corrupted. He would consider the Gospels more reliable than Ehrman might. From what I understand, Ehrman has written at least one book highlighting the contradictions from one Gospel to another, thus calling into question the credibility of any/all of the Gospel accounts.
I can't accept that the witness of eyewitnesses is so easily corrupted either. Otherwise how can we believe anything that happened before modern communication? And we can't believe all of that , either.
DeleteKatherine, as I aged, and, in a way, began slowly freeing myself from the indoctrination I received from birth, I began to look more objectively at what I was taught growing up, in regards to religion and in regards to history, especially US history. I began to realize that none of it is particularly trustworthy. I was never taught about the many crimes that Christianity/the Catholic Church committed throughout the last 2000 years of history. Nor was I taught a true account of much of American history. It was whitewashed, quite literally. As an adult I would stumble across a shocking ( to me) piece of information. So I would start studying it on my own and over a couple of decades of studying on my own I came to accept the relative unreliablity of what I had been taught - and that neither the church’s nor our country’s history was quite as pure and glorious as it is presented. Not all bad, but definitely not all good either. Now there is a movement in the red states, especially places like Florida and Texas to again whitewash - literally - American history. Slavery wasn’t all bad. It was God’s will that the Europeans conquer the native Americans. There is no racism anymore. Etc. Revising history back to where it had been revised to through the 1950s.
DeleteI went to the Dominican Republic about 25 years ago to visit our sister parish in the poorest part of the country. We traveled with the bishop through numerous extremely poor mountain villages, but before that, were given a brief tour of Santo Domingo after our plane landed. Christopher Columbus has been lionized throughout history in the west because he stumbled across the islands of the Caribbean while aiming for India. So - as just one small example of the unreliability of history, of historic judgment, and even of simple facts, I offer this. Was he a good guy or a bad guy? A hero or a villain? It all depends on one’s perspective. I learned in the DR trip that he is a hated figure there and in the history of most indigenous peoples. So which version of history has it right? How about what are supposed to be facts. There is a huge monument to him in Santo Domingo, a tomb, built during the Spanish colonial era. But apparently it’s not totally sure where he is buried. There? Or in Seville, Spain? Now DNA says it’s Spain, but it’s not clear exactly how that test is totally reliable.
https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/day-10-the-many-tombs-of-christoper-columbus
Go back longer than 1492 - maybe go back 1500 or 2000 years and how reliable are the accounts of Jesus’s life? How reliable is news on Fox? Or CNN? How reliable is science? Science has changed its collective mind many times. History? German text books made no mention of the Holocaust for many years after WWII. From what I have read, it seems that English history textbooks still barely mention the oppression of the Irish and the famine that killed so many. The legacy of their colonialism. Might disillusion their people who still consider themselves to be superior to all others. Unfortunately the RCC backed itself into a corner on dogma and doctrine by claiming infallibility. So, unlike science, it’s unwilling to change based on new knowledge. It clings to what “it has always taught”. The gospels were inspired by Jesus’s teachings. Does it really matter whether or not he actually said all the words? Do the “ eyewitness “ accounts of miracles really matter? Or is the greater truth that is buried in those stories what really matter, rather than a literal belief?
Anyway, just a few thoughts on all of this.
An example of the literal whitewashing of American Catholic history today at the America website.
Deletehttps://www.americamagazine.org/faith/2023/06/07/letter-sisters-charity-williams-racism-245441
I do believe in the action of the Holy Spirit in the compilation of the New Testament. That doesn't mean that I think it matters whether the sermon on the mount was one event, or several. Or that all words attributed to Jesus were a direct quote. I think it definitely does matter that the miracles attributed to him were not just made up out of the whole cloth. He either was the Son of God, or he wasn't. I'm under no illusion that the Holy Spirit had anything to do with the record of secular history.
DeleteIt's singular that the authorship of the epistles of Paul, with the possible exception of questions about Hebrews, is not under question. And Acts is more or less accepted as an historical account.
Anne - I'm not going to say you're wrong in your skepticism. I've found that my own memory isn't always trustworthy: it conflates two incidents from the distant past into one, or imposes interpretations on events which aren't necessarily borne out by the facts (or by what other people recall of the same event).
DeleteIt seems one illustration from the New Testament brought forward by the form critics to illustrate how facts can be garbled in just the space of a generation or two are variations in the names of the 12 apostles from one Gospel to the next.
https://www.esv.org/resources/esv-global-study-bible/chart-40-02/
Bauckham spends quite a bit of time countering that particular objection; and more generally, showing that cultures in the Middle East prized cultural memory - some cultures were not as careless about memory as we are, especially when it was crucial to cultural identity.
Bauckham also has a chapter at the end of his book which makes the point that virtually everything we know and hold to be true is based on trusting and believing other people. There is simply no getting around it. You can believe the historians who wrote your high school American History textbook. Or you can believe the authors of the 1619 Project. You need to have a rational basis for deciding whom to believe. Or perhaps not; these days, it is enough for many people that the source they choose to believe (1619 Project; Fox News; Donald Trump; Elizabeth Warren) is on their "team" in the culture wars.
There are miracle stories in both Islam and Hinduism. Perhaps in some other religions as well. People born christian in a predominantly Christian country generally accept christian miracle stories. The same can be said of Muslims and Hindus. So what do they actually prove? Here is a sample of miracle stories in Hinduism - which I doubt that many Christians would believe. But they weren’t born Hindus in a predominantly Hindu culture. People are programmed from birth into religious beliefs, generally those of their own family and culture. The miracle stories serve religious purposes, but do they actually prove anything about divinity and who is divine? Or who is a saint?
Deletehttps://www.hinduismtoday.com/magazine/december-1995/1995-12-miracles/
Jim, you are right. But some of us who were taught to trust certain authorities’ version of truth learn later that we were deceived. Or even lied to, often by people we trusted who didn’t know they were lying. They never questioned what they had been taught. But when some learn that they were deceived, or lied to, then then might change their minds about what they once believed. And They become skeptical. Since it’s all based on belief, rather than unassailable facts, it’s rather difficult to really trust that what we believe to be truth really is truth. So then it’s a hunt for the essential truths - what is a passage of scripture really saying? Not literally, but the essential meaning or lesson. What is the true meaning of a particular miracle story? None of this is easy, and nobody can ever be sure that what they believe is The Truth. That goes for Ehrman and Bauckham too, and all other religious scholars. Of course It was Ehrman’s continuing in- depth study of the Bible that moved him from evangelical superstar biblical studies academic at his college (they expected great things from him), then through his PhD at Princeton, to mainstream Protestant, and eventually to agnostic. He might be full- blown atheist by now. It’s been a long evolution for him. The more he learned the more he questioned. The less he took “ on faith”. He’s a good lecturer. He never attacks christianity, he never disparages it, at least not in anything that I’ve listened to of his, but he provides a lot of background - creating context by providing the history and culture of the NT era and the early centuries of the development of Christianity. He leaves the listener to come to their own conclusions based on the information he provides. Interesting stuff.
DeleteAs far as contemporary events go, and politicians’ claims, I fact-check, using primary sources as much as possible. That is what I did in my work - dug up primary source information and then did analyses. With current events I often take a shortcut by using Snopes or Politifact or AP or Reuters fact check etc. They generally provide citations which can be followed up independently. But nothing is perfect and often we will never know the truth about many things we believe.
In addition to learning about Hindu miracles, here is an interesting account of Muhammad’s trip to heaven.
Deletehttps://islamonline.net/en/reflections-on-al-israa-and-al-miraj-2/
PS. The angel Jibreel is the angel we call Gabriel.
DeleteI have no trouble believing that people in other religions have experienced miracles, too. God isn't confined in a box. Miracles are an instance of the divine breaking through.
DeleteAbout Mohammed, I know there are a lot of good Muslims. But the guy himself was pretty sketchy and violent and you'll have to excuse me if I don't put any faith in his ascension.
Yes Katherine, you may not believe it but 1,8 billion Muslims do - almost as many as Christians who believe that Jesus rose from the dead. Now Jesus definitely comes across as a pretty nice guy, not violent, but the OT God does not - he comes across as erratic, vengeful, pretty violent and pretty unfair. Christians claim belief in that version of God too. A God whose miracles included actions that killed a whole lot of innocent people who didn’t happen to be members of the tribes of Israel.
DeleteI’ll skip the miracle stories, thank you, because they don’t point always to a kind and loving deity.
Off topic but I wanted to make a posting but I can't find the post button either on my PC or my phone. Any help for the hopeless?
ReplyDeleteI sometimes post on my Kindle Fire and there is just an orange button with an arrow on the upper right to post.
Delete. . . it is enough for many people that the source they choose to believe . . . is on their "team" in the culture wars. . . .
ReplyDeleteIt seems to me that the reason Bauckham's book is so popular in certain quarters is that he has written a respectable, contemporary, scholarly book for the more conservative (but not fundamentalist or evangelical) Christian "team" (including Catholics) that tells them basically what they wanted to hear and already believed to be the case. (This does not, by the way, preclude him being right.)
I think a great many people who have never paid attention to modern biblical scholarship have just all along assumed that the gospels were more or less historical documents ultimately based on eyewitness accounts. In fact, many people I have had discussions with (including Catholics) maintain that the evangelists Matthew and John were both apostles.
It would be nice to know who is right and who is wrong, but to the best of my knowledge, there are very few (if any) "objective" biblical scholars. With rare exceptions, non-Christians don't devote their lives to New Testament scholarship, and Christians who do generally start out in one tradition or another. "Objective" historians may occasionally write a book or two about Jesus or the gospels or the early church, but they don't cover the subjects with the same depth as religious scholars. Consequently, we are all stuck either reading authors already on our "team" or occasionally trying to slog through the works of authors we disagree with.
Or to put it more succinctly, your religious beliefs are more likely to determine what you find convincing regarding biblical scholarship than the study of biblical scholarship is likely to strongly influence or alter your religious beliefs. Bart Ehrman is a notable exception, which is one reason many of us find him so interesting.
DeleteDavid - I agree with your point: general readers tend to cluster around the scholars whose work is most congenial to their preferences.
DeleteI am sure you are right about Bauckham appealing to Christians who like what he is saying. FWIW, I purchased Jesus and the Eyewitnesses at the bookshop of our local seminary; presumably it was used as a textbook in one of the Old Testament or New Testament courses.
For those who are professionals in the world of theology and biblical studies, I think one of the challenges of being in the business is learning to respect the scholarship of those from other traditions or outlooks, even to the point of being willing to defend what is valuable in their work. Perhaps that snippet from Ehrman's and Bauckham's conversation that you used in the original post is an example of these two scholars working toward that.
David - … your religious beliefs are more likely to determine what you find convincing regarding biblical scholarship than the study of biblical scholarship is likely to strongly influence or alter your religious beliefs.
DeleteJim - David - I agree with your point: general readers tend to cluster around the scholars whose work is most congenial to their preferences.
I agree also. I read some traditional writers, the more scholarly or academic, including Anglican but some from other traditions, including evangelical Protestants. But, I do seek out those whose views support my instinctive ideas.
Over my adult lifetime my religious beliefs evolved gradually. The changes always resulted from my own thought processes. I found very few, almost zero really, interest from others when I tried to raise questions or concerns. These attempts to find some in-depth discussion included approaching priests and other church professionals. At times I felt a bit like I was crazy - the only “good” Catholic, (once as much a true believer as Jim, Katherine and Stanley) with my unorthodox kinds of questions and ideas. No luck with real, human people. Eventually I would stumble on religious writers and scholars who made me feel less crazy - people like Bart Ehrman. He didn’t convince me that many, maybe most, biblical stories weren’t accurate in the literal sense, but his views were affirming of the conclusions I had reached on my own - that were totally the opposite of what I had once believed. So I looked for more from him. And I learned from his work a whole lot about the nature of the culture, its impact on the development of christian thought, during the first few hundred years after Jesus’s death. That happened with several other writers, not biblical scholars but spiritual writers like Richard Rohr and Joan Chittister. And others. Mavericks in the RCC, heretics according to the conservative Catholics. My superficial survey of the other great religions convinced me that I needed to pretty much grow where I had been planted, focusing on the essential messages of scripture, especially the gospels, while ignoring the factors that cause a lot of cognitive dissonance. So, like Jefferson, I tossed out the miracles. ;).
I have not left christian belief as far behind as Ehrman has, and that’s because of writers like Richard Rohr. I just checked out a couple of ebooks from the library by NT Wright, an Anglican scholar. Downloaded but not yet read. Our son and his wife and three little boys (6, 4, 2) have been here for two weeks. They left a couple of days ago and I am still trying to recover !
Wright is fairly traditional but apparently one of the better advocates for the more traditional understandings and interpretations of the scriptures.