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Jesus Never Existed? Bart Ehrman Responds

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Several times over the last few weeks I’ve had conversations where friends have have seriously cast doubt over the very existence of Jesus of Nazareth, claiming that there’s no evidence that He’s even a real, historical figure.

You tend to hear stuff like this a lot on the Internet, but such claims are noticeably absent in respected academic scholarship. When I say “academic scholarship”, I’m not just referring to conservative Christian scholars either. I’m including liberal scholars, atheists, agnostics and those of other faiths. To demonstrate this, here’s an interview with Bart Erhman, who is an agnostic, former Christian, and a well-known figure in the area of Biblical criticism:

(I’ve moved the video start time past the pejorative preamble)

Catholic Answers recently produced an article in response in response to a recent article on Salon.com also on this subject.

Anonymous Gospels?

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AnonymousThis week I heard a talk on the Gospel of John by Dr. Michael Barber at Our Lady of Mount Carmel Church.

In the early part of his talk, Dr. Barber discussed the question of authorship of the Gospel. He mentioned how modern sceptical scholars often say that the Gospel was originally anonymous, and that the text “The Gospel according to John” was a later addition. I have often heard claims such as these, so I was delighted to hear Dr. Barber present some potential problems with this position…

The main issue in asserting that the Gospel was original anonymous is that the manuscript evidence does not support this hypothesis at all. Where the manuscripts survive, we find the text present. Not only that, there are some other problems which flow from this…

If the original Gospel was anonymous and the association with St. John was a later development, why don’t we find divergent attributions? Since St. John is not identified as the author within the narrative itself, surely one would expect many divergent attributions to develop? Why was the Gospel never associated with, say, St. Peter? The obvious answer is that the text “The Gospel according to John” was in there from the beginning.

If the sceptics are right, the text had been copied as an anonymous Gospel and distributed throughout the Empire. Why is it that manuscripts from all these different regions bear the text claiming Johannine authorship? It would have been an impossible task to gather up all these different manuscripts retrospectively in order to “fix” them with an agreed-upon author, particularly since they were in different languages (Greek, Latin etc). Once again, the simplest explanation for consistency in all these manuscripts in all these areas in all these languages is simply that the text “The Gospel according to John” was in there from the beginning.

These reasons, coupled with the universal testimony of the Early Church Fathers, should give us great confidence that, from the very beginning, this Gospel opened with the words “The Gospel according to John…”

The Great Divorce: Chapter 12

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Summary

The branches of trees down one aisle of the forest dance with light and Lewis thinks there must be another river nearby. It turns out the light is coming from people in a procession. Lewis tells us that “If I could remember their singing and write down the notes, no man who read that score would ever grow sick or old”. Behind them came a beautiful lady in whose honour all this was being done.

Lewis whispers to MacDonald, “Is it? … is it?”. His teacher responds that it’s actually a lady from Golders Green named Sarah Smith, who is “one of the great ones” in this country. MacDonald identifies some of the people in the procession as angels, and others as “her sons and daughters” who were any child she met on earth. She is also surrounded by animals: cats, dogs, birds and horses. MacDonald explains that “Every beast and bird that came near her had its place in her love. In her they became themselves. And now the abundance of life she has in Christ from the Father flows over into them.”

The Lady moves towards “two phantoms: a great tall Ghost, horribly thin and shaky”, whom Lewis dubs “The Tragedian”, who is being led on a chain by another Ghost who is “no bigger than an organ-grinder’s monkey”. When they meet, despite the Tragedian being the one who speaks, the Lady addresses only the Dwarf Ghost. She kisses him and asks for his forgiveness “For all I ever did wrong and for all I did not do right since the first day we met”. The Dwarf shakes the chain and the Tragedian responds, saying he accepts her apology.

The Tragedian says that he’s been thinking only about her “all these years…breaking your heart about me”. In a small, bleating voice, the Dwarf Ghost asks if she missed him. When the Lady tells him that he’ll understand it soon enough, the Dwarf and Tragedian speak in unison to each other, saying that she didn’t answer the question. It is at this point that Lewis “realised then that they were one person, or rather that both were the remains of what had once been a person”, Sarah’s husband, Frank. The Dwarf and the Tragedian tell each other that “it would be rather fine and magnanimous not to press the point” but they aren’t sure if she’d notice, recalling a time when they let her have the last stamp and she didn’t “see how unselfish we’d been”.

The Dwarf and the Tragedian are shocked to find out that the Lady has been happy in Heaven without him. The Tragedian asks here if she even knows the meaning of the word “Love”! The Lady responds: “How should I not?.. I am in love. In love, do you understand? Yes, now I love truly”. Rather than being comforted by this, the Tragedian asks if this means she didn’t love him on earth. The Lady says she did but “only in a poor sort of way… mostly the craving to be loved… I needed you”. The Tragedian is horrified at the idea that she no longer needs him, even though she says that “We shall have no need for one another now: we can begin to love truly”.

The Tragedian, becoming even more melodramatic, laments “Would to God I had seen her lying dead at my feet before I heard those words”. The Lady tries to snap him out of it by saying to the Dwarf “Frank! … Look at me… What are you doing with that great, ugly doll? Let go of the chain. Send it away. It is you I want. Don’t you see what nonsense it’s talking?”. Her message seems to get through and he starts to smile and grow a little bigger.

Questions

Q1. How would you describe the procession? What is Lewis’ suspicion regarding the identity of the lady?

Q2. Who are the ghosts in this chapter? Why are there two ghosts, one of them on a chain? Why are the ghosts shocked to find that the lady has been happy in Heaven?

Q3. How does the lady describe her love for her husband on earth? How is it different now in Heaven?

Q4. How does the lady try to snap Frank out of the melodrama? Why might this work?

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Mega Mass Meme

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Last weekend we had the “Mega Mass” here in San Diego, where the Bishop celebrated the Eucharistic liturgy with approximately 600 Young Adults. Since I now only occasionally go to a Roman Rite Mass, I did find it a little strange. Among the things which now seem a little alien to me, in particular, is receiving the Eucharist from someone other than a priest.

Although I didn’t receive Communion from a priest, I received from the next best thing, the SWAT commando of Catholics, my friend Artzell. Art has a way of bringing out the uber-Catholic in me. The first time we met, we ended up having a huge argument as to which of us had the more powerful patron Saint and which of us most desired martyrdom 🙂

So anyway, to mark the occasion, I created a meme parodying the Dos Equis adverts:

Artzell Bautista

The article Mega Mass Meme first appeared on RestlessPilgrim.net

Naming the books of Moses

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I’ve recently started studying the first five books of the Bible in more depth. Almost as soon as I started, I had an “Oh, I never knew that!” moment which is the subject of today’s post.

Torah

The opening books of the Bible are known by the Greek word “Pentateuch”, which literally means “five volumes”. Unsurprisingly, there are five books which make up the Pentateuch:

1. Genesis
In Greek, “Genesis” means “Beginning”, which is an appropriate title for this book since it describes the Creation of all things. It also covers the lives of the early Patriarchs, up until the time of Jacob and the Twelve Tribes.

2. Exodus
The second book of the Bible describes the escape of the Children of Israel from Egypt and the giving of the Ten Commandments on Sinai. This is reflected in the book’s title, which literally means “Departure”.

3. Leviticus
If you’ve ever tried to read Leviticus, you’ll know that it goes into great detail concerning all the different sacrifices in the cultic worship of Israel. This worship was performed in the Temple by the priestly tribe of the Levites, which gave rise to the this volume’s title, “Book of the Levites”.

4. Numbers
This book recounts the events of Israel’s sojourn in the desert. Unlike the other volumes in the Pentateuch, its title is not very descriptive, being so named because the opening pages of the book concern a census that was taken among the people.

5. Deuteronomy
The final volume in the Pentateuch contains the Law given by Moses on the plains of Moab prior to his death and before the entry into the Promised Land.

My first “Oh, I didn’t know that!” moment was when I found out the meaning of this book’s title. The Greek word for “Law” is “nomos” and it’s the word used throughout the New Testament to refer to the Law of Moses. You can see this Greek word hidden away in the name of the book: “Deuteronomy“. The prefix, “deutero” means “second” (e.g. “deuterocanon” means “second canon”). Therefore, “Deuteronomy” means “Second Law”. It is so called because it’s the second major piece of legislative material in the Books of Moses.

I previously knew that the Jewish people often refer to the Pentateuch as “The Torah”, the Hebrew word for “Instruction”, “Teaching”, or “Law”. However, what I didn’t know was that the they have different names for each of these books. The names which I listed above (Genesis, Exodus, …) come from the Septuagint (LXX), the Greek translation of the Pentateuch sometime around 250 BC. Within Judaism, however, the following Hebrew names are used:

1. Bereshith (“In the Beginning”)
2. Shemuoth (“Names”)
3. Wayiqra (“And he said”)
4. Bamidbar (“In the desert”)
5. Debarim (“Words”)

As you might be able to guess from the translations in parentheses, the Jews follow the same naming convention used in Catholic Papal Encyclicals, naming the book after the opening words of the document.

Well, that’s enough nerding out for one day… 🙂

He-Man, Christian Allegory & Transubstantiation

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Christians have long made use of allegory to narrate the story of salvation. We have done this because, by utilizing fiction to retell the story of Jesus, we can present to an unbelieving world the archetypal themes of Christianity, as well as providing for ourselves a “novel” way 😉 to meditate upon our tale of grace…

A Common Example…

One popular example of Christian allegory would be “The Lion, the witch and the wardrobe”  by C.S. Lewis. This is one of the first novels I can recall hearing as a child. However, it wasn’t until I was quite a bit older that I started to realize why the story felt so familiar…

C.S. Lewis’ goal in writing “The Chronicles Of Narnia”  was to write a good story rather than simply a Christian story. Fortunately for us he does both! In “The Lion, the witch and the wardrobe”  Lewis tells the story of the great lion Aslan who offers his life in place of the disobedient boy Edmund. Even with this brief outline, it is clear to see that this story is an allegory of Jesus’ Crucifixion and the offering of His life for sinners.

In my mid-twenties I did a lot of babysitting and, because of this, I got to read the book out loud for the children I was babysitting (complete with voices, of course). Reading the book as an adult, I was stunned to find Christ on every page.

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