Category: Textual Criticism

Marking Mark’s Opening Verses

I was conversing with a Calvinist friend recently about the opening verses of the Gospel of Mark. As I was putting together my thoughts, it struck me again just how insecure the opening verses are for what is almost certainly the oldest surviving of the canonical gospels. Within just the first four verses there are at least two common textual variants, a misquote of the Old Testament, and a claim that contradicts a contemporary historical source.

Mark 1:1-4
1 The beginning of the gospel of Jesus the Messiah, the Son of God. 2 As it is written in Isaiah the prophet, “See, I am sending my messenger ahead of you, who will prepare your way. 3 The voice of one crying out in the wilderness: ‘Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight.’” 4 John the baptizer appeared in the wilderness, proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins…

Above is how the text currently stands, as translated from the reconstructed Greek by the Nestle-Aland team (which serves for the basis of most English translations – the NIV, NRSV, NLT, etc.)

In verse 1, the title “Son of God” is missing in at least two of the earliest surviving attestations of the text, leaving some question as to whether or not it should be considered part of the earliest attainable form of the gospel’s opening. The phrase is missing from what is probably the earliest scrap of Mark 1:1, that being the amulet P. Oxyrhynchus LXXVI 5073 of the late 3rd / early 4th centuries, and from Codex Sinaiticus of the 4th century. The phrase is included in most of the other major survived sources. Opinions vary among textual experts.

Image result for Oxyrhynchus LXXVI 5073^P. Oxyrhynchus LXXVI 5073 (c.late 3rd / early 4th century)

In verse 2, the text purports to quote “what is written in Isaiah the prophet”. However the following quotation actually comes from Malachi 3:1. Doh! When one isn’t hindered by an unnecessary presupposition of Biblical inerrancy (as my Calvinist friend seems compelled to presuppose) it requires no interpretive strain to see this as just another minor gaff on the author’s behalf (of which there are several others in the gospel [1]). Later scribes reproducing the verse also regularly saw the problem and many attempted to fix the text to read “as it is written in the prophets” (or variations).

In verse 4, the text describes John the Baptist as “proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins”. This oddly contradicts what the great ancient-Jewish historian Josephus says about John the Baptist – that John was *not* baptizing for the purpose of forgiveness of sins. Josephus: “For immersion in water, it was clear to [John the Baptist], could not be used for the forgiveness of sins, but as a sanctification of the body…” (Antiquities of the Jews, 18.5.2). [Further, the chronology of Josephus’ description of John the Baptist appears to disagree with the chronology of Mark’s. Josephus places his brief narrative of the baptist several pericopes after having talked about Pilate’s dismissal, etc.]

Given this, I don’t see any way how we can ever know whether the ritual provided by historical John the Baptist was intended for the forgiveness of sins or not. It’s Josephus’ word vs. the Gospel of Mark’s word – both sources written at roughly the same period (late 1st century). One might see Josephus as having the the advantage in that he was a native Hebrew / Aramaic speaker who lived in pre-war Israel, like the Baptist himself. The same can’t be said for the Gospel of Mark, being composed in a foreign language and probably from outside of Israel with no guarantee of having been written prior to the war. On the other hand, one might see the Gospel of Mark having the advantage on the basis that his movement appears to have indirectly sprung from John the Baptist’s movement (at least in some sense) whereas Josephus was an outsider of the movement who simply commented on it. So who knows?! The point is not so much to argue that the Gospel of Mark is necessarily wrong, only that it highlights that the gospels do not always agree with contemporary historical sources (despite that I am regularly told otherwise by believers).

I predict that most evangelicals will respond with a “well what does it matter?!” kind of response. Well, it doesn’t matter to me beyond fun little historical curiosities. But I think even these little issues should matter to those who believe the autographs of these texts were inerrantly inspired by a divine being when we don’t know precisely what the autographs said in places and when they contradict contemporary alternate historical sources. On the other hand, if this is all just a human production, it is not surprising at all to find that the opening verses of what is probably the earliest surviving gospel are littered with textual and historical eyebrow-raisers. The gospel genre is off to a flying start! 

Has ‘The Bible’ Passed the Test of Time?

I am often told by Christians (I hear it regularly from Jehovah’s Witnesses especially) that one of the reasons they believe ‘the Bible’ is the ‘Word of God’ is that it has “passed the test of time”. I am regularly told that throughout history many have tried to destroy the Bible and their lack of success should imply that God has had some part in its preservation.

There are three big problems with this line of reasoning that I can see. Firstly, how is it being determined that a text’s (or in the Bible’s case, a compilation of texts’) survival throughout history is a sign of divine authorship? What is the length of time required for one to begin considering it divinely authored? 500 years? 1,000 years? 3,000 years? Similarly, what is the justification for the underlying assumption that a divinely authored text should survive throughout history? Why can’t an equally divinely authored text become lost to history? Is there some rule that says a God can’t have inspired a text that can become lost?

Surely the same Christians who espouse this view do not think the Koran or the Bhagavad Gita are divinely inspired because they have survived over the centuries? And what about the rediscoveries of previously lost ancient texts? Would that not also count as a form of ‘survival’? Could not the rediscovery of the Nag Hammadi Gnostic texts or the Dead Sea Scrolls’ Jewish Apocrypha, etc., be considered God’s handiwork? Those discoveries were very much unexpected and unlikely, after all. They have ‘survived’ too, it appears.

Secondly, I think many who hold to this view (again, I have Jehovah’s Witnesses on my mind as I type, but I’ve also heard it from other Christians) have a somewhat warped understanding of the history of the preservation of the Bible. For better or worse, Christianity has dominated the West for the past 1600 years. While there has always been pockets of dissent during this period, the overwhelming power balance has been in the Church’s favour. Christians often remind me that the New Testament is the most well attested to ancient text. This is true, of course, but should that be considered a sign of divine authorship or simply a sign of the Church’s power and influence over the past 1600 years? It is not inconceivable that when future archaeologists dig up the Middle East in 1,000 years time they will find oodles and oodles of copies of the Koran. Would that tell us anything about God? No reason to think so. It would just be a sign of Islam’s power and influence during a certain period of Middle Eastern history.

The third and final hole I see in this line of reasoning is the question over what extent ‘the Bible’ has actually survived? Those who engage in the quest for the ‘original text’ of ‘the Bible’ quickly learn that in many places it is very hard, if not impossible, to determine with confidence what should count as the “original” text. This is not only a matter over minor details like spelling and grammar (as is sometimes portrayed by Christian apologists), but it also includes serious questions over entire verses, chapters, and (occasionally) entire books. Examples of these bigger textual issues include the string of widely variant verses in the final chapters of the Gospel of Luke seen in the earliest manuscripts, whether chapter 21 of John’s gospel is “original” or an addition to a gospel that initially ended at 20:31, or whether Luke 1-2 are additions to a gospel that initially began at chapter 3, etc. There is also the problem over virtually the entirety of 2 Corinthians given that appears to most textual scholars to have been a cutting, stitching and editing together of several Pauline epistles that did not survive. Due to these (and many other) problems, scholars in this field are increasingly distancing themselves from referring to being able to reconstruct the “original” text, knowing that such a goal is probably beyond the reach of scholarship. It also raises all sorts of questions over what would even count as “original” when the texts appear to have gone through multiple stages of redaction. This is why textual scholars tend to prefer terms like “earliest attainable form” instead of “original” nowadays.

So is the Bible’s survival a good reason to think it was divinely authored? Nope. There is nothing inconsistent in its survival (in the form it has come down to us) if there was no divine guidance giving its survival a helping hand along the way. The Bible was authored by humans, copied by humans, edited by humans, and passed on by humans for human reasons. For better or worse. No Gods required.

The Proposed Non-Pauline Interpolation that Carrier-school Mythicists Tend Not to be Aware of

Central to the Richard Carrier-school mythicist thesis is the idea that Paul believed Jesus’ crucifixion occurred not here on Earth at the hands of ‘earthly’ ruling elites like Pilate and the Sanhedrin, but in outer-space at the hands of demons. One of the school’s most beloved proof-texts is 1 Corinthians 2:6-8, in which Paul is reported to have written:

“Yet among the mature we do speak wisdom, though it is not a wisdom of this age or of the rulers (Gk: ‘archons’) of this age, who are doomed to perish. But we speak God’s wisdom, secret and hidden, which God decreed before the ages for our glory. None of the rulers (‘archons’) of this age understood this, for if they had, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory”

Carrier says of this passage: “In the mythicist thesis, it was originally believed [by the earliest Christians that] the Prince of This World [i.e. the head demon] killed Jesus not knowing who he was (1 Cor. 2.8), because everything about him was kept hidden (1 Cor 2.7), and only revealed spiritually, by revelation to his elect (1 Cor. 2.10)” (“On the Historicity of Jesus”, 2014, p.321)

The battle lines over this passage between Carrier-school mythicists and boring old historicists like myself are generally over interpretation of who Paul understands those ‘archons’ responsible for crucifying Jesus to be. Does Paul mean that only celestial demons crucified Jesus, as the Carrier-school effectively requires? Or does Paul mean that only earthly human rulers like Pilate and the Sanhedrin were responsible? Or (as is perhaps most commonly thought) is Paul encompassing both demonic and earthly responsibility – i.e. the demonic influence on earthly rulers?

But there is another option that must be considered at least a further small hurdle for the Carrier-school thesis to overcome – that the passage might not even be from the hand of Paul. While this view is not widely held, several scholars over the years have proposed 1 Corinthians 2:6-16 to be a later non-Pauline interpolation. I do my best below to paraphrase and summarize the arguments of William O. Walker as found in his 1992 publication “1 Cor 2:6-16 – A Non Pauline Interpolation” (JSNT 47, 1992, p.75-94) who openly builds on and defends the work of the German scholar M. Widmann who came to the same conclusion about the inauthenticity of the passage in the 1970s. Basically, the reasons for thinking 1 Cor 2:6-16 might well be an interpolation include:

1. Contextual considerations – the relation of the passage to its immediate context. Consider, for example, the smooth and coherent flow had the text initially read from 2:5 to 3:1. Note also the abrupt shift beginning at v.6 from singular (‘I’) to plural (‘we’), from aorist to present tense.

2. Linguistic considerations – the distinctive language and style of the passage. Several words and phrases appear in the passage that are nowhere else found in the authentic epistles, including loaded theological terms that we might have expected Paul to use elsewhere. These include: “the rulers of this age” (v.6, 8), “before the ages” (v.7), “the Lord of glory” (v.8), “the spirit of the man” (v.11), “the spirit who is from God” (v.12), “natural man” (v.14), and several others.

3. Ideational considerations – the distinctive and potentially contradictory set of ideas in the passage. For example, Christian speech is now viewed as the mysterious hidden divine Wisdom or ‘the things of the deep’ *rather than* as the openly proclaimed word of the cross. Indeed, a positive view of Wisdom is now made *rather than* the rejection of Wisdom and, paradoxically, identifying the cross as Wisdom.

Borderline-mythicist Robert M. Price appears to see this last point as decisive for seeing 2:6-16 as from “a different writer” of the preceding verses (1:17b-2:5) – specifically, from the hand of a 2nd century Valentian Gnostic (“The Amazing Colossal Apostle”, p.306-7).

If it is true that 1 Corinthians 2:6-16 is an interpolation, it must surely be seen as a significant blow to the Carrier-school thesis as it would remove the only hint of a verse in the authentic Pauline corpus in which Paul might attribute the death of Jesus to demons (that is, if by ‘archons’ he means demons). On the other hand, the authenticity or inauthenticity of this passage would not have any significant effect on stock historicism given the plethora of other verses and sources which reflect Paul’s belief that Jesus had been here on Earth over and against any potential ‘ambiguity’ over Paul’s use of the term ‘archons’.

I want to make it clear that at this point I am not yet persuaded into thinking the passage is an interpolation. However as I have been reading up on it these last few days, I do find the interpolation view as at least in the ball park of fair consideration. My confidence in the passage’s authenticity has lowered to some degree.

I also find it slightly curious that in “On the Historicity of Jesus” Richard Carrier failed to mention this (admittedly not widely held, but at least respectable) scholarly view that if true would be rather destructive to his case. Recall that “On the Historicity of Jesus” is a whopping 600+ pager that includes over 1000 references, extensive discussions on 1 Corinthians 2:6-8 and its relevance to his particular Mythicist thesis, a Bibliography that includes reference to three of William O. Walker’s publications on Pauline Interpolations (and as such, Carrier must surely have known about it), and Carrier’s personal estimate that there “must be at least 20 [additional] significant interpolations in the text of the New Testament that [scholarship has] no way of detecting” (p.276-277). I do find it difficult to see Carrier’s failure to report this potentially scholarly detected interpolation as only an unintentional oversight.

The Case Against Luke 1-2

This essay seeks to argue the case that Luke 1:5-2:52 is an insertion into the Gospel of Luke and not original to it.

The Virgin Birth: A Late Narrative
Thematically, Luke 1:5-2:52 seems to fit better alongside legendary 2nd century ‘Infancy Gospel’ narratives, such as the Infancy Gospel of James and the Infancy Gospel of Thomas, in which there was something of a fad for stories about Mary, Joseph and boy-Jesus. In 1:44, the unborn John the Baptist, still in his mother’s womb, kicks for joy merely for being in the near presence of the Virgin Mary, who responds by breaking out into liturgical-sounding poetry/song.

If the Virgin Birth was an early tradition, it is odd that it isn’t mentioned more in roughly-contemporary (e.g. John c.90-110CE) and clearly earlier texts (Paul c.50sCE, and Mark c.70sCE). Each of these authors would have had good reason to recall it in their writings. While it is mentioned in Matthew (c.80-100CE), Church Fathers tell us of other Christian sects that had versions of Matthew that also omitted the virgin birth story and believed Jesus to be the natural offspring of Mary and Joseph.

A Notable Change of Linguistic Style
Linguistically, 1:5-2:52 differs from the rest of Luke-Acts also. To quote scholar Craig Blomberg: “Abruptly, with 1:5, Luke adopts a very Semitic form of Greek writing. From chapter 3 on, he uses standard koiné, though with a bit more literary artistry than the other evangelists, but not as elegantly as the preface or as Hebraic in style as the rest of [chapters 1-2]” (“Jesus and the Gospels: Introduction and Survey”, p.202).

Attestation of the Chapters Missing from Early Manuscripts
Church Fathers Irenaeus and Tertullian attest to the existence of versions of Luke that must have been in prominent circulation by c.150CE that did not include chapters 1-2. These were found in Marcionite churches. Is it just a coincidence that these are the very chapters that differ thematically and stylistically? Of course Irenaeus and Tertullian say that these chapters had been edited out by the holders of these gospels, but they don’t provide compelling evidence and argument. It’s their word against the word of the Marcionites. To quote scholar Jason BeDuhn: “[criticism by the Church Fathers that Marcion edited out Luke 1-2] was at best a guess on their part, and it cannot be given any weight as history just on their word” (“The First New Testament: Marcion’s Scriptural Canon”, p.69/70)

The Virgin Birth Missing through the Rest of Luke-Acts
The virgin birth (and any other significant content from 1:5-2:52) is never recalled or alluded to again in Luke-Acts after chapter 2 – even in places where we might expect to find it such as further scenes with Mary the mother of Jesus – e.g. she is never referred to as “the Virgin Mary” nor is it referenced again in the long summarizing speeches by Stephen, Peter and Paul who recall earlier events of Jesus’ life, death and resurrection. Did they just forget to mention that Jesus was born of a virgin? Is it just a coincidence that this missing piece of information happens to be the same information that was also found missing in the alternative circulating versions of Luke, that when told in the canonical counterpart differs thematically and linguistically to the rest of canonical Luke-Acts?

Chapter 3 as the Original Introduction of Luke’s Gospel
The beginning of Chapter 3 reads like the beginning of a bios-history / gospel: “In the fifteenth year of the reign of Emperor Tiberius, when Pontius Pilate was governor of Judea… ” etc., and is shortly followed by Jesus’s baptism and genealogy, etc. From the canonical point of view, it seems an odd place to insert Jesus’s genealogy – at the point of his adult baptism and after he has already “grown in wisdom and divine favor” (2:52) instead of at his conception or birth where genealogies would normally be placed. Indeed, one has to question the relevance and coherency of a genealogy that traces Jesus’s lineage through his father’s side if Jesus did not have a human father as is stated in chapters 1-2. Of course none of this would be odd if the gospel that underpinned Luke originally began at Chapter 3 – right at the point where the gospel sinks back into standard koiné style, and where we know other early versions started, and where the silence of further allusion to the virgin birth begins. Is this just all coincidence?

Baptismal Oddities Solved
The hypothesis that an earlier form of Luke did not include chapters 1-2 solves several other oddities within Luke-Acts’s surrounding John the Baptist and his baptism of Jesus. Firstly, John the Baptist is reintroduced in Luke 3:2 as if for the first time: “the word of God came to John son of Zechariah”, despite John having already recognized Jesus in the womb (1:44). There have been no other ‘Johns’ mentioned yet that would require this kind of formal distinction, and Luke 3:24 betrays no knowledge of the detailed events and family connections between Jesus and John in Luke 1-2. Secondly, Acts 1:22 has Peter refer to “the beginning” of “the time that the Lord Jesus went in and out among us” as Jesus’s baptism, not his birth nor maturity. And thirdly, there are textual variants in the surviving manuscripts of Luke 3 over what the voice from heaven said at Jesus’s baptism (3:22). Some manuscripts read “You are my Son, the Beloved. With you I am well pleased”, while others read “You are my Son. Today I have begotten you” (thus making it a quotation of Psalm 2:7). If the latter is the original saying, as is supported by many textual critics, this raises the question of why Jesus needs to be “begotten” further after already having been born of a virgin untainted from inheriting sin nature and already having obtained an increase in “wisdom and divine favor” (2:52). Similarly, the action of the Holy Spirit descending upon Jesus from above seems unnecessary. Again, all of this can be explained if chapters 1-2 are a later add-on.

Further Oddities Explained…
Furthermore on the version of Luke that circulated in Marcionite churches: The Church Fathers indicate that it more or less began with 3:1 and jumped straight to 4:31, skipping over (among other things) the story of Jesus’s rejection at Nazareth. If this is how an earlier form of the gospel once stood, this would actually prevent a further little oddity found within canonical Luke. In the canonical version, Jesus mocks the Nazareth synagogue attendees by suggesting they will want to see a miracle sign like the ones they have heard he performed in Capernaum (4:23). But at this point in canonical Luke, Jesus hasn’t performed any miracles in Capernaum yet. The miracles he performs in Capernaum occur AFTER these verses (4:31-41). If the Nazareth episode (4:16-30) wasn’t part of the gospel (as the Church Fathers attest was the case for the Marcionite version) then there is no oddity. It seems to me that the oddity was created unintentionally by a careless splicing together of sources. The redactor wants to have Jesus’s ministry expand from Nazareth (Jesus’s home town) to Capernaum, to Jerusalem, and ultimately to the rest of the world. However in constructing it this way, by splicing in a miracle narrative that references Jesus’s earlier Capernaum deeds before he even goes to Capernaum, he makes a little error that gives us a hint of the underlying redactional processes.

Once more, is this just another coincidence that the Marcionite version of Luke doesn’t have these textual oddities that seem to be the result of a careless splicing together of several sources?

Conclusion
I think when one takes all these factors in tandem, a fuzzy but distinguishable conclusion begins to rise to the surface – that Luke 1:5-2:52 is not original and has probably been added to a proto-Luke gospel that initially started at 3:1. I should also add that this is also not a denialist fringe view only held by a handful of amateur skeptics, but one that is held by many respectable scholars teaching in prestigious universities around the Western World. Bart Ehrman (Univ. North Carolina), Jason BeDuhn (Univ. Northern Arizona), David Trobisch (Univ. Heidelberg/Yale), are some names that subscribe to this view.

Relevant Quotes from Scholars:

“Granted that the birth material [of Luke 1-2] had an origin and transmission different from the stories of Jesus’s ministry, how did the evangelist proceed in joining birth material to the story of the ministry? Did he begin writing with the birth stories, or did he begin with the account of the ministry and, as an afterthought, prefix the birth stories? [The] evidence points in [the latter] direction. Although there have been occasional attempts to join the infancy story to the next two chapters, so that a continuous narrative-unit of the Gospel would extend from 1:5 to 4:15, the solemn beginning of the ministry in 3:1-2 could well have served as the original opening of the Lukan Gospel. Support for this is found not only in the fact that Mark and John open the Gospel story with the events surrounding the baptism of Jesus, but also in the reference to this baptism by John the Baptist as a beginning in Acts 1:22 (the latter passage suggests that the infancy narrative may have been prefixed to the Gospel after the Book of Acts was completed). The placing of the genealogy in the third chapter of Luke makes more sense if that had been done before an infancy narrative had been prefixed. As was true also with Matthew’s Gospel, none of the Lukan infancy narrative has had major influence on the body of the Gospel, so that, if the first two chapters had been lost, we could never have suspected their existence.”

– Raymond E. Brown: “The Birth of the Messiah: A Commentary of the Infancy Narratives in the Gospels of Matthew and Luke: Updated Edition”, 1993, p.239-240

“Luke 3:1 opens with an elaborate chronological statement: “In the fifteenth year of the reign of Tiberius, when Pontius Pilate was … the word of the Lord came to John the son of Zacharias in the wilderness”. This surely reads as if it was originally written as the opening section of a book. The impression is strengthened by the curious position of the genealogy of our Lord (3:23). If this had been inserted by the last editor of the Gospel, we should have expected to find it, like the genealogy in Matthew, somewhere in chapters 1 or 2 in connection with the account of the Birth and Infancy. If, however, it was originally inserted in a book which only began with Luke 3:1, its position is explained – for it occurs immediately after the first mention of the name of Jesus.”

– Burnett Hillman Streeter: “The Four Gospels: A Study of Origins”, 1924, p.209

Regarding Luke 1:5:2-52:

“Nowhere is the variety of the ‘narrative tradition’ more apparent, for here we find, not self-contained stories, but a continuous narrative, and yet a narrative which is very different in form from the Passion Story. … The section itself … suggests that Luke 1:5-2:52 is a literary composition of no mean order which ought to be treated as inspired poetry rather than as sober prose … If the Galilean material is so fragmentary, how was it that Luke was able to write a continuous account of events thirty years earlier still? There is no satisfactory answer to this question except the conclusion that the Birth Stories are a literary compilation. … All indications are that it was composed at a relatively late date. This follows at once if Proto-Luke began with 3:1 – the Preaching of John, the Baptism and the Genealogy. It is also implied if the section is a literary composition. Activity of this kind is hard to understand unless it belongs to [a time post-70CE]”

– Vincent Taylor: “The Formation of the Gospel Tradition: Eight Lectures”, 1964, p.159-160

“[Editorial] clumsiness is demonstrated strikingly in Luke [between the Virgin Birth narrative and the genealogy] … We are obviously confronted by a process in the development of an idea, the gradual magnification of Jesus, in which a prior layer of tradition has actually been pried up by the wedge of another, later tradition, and instead of replacing it has simply been juxtaposed … [Luke’s] impressive enumeration of Jesus’s forefathers is marred at the very outset by the incomprehensible interpolation of a parenthetical phrase: “Jesus, being the son (as was supposed) of Joseph”, and so on. This simple-minded “as was supposed” cancels the whole point of the lengthy genealogy, which is then given in detail anyhow! The editors who copied out the list establishing Jesus in the Jewish line of royal success were evidently active in a milieu that believed in the *later story of the Virgin Birth*. They simply inserted the parenthetical phrase to cancel what which would otherwise be normally conveyed by the presence of the genealogy – the perfect natural sonship of Jesus”

– Joel Carmichael, “The Death of Jesus”, 1964, p.53

On how textual discrepancies in the manuscripts might further indicate that 3:1 was the original beginning:

“If Luke 3 *began* this Gospel, then the placement of the genealogy makes perfect sense – especially if the words spoken by God from heaven are a quotation of Psalm 2:7, as [I’ve proposed elsewhere], “You are my son; today I have begotten you.” In that case, the Gospel begins by providing a dating for the events it is about to narrate, it opens with an account of Jesus’ baptism by John (as in Mark’s Gospel), that account ends with God indicating that this is the day on which he has “given birth to” (or “begotten”) Jesus, and then the author launches directly into the genealogy of Jesus’ birth. If that’s the case, there is no longer a problem with the voice of God at the baptism indicating that this is the moment at which he has “begotten” Jesus. He did not make Jesus his son at his birth (as indicated in 1:35 – a verse that was not originally in the Gospel) but at his baptism.”

– Bart Ehrman, “Arguments that Luke Originally Did Not Have the Virgin Birth”, blogpost, 22/10/2015.

“Without texts of the Gospel of Marcion or the pre-Marcionite edition of Luke, contentions about the composition of canonical Luke cannot be proven beyond a reasonable doubt. Any hypothesis is just that. But hypotheses carry conviction in the degree to which they answer questions and solve problems. In my judgment more problems are solved and fewer new ones created by a theory that understands canonical Luke to be the end of a rather long process of composition.

The first stage in this process would be the composition of a pre-Marcionite gospel. It probably began with Luke 3:1, and it would have contained material its author obtained, assuming the two-document hypothesis of synoptic relationship, from Mark and Q. This gospel probably also contained a brief narrative of Jesus’ resurrection, perhaps similar to what is now in Mark 16:1-8. Some material from the Lukan Sondergut was also used, but this early text almost certainly did not have the preface of the infancy narratives that now stand at the beginning of canonical Luke, and it probably did not contain the narratives of Jesus’ postresurrection appearances that we find in Luke 24. Without being precise about its actual contents, we may think of the pre-Marcionite gospel as similar to our Luke 3-23. This text, coming after Mark and before Marcion, probably dotes from ca. 70-90 C.E.

The second stage would be the composition of the Gospel of Marcion. This gospel as probably based on the pre-Marcionite gospel but with significant omissions, and so Marcion’s opponents could claim that he had “mutilated” the Gospel of Luke. We cannot be certain when this text first appeared, but a date of ca. 115-120 C.E. would probably not be far off the mark.

The third stage would be the composition of canonical Luke. This gospel was almost certainly based on the pre-Marcionite gospel, but its author added a number of new pericopes. He appended a preface (Luke 1:5-2:52); he rewrote the Markan story of the empty tomb (Luke 24:1-11) and added the postresurrection narratives (Luke 24:13-53). Undoubtedly this author also worked through his source and gave it his own stamp, thus creating the sense of literary unity that the work has. One of the purposes of this author was to publish a gospel that would clearly and forcefully respond to the claims of the Marcionites. The author of canonical Luke was also the author of Acts, and it is likely that he brought out the complete work about 120-125 C.E., just when Marcion’s views were becoming widely known. The author of these volumes almost certainly did not make use of Marcion’s gospel, which may well have appeared at about the same time. The work as a whole, Luke-Acts as we know it, surely served as a formidable anti-Marcionite text.”

– Joseph B. Tyson, “Marcion and Luke-Acts”, 2006, p.119-120

“It would not surprise me that the first two chapters [of Luke-Acts] take an anti-Marcionite view. In the first two chapters, Jewish piety is terrific. There is reference to John the Baptist’s circumcision, to Jesus’ circumcision, to people going to the Temple and making offerings. It looks like Old Testament wonderland! It’s fabulous! And you don’t see much of that particular view of Jewish piety, that particular view of the Temple and ritual in the rest of [Luke-Acts]. Everything in the first two chapters rings an anti-Marcionite bell. […] I put [the bulk of Luke] to probably the 90sCE, [and] I put Acts in the early second century. By the same author”

– Amy-Jill Levine, “Trinities Podcast Episode 236”, 2018.

John 21 is Probably Not Original to the Gospel

John 21 is probably not original to the fourth gospel. It is likely an addition to a text that initially ended at John 20:31. In this post, I’d like to highlight the significant reasons for why I think so.

To begin with, I’d like first to remind my readers that interpolations, additions, redactions, forgeries, verisimilitudes, stitchings together of earlier and free-floating traditions, and other textual shenanigans etc., were not at all uncommon in the practice of early Christian textual production and reproduction. To see this, one only has to observe the way the Gospel of Thomas and the Diatesseron redact and interpolate over the canonical traditions. Or observe the way the Gospels of Matthew and Luke redact Mark, or the way the pericopes of John 7:53-8:11 and Mark 16:9-20 were probably added to their respective gospels at a later time (as they are missing in some of the earliest manuscripts). Similarly, we can read the longer version of Acts of the Apostles that contains some ~10% more material, or read up on disputes between Marcion and his opponents over accusations and denials of textual tampering vs. restoring etc. The point is simple: Such stuff was going on, and as such, we have a proof of concept before looking closer at John 21.

Let’s get to the meat now…

1) Most obviously, and I think this is the strongest point, is that the ending of John 20:30-31 reads just like a conclusion. It makes little sense to write a sentence indicating that “Jesus did many other signs in the presence of his disciples which are not written in this book” only to follow on with further miracles in the presence of his disciples in the book and a further almost identical concluding sentence (21:25). Even highly conservative scholars can see this. Take R. C. Lenski’s response in his classic commentary as a common response: “It is quite impossible to regard the last two verses of chapter 20 as anything but the formal and proper conclusion of John’s gospel. The impression made on us is that, when John penned or dictated these final verses, he intended to add nothing further.” (‘The Interpretation of St. John’s Gospel’, p.1399). Lenski of course still accepts John 21 as “scripture”, and an actual memory traceable to the Beloved Disciple. But he can still see the writing on the wall – John 21 has been added to something that likely originally concluded at John 20:31. (For what it’s worth, many scholars suspect 20:30-31 was the original ending to the hypothetical ‘Signs Source’)

2) Many words, expressions, and literary peculiarities are found for the first and only time in John 21 compared with the rest of the gospel. C.K. Barrett identifies some 28 greek words in John 21 that are only found in that chapter. Of course, as Barrett admits, many of these words may just be coincidental and subject specific, but he also points out that about 1/3 of them are quite surprising when other more common Johannine words and phrases could have been used for the same effect. Barrett concludes his discussion on the chapter’s literary peculiarities by saying: “Consequently, it seems necessary to detach the whole of chapter 21 from the main body of the gospel” (‘The Gospel According to St. John’).

3) John 21 confuses the sequence of the narrative. After the mission of Mary Magdalene to announce the resurrection and the subsequent mission of the disciples (20:18-23), why do the disciples return from Jerusalem to Galilee and to their former occupations, seemingly somewhat bored by the present situation (21:2-3)? There is an obtuseness among the disciples that makes little sense of the joy, the mission, and the receiving of the Holy Spirit of 20:19-23. After having twice seen Jesus in the upper room (20:19-23, 26-29) why do they fail to recognise him when he appears for the third time (21:14)?

4) The narrative of John 21 shows a concern for the community, its mission, and authority within the community that exceeds the interest shown in these questions throughout John 1:1-20:31. For example, one of its main objectives seems to be to address the accusation that Jesus had predicted that the Beloved Disciple wouldn’t die before Jesus’ return (something that looks to me the kind of thing Jesus predicts in Mark 13). It looks awfully like the author/s of chapter 21 were aware the Beloved Disciple had in fact died. If the beloved disciple was in any sense responsible for some proportion of the text of the Gospel of John, then clearly this part wasn’t, indicating addition of some sort. And once we admit “addition”, then the question of what constitutes “original” naturally follows.

(Some wording and phrasing of Points 3 & 4 above I have borrowed from Francis J. Moloney’s ‘Sacra Pagina’ commentary, p.545)

5) There exists possible manuscript attestation to a circulating chapter-21-less gospel. The manuscript P66 completes chapter 20 and leaves a significant chunk of blank space before starting chapter 21 on the following page. This is an irregular practice for the rest of this manuscript, elsewhere showing no desire to begin new pericopes on fresh pages. See Brent Nongbri’s blog: https://brentnongbri.com/2018/10/24/p-bodmer-ii-as-evidence/

Similarly, according to G. Schenke, in 2006 a 4th century Sahidic papyrus manuscript (Bodleian MS. Copt.e.150(P)) came to light that may end at 20:31. One side of this single-leaf fragment consists of John 20:30-31 with a large space under it, having no subscription. J. B. Lightfoot and Raymond Brown also refer to a 5th century Syriac manuscript in which chapter 21 is omitted, although I suspect they are talking about the same manuscript as Schenke, only prior to its publication.

6) Possible church father attestation to a missing John 21. Tertullian, writing around the same time as our earliest manuscript attestation to John 21 (P66, c.200CE), makes a comment in his ‘Against Praxeas’ that seems to imply his version of the gospel concluded at 20:31. Tertullian: “And wherefore does this conclusion of the gospel affirm that these things were written unless it is that you might believe, it says, that Jesus Christ is the son of God?”. That is the conclusion of 20:31. Not anything from chapter 21. Of course the obvious blow against this argument is that in another book, Tertullian seems aware of the tradition now found in John 21 that the disciple John should not have died prior to the second coming. However Tertullian gives us no indication that he is aware of that tradition from the Gospel of John. He may have known it from a free-floating tradition, or the second (third? fourth?) edition of the gospel. For a further discussion on this point, see Benen C. Smith’s article: http://www.textexcavation.com/tertullianjohnappendix.html.

So, considering all these reasons combined – particularly points 2-5 – this is why I think John 21 is not “original”. Of course each point may have possible alternative explanations to maintain the chapter’s status as “original”, however when taken cumulatively, I think the case against it is a strong one. I think there once existed a source that concluded with 20:30-31, and that chapter 21 was added onto that at a later time. How early or late that was I have no idea – almost certainly no later than 200CE, but I suspect a bit earlier. But how early is early enough to be considered “original”? Shouldn’t any addition be considered “not original”? Or at the very least it should raise the question of what should or should not count as “original”.

Even if, as I suspect, many evangelical readers will not find these arguments convincing, my hope is that they at least consider the possibility of addition in light of what we know about interpolation and redaction in early Christianity (both within and outside of the canon) and the ancient world in general for that matter. I hope they can see that there is at least some reason to doubt. I hope they can see that it is at least plausible and not at all an unreasonable hypothesis. And if that is the case, then the question becomes what it means for the doctrine of Biblical inerrancy if one can see the high plausibility that parts of “the Bible” as it stands today, may not be original?

A Reponse to TruthSurge’s Video on Galatians 1:19

This post is a response to the YouTube video titled James, the brother of the Lord – part 1 (Jesus myth exceptions) by TruthSurge.

1. TruthSurge’s Reasons to Believe Galatians 1:19 is an Interpolation

TruthSurge begins his case against the use of Galatians 1:19 as evidence for a Historical Jesus by first presenting an argument for interpolation, which he declares is “always on the table for the Jesus Mythicist” given the widespread phenomena of interpolation into early Christian texts. To support this, TruthSurge cites Bart Ehrman and the late Bruce Metzger, two of the leading experts in the field of New Testament Textual Criticism [1]. I could not help but find TruthSurge’s appeal to Ehrman and Metzger somewhat ironic, however, given that neither Ehrman or Metzger consider Galatians 1:19 an interpolation. Indeed, Bart Ehrman has written quite strongly against appeals to hypothetical interpolation speculations to support Mythicist readings of Paul and the canonical Gospels of the sort that TruthSurge is about to engage in [2].

That irony aside, let us now consider TruthSurge’s reasons for thinking Galatians 1:19 is an interpolation:

TruthSurge: “The most obvious reason to believe [the James reference in Galatians 1:19] is a later insertion is that Paul’s letters are completely devoid of any clear and unambiguous references to the gospel details concerning Jesus. The few references that do seem to refer to gospel details give us no confidence that Paul was indeed referring to the gospel detail in question” 

So, according to TruthSurge, there are no “clear” references to gospel details in Paul, but there are ones that “seem” to be references to gospel details. Allow me to summarize some ‘gospel details’ found in Paul that I take it TruthSurge accepts as those “seeming” to corroborate with the Gospels:

  • Jesus was born here on Earth as a high pedigree Jew (Rom 1:3, 9:5, 15:12, Gal 4:4)
  • That Jesus had brothers (the issue in question) (Gal 1:19, 1 Cor 9:5)
  • That Jesus ministered to Jews (Rom 15:8)
  • Paul’s awareness of some of Jesus’ teachings and sayings (1 Cor 7:10-11, 9:14)
  • The Last Supper, including Jesus’ being “handed over” (presumably to the authorities) on the same night (1 Cor 11:23ff)
  • Jesus’ crucifixion in Jerusalem, with Paul laying the blame on his own people and less well defined “rulers of this age” (1 Cor 1:23, 2:8, 1 Thes 2:14-15, Rom 9:32-33)
  • Resurrection appearances to Cephas (i.e. Simon Peter) and “the twelve” (1 Cor 15:3-11)

If, as seen above, there are plenty of things that “seem” to indicate an awareness of ‘gospel details’, how is this an argument for Galatians 1:19 being an interpolation – the verse in question corroborating the ‘gospel detail’ that Jesus had a brother called James?

This actually highlights a kind of circularity I see common in many mythicist’s thinking. We are regularly told that Paul doesn’t give ‘gospel details’. And then when it is pointed out that he does (or “seems” to), these details are quickly brushed aside as not being “clear” enough, or they are suspected to be interpolations on the basis that… well… Paul doesn’t give us gospel details! Why not just go with where things “seem” to be pointing? If there seems to be a reference to a detail also found in the gospels (in this case, that Jesus had a brother called James), why not go with that as a potential interpretive lens?

There also seems to be a faulty assumption here that one must accept all ‘gospel details’ as being known and stated by Paul. Many ‘gospel details’ may well be post-Pauline inventions. Or, on the flip-side, Paul may well have known other traditions about Jesus that his epistles simply didn’t warrant time or necessity for him to refer to. But this tells us nothing about the authenticity of Gal 1:19.

TruthSurge: “suddenly, and unexpectedly we get hit by a very Orthodox detail that sounds very foreign in the context. This is the case with Galatians 1:19 if we assume “brother” means “blood relation”.”

There is no warrant for claiming the content of Galatians 1:19 is “foreign” to Paul, or to his wider historical context. Paul often speaks of meeting or corresponding with certain individuals throughout his epistles. Paul talks about James elsewhere as a known figurehead in the movement (Gal 2:9, 12, 1 Cor 15:12). And Paul talks elsewhere of “the brothers of the Lord” (1 Cor 9:5 – see below). And this James as Jesus’ brother and pious heir in Jerusalem in the post-Jesus pre-Jewish War period is attested to in the contemporary non-Christian historian Josephus [3] and early Jewish-Christian legend and polemic [4].

And since when was the belief that James was Jesus’ actual brother an “Orthodox” detail? The Catholic Church have argued for most of their history that James was not Jesus’ actual brother, as they’ve been wedded to the doctrine of Mary’s Perpetual Virginity.

2. TruthSurge’s Excursus on Galatians 4:4

To expand on his argument from silence, TruthSurge attempts to show how other verses that “seem” to be referring to ‘gospel details’ may not actually be:

TruthSurge: “There is one other verse which contains what might be construed as a reference to an Earthly Jesus. It’s Galatians 4:4 […]. But again this is quite vague. And not hardly what you’d expect if Paul believed Jesus was not just born of any woman, but Mary the virgin. Why wouldn’t he mention her name here? And further, if Jesus was born like any other man, why would people find the need to inform people that Jesus was actually physically born? Yet actually Paul doesn’t actually use the term for “born”. He uses the term “made”. This is the only other verse that remotely hints at the gospel Jesus in Galatians”

So according to TruthSurge, Galatians 4:4 only “might be construed as” or only “remotely hints at” indicating Paul’s ‘gospel detail’-thought that Jesus had been here on Earth. Surely an exaggeration? I think it’s quite obviously indicating Paul’s thought of an Earthly Jesus, especially when one notices how it follows from the previous verse and how it is followed on:

Paul: “while we were minors, we were enslaved to the elemental principles of the world. But when the fullness of time had come, God sent his Son, come from a woman, come under the law, in order to redeem those who were under the law” (Galatians 4:3-5a)

Note the strong implication that Jesus had been sent to the same “world” as Paul’s. And the detail about Jesus having come “under the law” is surely a rather overt reference to Jesus’ having been born into the Jewish world as a Jew. This is strengthened a few verses later when Paul complains of people falling back into the “observing [of] special days, and months, and seasons, and years” (Galatians 4:10). The context of the entire epistle is Paul’s argument against the necessity for Christian converts to become circumcised and observe other Jewish rules and rituals.

There is no requirement for Paul to state Mary’s name or to have any knowledge of the potentially later-developed Virgin Birth tradition. Paul is still effectively saying that Jesus was here on Earth. For Paul, “God sent his son…” to the same “world” as Paul’s, where Jews take on the yoke of the Mosaic Law. Is such language indicative of someone thinking Jesus had never been here on Earth?

Now to address the point as to why Paul would need to mention Jesus’ having come from a woman if he were born like any other. Firstly, note the slight degree of circularity again – Paul doesn’t give Earthly-Jesus references but when he does they are suspected to be otherwise because we shouldn’t expect Paul to make Earthly references because doing so would be obvious and thus not required to be said. In other words, Paul is damned if he does and damned if he doesn’t.

Secondly, I think Paul is stressing that Jesus came from a woman because:

  • Jewish Matrineality (the belief that one’s ‘Jewishness’ comes from the mother’s side) is generally understood to have been at least contemporary with, if not significantly older, than Paul’s time. This fits neatly with Paul’s follow up that Jesus was “born/made under the [Mosaic] law”
  • Given that Paul thinks Jesus was some sort of pre-existent angel, his saying Jesus was “born/made of a woman” is Paul’s way of referring to the incarnation. In other words, Paul does not think Jesus was conceived like any ordinary guy. But this must not be confused with Paul saying Jesus had not been on Earth.

Finally, TruthSurge overextends in his search for ambiguity over Paul’s use of “γενόμενον ἐκ γυναικός” (“born/made of a woman”). Firstly, the phrase “… of woman” was commonly used as a poetic term to indicate one’s humanity in a way that often alluded to the burden of having inheretd the human condition – i.e. living in a world of pain, suffering and death. See LXX Job 14:1, 15:14, 25:4, Matthew 11:11, etc. Secondly, γενόμενον is used by Paul’s contemporary, Josephus, in referring to the ‘makings’ (shall we say) of other Israelite figures understood to have been here on Earth, in his retellings of Old Testament stories. See the following examples:

Josephus: “Now Lea was sorely troubled at her husband’s love to her sister; and she expected she should be better esteemed if she bore [γενομένων] him children: so she entreated God perpetually”

Josephus: “However, God sent a dangerous distemper upon the child that was born [γενομένῳ] to David of the wife of Uriah” [5]

With all these factors in mind, there is no reason to think that Paul’s “γενόμενον ἐκ γυναικός” (“born/made of a woman”) should be understood as a reference to someone not thought to have been here on Earth. Instead, it positively points toward Paul having an Earthly-Jesus in mind.

3. The Epistles of James & Jude

TruthSurge “Another interesting fact is that the author of the Epistle of James does not tell us that he is Jesus’ brother. Whether genuine or a forgery, it would have bolstered the authority of the letter had its author mentioned this little detail. Neither does the author of Jude mention anything about being Jesus’ brother. If these letters are forgeries, and I believe they are, then they would have mentioned a blood relationship, in my opinion, for the entire point of forging a letter in the name of someone famous was to ensure the letter was widely read and propagated. Having an actual blood brother to the very Savior of the world would have certainly added some credibility to the letters. Don’t you think?”

TruthSurge seems unaware that all of our attestation to the epistles of James and Jude, either in survived manuscripts or from direct Church Father quotations and references, post-date the period in which the doctrine of Mary’s Perpetual Virginity was taking shape in Christian communities. This lack of good attestation is even more poignant for each of the epistles’ opening words, in which “James” and “Jude” are introduced (as far as I can tell, not until the Catholic codecies of the 4th century). The highly stylized Greek that the author of the Epistle of James employs, plus content that appears to show an awareness of Paul’s epistles and Synoptic Gospel content, suggests that it is a significantly post-Paul and post-gospel production. There was also a reluctance from many Church Fathers to accept the text in their canons. The Church Father Origen, for example, one of the strongest proponents of the doctrine of Mary’s Perpetual Virginity, is the first we know of to directly quote from the Epistle of James, but he himself seems reluctant in accepting it as ‘scripture’, often referring to it as “the Epistle of James that is in circulation” [6]. Contrary to TruthSurge, it does not at all seem a fair expectation to find a reference to the siblingship between James and Jesus in the epistle given its late attestation (all of which post-date the emergence of the view of Mary’s Perpetual Virginity) and highly questioned status. Indeed, from that time, there was likely a greater tendency to deny such traditions of siblingship.

4. Summary of the Weak Argument for Interpolation

TruthSurge: “So as far as I know, there’s not enough evidence to make a good case that “brother of the lord” is a later insertion into Galatians, although the probability is still greater than zero”

So TruthSurge’s “reasons for believing” that the James reference in Galatians 1:19 is a later insertion are not even convincing to himself. I can respect that. Of course the probability for any hypothetical (that is not inherently illogical in construction) will always be greater than zero. That is just a facet of sound epistemology. But hopefully I have managed to show further why TruthSurge’s “reasons for believing” the passage is an interpolation are even weaker than what he presents, as they rely on bad arguments from silence, a detectable circularity in the reasoning, a wandering excursus on whether another passage (Gal 4:4) talks of an Earthly Jesus (which upon further inspection most assuredly does), and faulty expectations about what should have been included in later post-Pauline forgeries whose attestations all post-date the initial development of the doctrine of Mary’s Perpetual Virginity.

5. TruthSurge’s Conjectured Alternative Interpretations of Galatians 1:19

TruthSurge: “It’s pretty obvious that Paul was trying to signify which James he was talking about. There were many Jameses or Jacobs in Jerusalem at the time and almost certainly there was more than one James who also an apostle since James or Jacob was a very common name to say the least.”

Yes. I agree. Paul was identifying which James he was talking about. And Paul decided to identify this James using language and syntax we would expect if he were Jesus’ actual brother – the same syntax used, for example, when the gospels refer to Andrew as “the brother of Simon”. That would certainly narrow down to the Galatians which James he was talking about!

TruthSurge: “Paul certainly uses the word ‘adelphos’ which is Greek for “brother”, or “brethren”, many times in his letters to denote kinship of beliefs rather kinship of genetics. The number of times this happens are too numerous to even list”

Paul nowhere else designates any individual as “the brother of the Lord” as he does here, however. Paul uses terms like “a brother in the Lord”, or “our brother” when using ‘adelphos’ to denote more generic ‘brothers-from-another-mother’-sense Christians. Paul could have reused another of those if this were just a generic believing Christian called James. But Paul chose instead language that reads for someone more specific – as we would expect if it were a reference to Jesus’ actual brother.

TruthSurge: “Perhaps we could find a clue elsewhere in Paul’s writings that might shed light on this verse. In 1 Corinthians 9:5, Paul seems to use the term “brothers of the Lord” to designate a group of people […]. Is it possible that this group, the “brothers of the Lord” aren’t the siblings of Jesus, but are in fact the very same people as the apostles – those who were “in Christ”, “believers”, as you will? If we read it as a parallelism, with the “brothers of the Lord” being an elaboration of the apostles, then what we have here is an example of the term “brothers of the Lord” used to denote the apostles, and not some blood relationship to Jesus”

Everything is possible. But that is not the most likely reading. In 1 Corinthians 9:5, Paul seems to differentiate here between “other apostles” and “the brothers of the Lord”. If Paul wanted to just say “all the apostles” he could have done so. Personally, I think he is building in rank – from generic “other apostles”, to “the brothers of the Lord” (those apostles who were also actually Jesus’ brothers), and “Cephas” – Jesus’ right hand man and first to have “seen” (read: hallucinated) the risen-Jesus. One, I believe, can also detect traces of an acknowledgment of Jesus’ brothers (including James specifically) as being a part of the movement from its early days (including a degree of polemic against them) in the New Testament Gospels and Acts [7].

TruthSurge: “If this is what Paul meant, then it meshes with our problem verse quite nicely, as Paul would then be identifying James as an apostle, which would make him a brother of the Lord. Perhaps our verse should actually be translated, “but I saw none of the other apostles except James, a brother of the Lord” – “a brother” – not “the brother of the Lord”. This makes more sense as Jesus was alleged to have had more than one brother beside James, and it also works with the idea that there was a group of people known of people known of as “the brothers of the Lord”, and it may well have been a special designation for the apostles as a whole, as we see in 1 Corinthians 9:5”

Unfortunately, the underlying Greek here (what TruthSurge earlier encouraged us to check up on) completely undermines his preferred translation. Because in the Greek, Paul quite explicitly identifies this James as “the brother” (ton adelpon), using a definitive article, “τὸν”. Contrary to TruthSurge’s preferred rendition, it is clear to professional translators that Paul is NOT identifying this James as “a” brother, but rather “the” brother. TruthSurge’s preference is quickly tossed by any one with a most basic understanding of the Greek.

TruthSurge: “But maybe there’s another nuance here wherein every apostle was not a ‘brother of the Lord’, and there were some distinction by which a ‘brother of the Lord’ was perhaps an ascended apostle – an apostle who had met all of the initiation obligations”

Maybe, maybe, maybe. But what is the necessity for invoking out of thin air yet another higher-level kinship-labelled sub-group (when “brothers in the Lord” / “brothers” already functioned to refer to stock Christian-brethren) when we have attestation to a distinct individual in other early sources who perfectly satisfies who “the brother of the Lord” was – namely – James, Jesus’ brother! [3] TruthSurge’s hypothetical further ‘ascended apostle’ title, “the brothers of the Lord”, is not required. Shouldn’t Occam’s Razor be applied here against TruthSurge’s unevidenced conjecture?

6. Conclusion / Summary

TruthSurge’s objections to the use of Galatians 1:19 as a potent verse favoring the existence of a Historical Jesus are weak. His “reasons for believing” the passage to have been interpolated are not even strong enough for himself to believe, and upon further inspection can be shown to be even weaker than argued. Similarly, none of TruthSurge’s attempts to reinterpret the verse to mean something other than a straight forward reading as a reference to someone known in the community to have been Jesus’ brother are shown to be probable. Many attempts are further undermined by an apparent lack of understanding of the underlying Greek (for example, his desire to remove the “the” in “the brother” when it is clearly there in the Greek) and a preference to favor ad hoc alternatives which would be better engulfed by Occam’s Razor.

References:

[1] For an example of their scholarship, see Ehrman’s The Orthodox Corruption of Scripture, Metzger’s The Early Versions of the New Testament, and their collaborative multi-volumed project The Text of the New Testament

[2] See Bart Ehrman’s Did Jesus Exist, p.132-133

[3] Josephus, Antiquities of the Jews, 20.9.1

[4] See the 2nd century accounts of Hegesippus and Clement of Rome as preserved by Eusebius, Church History, 2.23 & 2.1, as well as other Jewish-Christian traditions such as those found in the Gospel According to the Hebrews, as preserved in Jerome, Illustrious Men, 2.

[5] Josephus, Antiquities of the Jews, 1.19.8 & 7.7.4

[6] Origen, Commentary on John, 19.61

[7] See Mark 6:3, John 7:1-9, Acts 1:14.

Carrier-school Mythicism Overblows on 1 Thessalonians 2:14-16

This post is primarily a response against the case for interpolation of 1 Thessalonians 2:14-16 as argued by Dr. Richard Carrier in his 2011 blog post, Pauline Interpolations [1].

I am regularly told by Jesus Mythicists of the Richard Carrier school of thought that the authentic Pauline epistles nowhere describe a Jesus whom had been here on Earth. The Carrier-school theory goes that Paul instead believed Jesus had only been a celestial angelic being who was crucified in the heavens by demons, not in Jerusalem at the hands of the regular ‘Earthly’ (Jewish and Roman) authorities [2]. Refuting this view are, of course, the plethora of verses found in the genuine epistles in which Paul uses language and concepts that, at least to virtually everyone else outside the Carrier-school, point both explicitly and implicitly to the conclusion that (despite whatever else Paul thought fancifully about Jesus and his death) he most certainly thought Jesus had been, and died, here on Earth [3].

I intend to write a more thorough post on the sheer quantity and quality of Paul’s ‘Earthly Jesus’ verses on another occasion. This post, however, is focused on one of the more controversial ‘Earthly’ passages found in one of genuine epistles – namely 1 Thessalonians 2:14-16, in which Paul (or so it seems) effectively anchors for us his belief that Jesus had been here on Earth by stating quite explicitly that Judean Jews were responsible for the killing of Jesus. Here is Paul’s full passage (with emphasis added):

“14a For you, brothers, became imitators of the churches of God in Christ Jesus that are in Judea, 14b for you suffered the same things from your own compatriots as they did from the Jews, 15a who killed both the Lord Jesus and the prophets, and drove us out. 15b They displease God and oppose everyone 16a by hindering us from speaking to the Gentiles so that they may be saved. 16b Thus they have constantly been filling up the measure of their sins. 16c But God’s wrath has overtaken them at last.”

Without further inspection, these verses alone function effectively as a conclusive ‘mic drop’ moment against the Carrier-school view. Here, Paul quite frankly tells us that “the Jews, killed […] Jesus”, with a strong implication that he is talking about events he understood as having happened in Judea. No demons, no crucifixion in outer-space.

Case closed, right? Well, not so fast. Scholarship has spilled significant liters of ink over the past 100 years probing the question whether this passage (or its parts) are authentic to Paul or have been interpolated into the epistle by a later hand. While it may or may not be an exaggeration to say, as is often and loudly by Carrier-school Mythicists, that a pro-interpolation view holds the consensus of scholarship, it is certainly true that a significant proportion of scholars (most of whom, admittedly, are not Mythicists) believe these verses to be an interpolation [4].

Thus when Carrier-school Mythicists are confronted by those like myself who refer to 1 Thessalonians 2:14-15a as part of a wider and cumulative argument for thinking Paul and earliest Christians did indeed think Jesus had been here on Earth, in response we are often quickly forwarded a link to Carrier’s 2011 blog post, Pauline Interpolations [1]. In the blog post, Carrier summarizes what he understands of the arguments for interpolation, and, in his usual pompous, claims that contrary views are to be considered “delusional”.

Consider me delusional. Here is why I am not convinced, at least by Carrier’s article, into thinking that the verses which present Paul stating Judean Jews killed Jesus have been interpolated.

To begin with, the overwhelming majority of points made by Carrier are focused on the latter words of the passage, verses 15b-16: “They displease God and oppose everyone by hindering us from speaking to the Gentiles so that they may be saved. Thus they have constantly been filling up the measure of their sins. But God’s wrath has overtaken them at last.” For the most part, Carrier argues these to be retrojected references to the destruction of the Temple by the Romans in 70CE – an event that likely post-dates the death of Paul by around 5 years, and around 20 years after the initial composition of 1 Thessalonians.

For my purposes here, I do not care to try and defend these verses from 15b onward. It matters not to the issue at hand whether verses 15b-16c are interpolated [5]. If interpolation is present at all in 1 Thessalonians 2, it may well have begun at verse 15b, or at 16a, 16b or 16c, and not necessarily prior, as is often proposed in the scholarly literature [6]. In other words, any argument for or against the interpolation of verses 15b-16c need not have relevance for verses 14-15a. There is nothing in verses 14-15a that requires their removal if verses 15b-16c are found to be an interpolation on separate grounds.

It is a shame Carrier’s article does not address the question as to whether the potential interpolation may have begun somewhere after verses 14-15a. This gives the impression to Carrier-school devotees that the entirety of 1 Thessalonians 2:14-16 must be viewed as a single unit – that if one part falls, the rest must also. It ain’t necessarily so.

So one is left then to consider arguments within Carrier’s blog post that may be relevant for the more crucial phrase, “For you, brothers, became imitators of the churches of God in Christ Jesus that are in Judea, for you suffered the same things from your own compatriots as they did from the Jews, who killed both the Lord Jesus and the prophets” from verses 14-15a. Have these verses been interpolated? Within Carrier’s article, the first relevant protests are found in the form of an argument from silence:

Carrier: “Paul never blames the Jews for the death of Jesus elsewhere” / “Not in any of Paul’s 20,000 words, and dozens of discussions of the Jews, is anything like it.” / “Paul blaming the Jews for the death of Jesus is simply unprecedented.”

This need not be a strong objection. To begin with, arguments from silence are only weighty when we shouldn’t expect silence to begin with. Paul’s letters were not written for the purpose of teaching his hearers the who, what, where and when of the death of Jesus. For the most part, Paul isn’t trying to convince his congregation that Jesus died. Instead, he is trying to generate theology and meaning out of his death. A different kettle of fish. This is why the slim amount of information we get from Paul about the Jesus he believed had been here on Earth often comes from comments in passing, or from reading between the lines within a wider context [3].

With this in mind, Carrier’s comment about the silence of Paul to specifically state again that the Jews killed Jesus in the rest of his 20,000 words seems quite irrelevant. Why should we expect Paul to have said this again? There are plenty of other data points in the authentic Pauline epistles that are only attested to once. Indeed, many pieces of data that Carrier himself uses to construct his heavenly-crucified Jesus hypothesis come only from a single reference in Paul [7]. And once is surely better than nonce, right? If a greater frequency of attestation is what Carrier requires, perhaps he should be reminded that specific attestation for his own view – that Paul believed Jesus crucified by demons in the heavens – registers a fat ZERO on the scoreboard. Not in any of Paul’s 20,000 words, and dozens of discussions of Jesus’s death, is there anything like it! 😉

But let’s not assume Carrier’s claim that Paul doesn’t elsewhere link Jesus’ death to his fellow countrymen too quickly. Is that actually the case? As fellow atheist scholar Gerd Lüdemann points out in his commentary on verse 15, “[Paul’s] charge that the Jews killed the prophets corresponds to the Old Testament theme of animosity toward prophetic opposition” [8]. In other words, it was a common theme within 2nd Temple Judaism for sectarians to indict Israel / Judah for the death of their own prophets. Lüdemann cites examples such as Nehemiah 9:26, 2 Chronicles 36:15-16, Baruch 2:20 and 1 Kings 19:10.

And it is this last Old Testament verse that potentially prods against the idea that Paul doesn’t elsewhere indict his fellow countrymen for the death of Jesus. In Romans 11:2-5, Paul quite explicitly quotes 1 Kings 19:10 while discussing God’s plan for the Jews. In doing so, Paul notes what he sees as parallels between the new Christian community and the “remnant” set up by God in the days of Elijah after the ‘Earthly’ nation of “Israel” had “killed [God’s] prophets”:

Paul: “God has not rejected his people whom he foreknew. Do you not know what the scripture says of Elijah, how he pleads with God against Israel? “Lord, they have killed your prophets, they have demolished your altars. I alone am left, and they are seeking my life.” But what is the divine reply to him? “I have kept for myself seven thousand who have not bowed the knee to Baal.” So too at the present time there is a remnant, chosen by grace.”

It seems that in Paul’s eyes, history was repeating itself – God’s people had once again killed one of their own prophets and once again God had separated a remnant whom the un-remnanted were once again seeking to destroy.

Beyond Carrier’s poor attempt at a not-so-silent argument from silence, he next attempts another angle:

Carrier: “Paul also never talks about the Jews as if he wasn’t one of them” / “And Paul acknowledged Jews as members of his own church, so he wouldn’t damn them as a group like this, and never does”, etc.

Again, this objection might be stronger if targeted toward the latter verse 16, but I’ll take from it what I can as an argument against 14-15a. Is Paul necessarily talking “about the Jews as if he wasn’t one of them?” or “damning them as a group” in 14-15a’s statement that “the Jews [killed] Jesus and the prophets”? I don’t think so.

Paul elsewhere makes sweeping generalizations about “the Jews” in negative tones. See 1 Corinthians 1:23 where Paul says Jesus’ crucifixion was a “stumbling block to Jews”, and 2 Corinthians 11:24-25, where Paul claims to have been physically assaulted by “the Jews” in an effort to prove his credentials against alternative Christian apostles. Paul obviously isn’t talking about all Jews in these comments, nor condemning them as a group, and nor is he suggesting that he isn’t himself a Jew. Indeed, in verses leading up to his claims of being physically assaulted by “the Jews”, Paul proudly acknowledges his descent from Abraham and Israelites as one of his credentials. Paul is quite adept at proudly vindicating his own Israelite / Abrahamic identity in one cheek while simultaneously making negative generalisations about “the Jews” from the other. With all this in mind, there’s nothing outlandish in his saying that Judean Jews killed Jesus in 1 Thessalonians 14-15a.

Paul’s use of “stumbling” language in 1 Corinthians 1:23 to refer to the Jewish reaction toward the death of Jesus also creates a nice ‘paper-scissors-rock’-like complimentary symmetry when viewed alongside 1 Thessalonians 2:14-15a, Romans 11:3, and Romans 9:30-33. In the latter, the “stumbling” language is again applied to the Jewish reaction toward the Jesus-event that Paul sees as the fulfillment of Isaiah 28:16 – “See, I am laying in Zion a foundation stone”. “Zion” is, of course, an allusion to Jerusalem, i.e. Judea – just as we find in 1 Thessalonians 2:14-15a. The four verses circle between the themes of “the Jews” / “Israelites” (Paul’s fellow countrymen), “stumbling”, the death of Jesus, the “killing” of “prophets”, and “in Judea/Zion”.

I feel it’s important to remind readers at this point that there are no surviving manuscripts that omit these verses. Nor are there any Church Fathers who attest to their being missing in so-called ‘heretical’ versions of 1 Thessalonians circulating in their time (as they do on other occasions). Indeed, these verses are even understood to have been present in the early/mid 2nd century arch-heretic Marcion’s Apostolikon (his collection of Pauline epistles) as recently reconstructed by Jason BeDuhn [9], retrieving the verse from Tertullian’s quotation of Marcion’s now lost text [10]. In other words, the hard evidence of manuscript attestation and Church Father quotation is much more in line with what we might expect if these verses are authentic than not. To quote the late Pauline specialist Stanley B. Marrow, these verses are “as solid as anything else in the epistle” [11].

To conclude, I do not find Carrier’s blog post satisfactorily demonstrative in showing that the phrase found on the lips of Paul in 1 Thessalonians 2:14-15a, that “the Jews, killed […] Lord Jesus”, is an interpolation. In focusing most of his attention on the later verse 16 in an article that claims to remove verses 14 and 15 also, Carrier’s remaining arguments against these earlier verses appear weak and refutable. Carrier’s argument from silence turns out to be neither relevant nor necessarily silent, and his proposed incongruence can be seen as congruent upon further inspection of the wider authentic Pauline corpus. Finally, attestation to this piece of Pauline data is extremely firm. It should, until further notice, be accepted as likely authentic to the hand of Paul.

 

 

References:

[1] http://richardcarrier.blogspot.com/2011/06/pauline-interpolations.html
[2] For Carrier’s full argument, see Richard Carrier, On the Historicity of Jesus, 2014.
[3] For example: Paul repeatedly stresses that Jesus was human, or at least was in human form (1 Cor 15:21, Phil 2:7). Paul repeatedly stresses that Jesus was a high pedigree Jew. He says that Jesus was “born of a woman under the [Mosaic] law” (Gal 4:4), that Jesus was a “descendant of [King] David according to the flesh” (Rom 1.3), “from the root of [David’s father] Jesse” (Rom 15:12), and the “offspring/seed” of “Abraham” (Gal 3:16). Elsewhere, Paul says that Jesus came “from the Israelites […] according to the flesh” (Rom 9.5). Paul believes Jesus had “brothers” (1 Cor 9:5), one of whom he had personally met and had disagreements with (Gal 1:19). Paul believes Jesus had been a teacher – a “servant to the circumcised” (Rom 15:8) – whom on one occasion taught by example a new communal table fellowship ritual that involved “breaking bread”, “taking a cup” and “giving thanks” (1 Cor 11:23-26). Paul believes Jesus had been “handed over” one “night” (1 Cor 11:23), was “crucified” (1 Cor 1:23), with such a mode of execution causing Jesus to contract a Mosaic “curse” for being “hung on a tree” (Gal 3:13, quoting Deut 21:23), and then “buried” (1 Cor 15:4). Paul blames “the Jews”, seemingly specifically Judean-based ones, for “killing the Lord Jesus” (1 Thes 2:14-15), paralleling the Earthly killings of “prophets” of old by “Israelites” (Rom 11:3). Paul sees the Jesus event as the fulfillment of a prophecy in which a stone of stumbling was to be set “in Zion” (i.e. Jerusalem) (Rom 9:33). Finally, we can gather from Paul’s theologizing about the resurrection body as first requiring to have been “sown perishable / physical” (1 Cor 15:43-44), and that Jesus was the “first fruits of those who have died” (1 Cor 15:20), that he thinks Jesus had been here in the perishable / physical sense.
[4] I am unaware of any significant study to show that the pro-interpolation view necessarily totals a consensus. In my experience, it seems that most commentators, whether for or against the interpolation view personally, simply acknowledge the passage as ‘disputed’ without claiming a more definitive consensus one way or the other.
[5] For two robust discussions from fellow atheist scholars in favor of authenticity of the entire passage (14a-16c) against Carrier-school Mythicism, see Bart Ehrman’s Did Jesus Exist?, 2012, p.122-125, and Maurice Casey’s Jesus: Evidence and Argument or Mythicist Myths?, 2014, p.182-184.
[6] For example, two brief scholarly alternate proposals:
“If the only part of the passage that seems truly odd on the pend of Paul is the last sentence, then it would make better sense simply to say that it is this sentence that was added by the hypothetical Christian scribe. There is no reason to doubt the entire passage, just the last few words” – Bart Ehrman, Did Jesus Exist?, 2012, p.183
“[It has been argued elsewhere] that the whole passage 2:13-16 is a later interpolation, referring to the destruction of the Temple in A.D. 70. Despite […] careful argument, I am not convinced of this attractive solution to an old problem. Rather, I am inclined to see in verses 15f. a reinterpretation of Paul’s original reference to “the Judeans,” understood by the interpolator as the Jews in general” – Wayne Meeks, The First Urban Christians, 1983, p.227.
[7] See, for example, the mileage Carrier attempts to draw from 2 Corinthians 2:6-10 throughout his tome [2]. This is the only passage in which Paul states that Jesus was killed by “rulers of the age”, which, despite the Greek for “rulers” also being used to refer to ‘Earthly’ authorities by Paul elsewhere (see Romans 13:3), Carrier instead sees as “a direct paraphrase of an early version of the Ascension of Isaiah” and thus leapingly explainable as Paul referring to a “demonic execution of Jesus in outer space” (p.47-48).
[8] Gerd Lüdemann, 1 Thessalonians: The Earliest Christian Text, 2013, p.40.
[9] Jason BeDuhn, The First New Testament: Marcion’s Scriptural Canon, 2013, p.251 & p.306.
[10] Tertullian, A Prescription Against Heresies Book 5, Chapter 15, Verse 1.
[11] Stanley B. Marrow, Paul: His Letters and his Theology, p.99.

Stages of Development of the Pauline Letter Collection

Here is a summary of my thoughts on the stages of development of the Pauline Letter Collection. I lean heavily on David Trobisch‘s Paul’s Letter Collection: Tracing the Origins.

Stage 1) The original letters.
Paul wrote letters to various churches during his ministry dealing with issues such as theology, practice, how to deal with specific issues that would arise, his travel plans and expectations etc. Some of these letters were for private individual use, others for specific congregational use, and others for a more broad audience to be read aloud and passed on. We may or may not have any of these original letters (obviously we don’t have the original manuscripts, but I mean the original text also). I suspect most of what we have now in the manuscripts are redacted versions of them. To what extent this process affects our ability to reconstruct Paul is unknown – but that’s not to say we can’t say some things with some degree of confidence.

Stage 2) The first compilation.
Trobisch argues that the original compilation consisted only of Romans, 1 Corinthians, 2 Corinthians and Galatians, and that this was put together around the time of Paul’s final journey to Jerusalem to set the record straight on his theological views and to justify his actions and to clear his name in case of arrest or death. Personally, I’m not convinced it would have been that early, but it’s not a necessary date. At this point, 2 Corinthians is probably spliced together from several correspondences between Paul and the Corinthian church.

Stage 3) Expanded editions.
Additions of Ephesians*, Colossians, Philippians, 1 Thessalonians, 2 Thessalonians and Philemon. There are probably several undetectable stages between stages 2 and 3, but we can say this much: After Paul’s death, expanded versions of the now circulating work known as ‘Paul’s Letters’ began to emerge, containing some or all of these new epistles. Some of these may or may not be authentic (I agree with the majority of scholars in accepting Philippians, 1 Thessalonians and Philemon as probably authentic, with the other three in dispute). Stage 3 is the point from which the Marcionite and Gnostic-Christian sects branch off. *The Marcionites titled the text that we know of today as the Epistle to the Ephesians as the Epistle to the Laodiceans.

Stage 4) Pastoral Epistles.
The addition of the almost certainly forged Pastoral Epistles, wedged between the letters to churches and the only other letter to an individual, Philemon. Philemon gets last spot because of its shortness.

Stage 5) Hebrews.
In the manuscript tradition, there is confusion over where Hebrews fits within this collection. Sometimes it’s after 2 Thessalonians and before the Pastorals, other times it’s after Philemon, other times it’s missing altogether (Codecies Boernerianus & Augiensis). This suggests its wide acceptance into the canon is late. The authenticity of Hebrews is unknown. If anything, I lean towards it being written fairly early, pre-70CE. But its status as authentically from Paul and/or whether it counted as ‘scripture’ was questionable, or the text was simply unknown, to many compilers. Stages 4 and 5 may be interchangeable.

Stage 6) Additional letters.
Additional forged Pauline letters continue to be generated and circulated in various churches, though never reaching the status of mainstream canonical. These include the proto-orthodox 3 Corinthians, Paul’s letters to Seneca, an additional Epistle to the Laodiceans, and the Gnostic Prayer of Paul, etc.