Thomas and the Gospels - excerpt from chapter 1

I thought it might be a bit of fun, in the lead up to the publication of my Thomas and the Gospels, to post some excerpts.  And where to begin?  Well, as the King said to the White Rabbit, why not begin at the beginning?  Here's the first page or so:

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The Gospel of Thomas is the noncanonical gospel par excellence. It has been studied more than all the other noncanonical gospels put together, and for good reason. Among all of the extant gospels that did not make it into the New Testament canon, this is the one that has the best claim to antiquity, the only one that provides the potential for extended reflection on the sayings of the historical Jesus. However much we may wish to draw attention to the importance of understanding the development of Christianity in the second century, reaching back into the first century is still far more attractive to most historians of Christian origins. There is romance in the idea that this text, so recently discovered, could provide a special witness to the earliest phase of Christianity.

For many, the text takes its place in a dynamic early Christian world in which variety and diversity are the chief characteristics. Words like “orthodoxy” are firmly out of favor. Talk of “Christianities” is in. Indeed, the discovery of the Gospel of Thomas provided a catalyst for the development of this perspective in which it now plays such a major role. The impetus for this new approach, in some senses its manifesto, was Trajectories through

Early Christianity by James Robinson and Helmut Koester, first published in 1971. The book was in part a development of and in part a reaction to Rudolf Bultmann’s views, now packaged for a new era. Early Christian diversity looms large, and newly discovered early Christian texts take their place in a world of competing trajectories. The Gospel of Thomas, unavailable in full to Bultmann when he was writing his seminal History of the Synoptic

Tradition, now rises to new prominence alongside the hypothetical source Q, as two early witnesses to a passion-free, sayings-based trajectory in early Christianity, which contrasted with the passion-centered, Pauline influenced versions of Christianity that later won the day.

Trajectories has influenced a generation of scholarship on Christian origins, and its legacy is perhaps most pronounced in the key contributions of scholars like Robert Funk and John Dominic Crossan, most famous for their prominence in the Jesus Seminar, who have applied a model that prioritizes Q and Thomas in historical Jesus research. The responsible historical Jesus scholar now works outside canonical boundaries, and those who ignore texts like Thomas are chastised for their canonical bias. They are seen as engaging in a kind of stubborn, confessional attempt to skew the field by ignoring much of the best evidence.

(Thomas and the Gospels: The Case for Thomas's Familiarity with the Synoptic Gospels (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2012), 1-2)
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Top Ten Authors in my Thomas Book (by counts)

I have recently finished indexing my forthcoming book Thomas and the Gospels.  These are the top ten most popular authors featured in the book by counts.  As you will see, it's a resounding victory for Stephen Patterson, who has almost fifty more mentions compared to his nearest rival, April DeConick:

(1) Stephen Patterson (115)
(2) April DeConick (66)
(3) Helmut Koester (49)
(4) James Robinson (45)
(5) Werner Kelber (39)
(6) Klyne Snodgrass (30)
(7) Uwe-Karsten Plisch (27)
(8) Michael Goulder (25)
(9) Wolfgang Schrage (24)
(9) Christopher Tuckett (24)
(11) Risto Uro (23)

I should perhaps add that frequency of mention does not necessarily correlate with degree to which I agree with these scholars' arguments.

A New Interpretation of the Greek Ossuary Inscription in Talpiyot Tomb B

Richard Bauckham has written a new piece on the inscription in Tapiyot Tomb B and I am happy to be posting it here.  It's a PDF file available here:

A New Interpretation of the Greek Ossuary Inscription in Talpiyot Tomb B

Richard Bauckham

The Paul Verhoeven Jesus Film is to go ahead

For over eight years, I have been posting here on the NT Blog about the Paul Verhoeven Jesus film. Back in 2004 I was already wondering Whatever happened to the Paul Verhoeven Jesus Film Project, something that has been discussed since Verhoeven attended meetings of the Jesus Seminar in the 90s.

The story received some renewed interest when in 2008 Verhoeven published his own book on Jesus which looked like it might become the basis for the renewal of the film project.

Well, now comes the confirmation that the film is going to go ahead after all.  It's going to be made by Muse Productions who are headlining the news on their website, with a picture of Verhoeven's book and the following note:

MUSE’s Chris Hanley will back director Paul Verhoeven’s (Robocop, Total Recall, Basic Instinct, co-writer of Pulp Fiction) new film based on his book ‘Jesus of Navareth.’ The project is the product of two decades of research by Verhoeven. Hollywood Deadline and Indiewire picked up the news, check their articles out here and here.

Roger Avary is to script the film and already there are some preparing for a fight, not least because it may feature the line that Mary was raped by the Roman soldier Panthera, a story that features in Verhoeven's book and which is derived from Origen's quotation of Celsus in Contra Celsum.  (Celsus was a pagan critic of Christianity writing in the mid second century whose work the third century Origen is refuting).  Mike Fleming writes in Deadline:

Verhoeven’s take on the life of Jesus Christ discounts all the miracles that inform the New Testament. That includes the virgin birth and the resurrection. Verhoeven doesn’t believe any of them happened. I wrote about Verhoeven’s ambitions in spring 2011, as he and his reps at ICM first tried to find funding — no small feat given some of the theories he put forth in the book.The most controversial: that Jesus might have been the product of his mother being raped by a Roman soldier, which Verhoeven said was commonplace at the time, and that Jesus was a radical prophet who performed exorcisms and was convinced he would find the kingdom of Heaven on earth, and did not know he would be sentenced to die on the cross by Pontius Pilate.

There's no doubt that it would be controversial to put this particular tradition in the film.  I still remember Christians picketing cinema's when Scorsese's Last Temptation of Christ came out in 1987 because it depicted Jesus hallucinating about having sex with Mary Magdalene ( a scene most of the critics misunderstood).

I remember the BBC getting into hot water for even reporting the Roman soldier tradition in a documentary called The Virgin Mary that I was on in 2002 (see further Mary).  The difficulty is that the vast majority of Christians have not heard about this piece of gossip that goes back at least to the second century and possibly also to the first.

My guess is that Verhoeven will find a way to represent the tradition without committing to it in order to avoid appearing deliberately sacrilegious.  It is worth remembering, though, that Scorsese used the controversy that his film stirred up in 1988 to provide a lot of free publicity.

This is a story that I will be watching with interest.

The technology of the book -- new "aBook"

Delightful piece on Horrible Histories about the launch of the book:




I particularly like the Roman's expression when he says that "aBook is the new book that rewrites the book on writing books".

John the Baptist's Bones have been found -- again!

This morning's papers are full of another new story about the discovery of a Biblical figure's bones.  This time it is John the Baptist's bones and the story has the standard marks of modern-day relic hunting according to which some detail will in some way link the relic(s) to the first century.

The story appears in several news sources, e.g. MSNBC's Science pages and Live Science, but a nicely illustrated version is the Daily Mail's one here:

'Found', bones of John the Baptist: Tests on knucklebone provide support to extraordinary claim
By Chris Brooke

When archaeologists claimed to have found the bones of John the Baptist amid the ruins of an ancient Bulgarian monastery experts were understandably sceptical. 

But carbon dating tests carried out at Oxford University have provided scientific evidence to support the extraordinary claim. 

A knucklebone has been dated to the 1st Century AD - a time when the revered Jewish prophet is believed to have lived.

If the story sounds familiar, it may be because it had an earlier incarnation in 2010, e.g. on Discovery News (see Robert Cargill's post).  What is new is some carbon dating of one of the bones, carbon dating that dates the bones to the first century.

How, though, do the researchers know that these are the bones of the baptist?  According to the Daily Mail article:

The ‘key’ clue to the relics’ origins was a tiny sandstone box found alongside the reliquary with a Greek inscription: ‘God, save your servant Thomas. To St John. June 24.’ The date is believed to be John the Baptist’s birthday.

Well, that's the date of his feast day.  We have no idea when his birthday was.  I'd like to see the actual Greek inscription, but I can't find any pictures of it on the web at present and so, of course, any remarks are provisional.  From the translation here, the only thing that would connect these bones to John the Baptist (rather than any other St John) is the feast day.  However, that is probably too late to provide any serious link to the first century.

According to the article, the radiocarbon research was carried out by Oxford professors Thomas Higham and Christopher Ramsey.  Also mentioned is "Dr Hannes Schroeder, who carried out the research", who is quoted as saying, "Of course, this does not prove that these were the remains of John the Baptist but nor does it refute that theory."

I will watch the story with my usual mixture of interest and scepticism.  It may perhaps be worth mentioning that the only reports we have about John's body post-mortem is the report of his disciples burying his body (Mark 6.29).  Perhaps later on, after his secondary burial, some of the same disciples saved a few bones for posterity to be carried half way across Europe a few centuries later, no doubt leaving a few bones in each of several other countries too, Egypt, Turkey, Greece and Italy.

Oh, and it's all connected, of course, to a National Geographic TV documentary this weekend.

Update (10.18): Comments from Michael Heiser on PaleoBabble, John Byron on The Biblical World (very funny) and Jim West on Zwinglius Redivivus.

Update (13.30): See now the superb and authoritative response by Christopher Rollston, John the Baptist and the Reliquary of ‘Sveti Ivan’ : Methodological Reflections.

Update (Sunday, 00.29): Round-up from James McGrath on Exploring our Matrix.

James Charlesworth on Talpiot Tomb B (Revised and Updated)

This is a fully revised and updated version of my earlier post James Charlesworth on Talpiot Tomb B which commented on an earlier version of an article by James Charlesworth on Talpiot Tomb B that was subsequently removed.  This post revises that one so that it responds to the new version of the article.
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Those with an interest in the claims made by Simcha Jacobovici and James Tabor on Talpiot Tomb B, "the Patio Tomb", have been looking forward to hearing more about the views of Prof. James Charlesworth of Princeton Theological Seminary who acted as the "primary academic consultant" on the project (Tabor, Preliminary Report, 1, n. 2) and who appears in the documentary labelled The Resurrection Tomb Mystery (USA) / The Jesus Discovery (Canada).  His report is now available, as a PDF on the Bible and Interpretation website:

What is the Message of the "Patio Tomb" in Talpiot, Jerusalem?
James Hamilton Charlesworth, Princeton, June 2012

The article provides a useful summary of the issues raised by the documentary and the related book (but not the Jesus Discovery website or the Preliminary Report, neither of which is mentioned).  Charlesworth is broadly supportive of Tabor's and Jacobovici's claims, but he is cautious and sceptical at several points.  Charlesworth discusses the different possibilities for the interpretation of the image on ossuary 6 (nefesh, amphora or fish?) and he defends his reading of YONAH at the bottom of that image.  He asks lots of questions and encourages continued debate.

The piece is aimed at a non-scholarly audience for whom Charlesworth explains terms like "ossuary" and "nefesh"; he explains what happened in 66CE (2); he notes the correspondences between Hebrew and English letters (9) and explains that  "Hebrew is written right to left" (9).

In spite of that target audience, I will admit to some disappointment that Charlesworth does not engage directly with any of the scholars' critiques of the project, whether here, on the ASOR blog, on Bible and Interpretation, on Robert Cargill's blog, on Christopher Rollston's blog or elsewhere.  He does mention "scholars and non-scholars" who "have been reporting and blogging" and he speaks about his dismay over "occasional ad hominem comments" (1).  As one who has experienced some unpleasant remarks, including from those involved in the making of the documentary, I very much share Charlesworth's concern on that front.  Nevertheless, I think there is a danger in only mentioning blogging in the context of complaining about those who abuse the medium because it can all too easily be taken as a reason not to engage with serious scholarly criticism of the claims.

In relation to this, it is disappointing that Charlesworth simply repeats the sight reading of the inscription on Ossuary 5, "Divine [YHWH], who lifts up (or raised up), from (the tomb or death?)" (6), which is seen in the documentary.  With the exception of a brief footnoted reference to Bauckham (15, n. 10), he does not engage with the careful analysis and criticism of this claim, with alternative readings, offered by Richard Bauckham, Christopher Rollston and others (see also Rollston's review here; see further links in those posts).  The difficulty with not engaging with the critics is that it can give the impression that the reading in question is uncontested and somehow self-evident.  It is not.  It is controversial and unclear.

By contrast, there is some exposition of the alleged YONAH inscription that appears at the bottom of the image on Ossuary 6 (6-11).  It is useful to have this exposition given that previously Charlesworth's views were only known through reports (See most fully Taborblog).  Charlesworth is actually quite guarded about his suggestion and only puts forward the reading quite tentatively.  Of the four alleged letters, he regards only the he as "unmistakable" (9).  The yod may be a zayin; "some imagination is required" for the reading of the waw (9) and the nun "is not prima facie obvious" -- it may be a lamed (9).

Having read Charlesworth's own defence of this claim, I admit to being no more convinced than I was before, and pleased to see the way in which he makes the suggestion only tentatively.  One of the reasons for my own scepticism has been the confusing nature of the case.  With so much going on in the head of the fish / base of the vessel -- arms and legs of a stick man, a mouth and an eye of a fish, Hebrew letters that extend unusually and further lines that are unaccounted for -- it is doubtful that YONAH is there (see further The Texas Sharpshooter Fallacy and the Talpiot Tomb).

Like Tabor and Jacobovici, Charlesworth is inclined to see a stick man here too (5, 9-10 and especially 11), though he does not explain which lines belong to the stick man, and whether any of the lines that form the stick man do double duty as parts of the alleged YONAH inscription (see further my Changing Body of the Stick Man and links there).  I suspect that most scholars will remain sceptical about the presence of a stick man given the lack of clarity about which lines represent his arms and legs.

Charlesworth does, however, add a new element to the discussion of the stick man with an interesting speculation about the size of his head:

If this is a large fish and Jonah is intended, then it is possible to image [sic, imagine?] a stick figure inside the fish.  If so, the head is absurdly large. Why? Obviously, some Jews imagined the resurrection body to be similar to but different from the fleshy body.  Would some early Jews have imagined a resurrected body would have a large head?  Is that the ideal body? We simply need to raise questions and be open to dialogue. (5).

I would be interested to hear if there is any analogy for the idea of the resurrection body having a massive head.  I would doubt it, but I will listen with interest.  But in any case, the key question presumably would relate not to the resurrection body but to the book of Jonah, where there is no hint that the character has a massive head, either before or after being swallowed by the fish.

Moreover, one of the issues mentioned by Charlesworth does have a straightforward explanation.  He asks:

Why has the engraver spent so much time on the lines within the spherical "bottom"?  One can count at least 14 strokes.  Why? What was imagined? (5).

As  Juan V. Fernández de la Gala has helpfully illustrated (ASOR Blog), those lines are the way that the artist shades in the vessel, seen also at the top of the vessel (the "fish tail") and the vessel decorations (the "scales"):

But what of the image itself?   According to Jacobovici and Tabor's Jesus Discovery, at the time of viewing, Charlesworth "offered without hesitation the same interpretation of the fish" (loc. 1041).  In the new article, he is still inclined towards the "fish" interpretation, but he suggests that there are merits also in the ideas that it is a nefesh monument or an amphora.  Indeed he wonders whether the artist was being deliberately ambiguous, perhaps attempting to depict all three.  He suggests, for example, that:

A symbol must be interpreted and usually has many meanings.  Symbols appear in a world of ambiguity and bring with them more than one meaning (4).

Charlesworth adds:

But, something is intended.  We should move beyond what it could possibly be and ask what is the intentionality that created this image (5).

I must admit to struggling with this.  It is difficult to ask about the "intentionality" of the artist without having a clear handle on "what it could possibly be".  Perhaps my fondness for Occam's Razor is the problem.  Where Charlesworth wonders about the decorative squares inside the image --

Did the inscriber attempt to meld an image of a fish with a nefesh? Is there some conflation of symbols? Are there multiple meanings to be contemplated? (5), 

-- I can't help thinking that it is unnecessary to interpret the image as a conflated nefesh-fish when the vessel interpretation appears more plausible.

Charlesworth's concern with the amphora theory relates to the handles:

The image has something on each side. Could these be handles?  If so, they are not like any known handles on an amphora, whether drawn or part of an amphora itself (4).

Since Charlesworth does not mention any of the scholarly critiques of the project, it may be that he is unfamiliar with the attempts to illustrate answers to this type of question.  Antonio Lombatti's detailed and helpful illustrated article Observations on the “Jonah” Iconography on the Ossuary of Talpiot B Tomb, for example, provides several useful analogues, including this graphic from a useful post by Thomas Verenna:

Moreover, since he does not mention it in the article, Charlesworth may be unaware that in May 1981, Zvi Ilan reported that the first excavators of the tomb, who actually saw the ossuary, interpreted the image in question as an amphora (ASOR blog).  Furthermore, Charlesworth does not mention the image on the side of ossuary, the image that Tabor and Jacobovici had interpreted as a "half-fish" but which clearly appears to have handles on either side, as I have often mentioned here (see How the half-fish became a vase and why it matters and links there):

The key point about this image, which Tabor and Jacobovici concede may have been interpreted as a vase in 1981, is that it provides the all-important contextual information about the image on the façade.  Vase on the side; vase on the front.

Charlesworth's post concludes with reflections on the meaning of the image, and although he suggests that "meaning resides in ambiguity and all symbols are multvalent" (11), he focuses on the idea of Jonah and the fish, linking this first with repentance and then with resurrection. He draws attention to the repentance theme in Luke 11.29-32 and adds that

 Jonah is still read on the evening of Yom Kippur (the Day of Atonement) to signal the importance of seeking forgiveness before God (11).

There is, however, no evidence that I am aware of that Jews were reading Jonah on the Day of Atonement as early as the first century.  The first reference I know of to Jonah being read at Yom Kippur is b.Meg. 31a.  But in any case that does not help with the imagined Christian identification of the tomb.

Charlesworth goes on to mention the connection between the resurrection and the sign of Jonah in Matt. 12.38-41, the text that is key in Tabor's and Jacobovici's case (See my The Talpiot Tomb, Jonah and Q).  The big question here relates to dating.  Most scholars (me included) date Matthew after 70CE, after the dates of the ossuaries in this early Roman period tomb, which places a question mark against Tabor's and Jacobovici's case.  Charlesworth's comment is:

These Jewish reflections [Matthew's] are from the first century CE, but after 70CE they were reported by those who were claimed to have seen a resurrected Jesus (12).

And Charlesworth goes on to quote 1 Cor. 15.3-8 followed by Joseph Ratzinger's Jesus of Nazareth.   It looks like Charlesworth is here distancing himself from interpreting the sign of Jonah as a sign of the resurrection in the pre-70 period, and so aligning himself more with sceptics like me than with Tabor and Jacobovici.  But I could be wrong -- it is not easy to parse Charlesworth's prose here (What does "they were reported by those who were claimed to have seen a resurrected Jesus" mean?).

Before concluding this post, I would like to comment on three other things of interest.  The first is the mention of a "rubbing of that image" (Q & A with Ben Witherington, footnote 1), i.e. the image of the fish / vessel on ossuary 6.  I had not heard about this before and so asked Prof. Charlesworth for clarification.  He responded by saying emphatically that "there was no rubbing" and in the revised article, the reference has been changed to "a CGI generated image created from a composite of several photographs from different angles and in different lighting" (14, n. 2).

Second, I was interested to see measurements for the fish/vessel image (23 x 15 x 9 x 3) for the first time (4). This is helpful information, but I am curious about how the image was measured.

Third, it is helpful to have some clarifications of the dates in this article.  Charlesworth here dates his involvement to June 2010, which coheres with the dating in The Jesus Discovery and corrects his earlier dating of June 2011.

In summary, after having read Charlesworth's article carefully, I am sorry to say that I remain completely unpersuaded by the claims made in the documentary, the book, the website, and the preliminary report.

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Appended Note 1:  Two of Richard Bauckham's comments to the earlier version of this post remain relevant to this revised version, so I will quote them again here:

(2) Charlesworth's reiteration of the reading of the Greek inscription that he made when he first saw it (shown in the film) without taking any notice at all of any of the very considerable subsequent discussion of it by fellow-scholars is extremely disappointing, especially as he himself says in this article that "we need each other in a dialogue that appreciates the input of others" (p. 5).

(3) I was puzzled by his appeal to the multivalency of symbols in relation to the fish/nephesh/amphora image when he first made it in email correspondence back in the autumn, and his elaboration of it in this article still leaves me baffled. He says, "Any attempt to enter the mind of an engraver in order to discern the intention of an “artist” borders on unsophisticated methodology," but then goes on precisely to discuss all sorts of considerations precisely with a view to discerning the engraver's intention. Furthermore, what exactly does he mean by calling this image a symbol. His footnote refers to his own extensive discussion of the image of the "serpent" in his book on that topic, reporting that he found this to have about thirty meanings. But these are all meanings of the image of a SERPENT. This scarcely seems a valid parallel to the suggestion that the image on the ossuary may be ambiguously a nephesh or an amphora or a fish. If it is indeed a fish, then one might say that the fish is a multivalent symbol - conceivably, for example, an early Christian engraver might have intended both Jonah's fish and the Christian ICHTHYS acronym (though Jim Charlesworth himself rather dogmatically dismisses the latter as having any relevance). An amphora might also have more than one possible symbolic significance (a funerary symbol? one of the famous Temple vessels?). In such cases, we could be dealing with an intentionality on the part of the engraver to provide a symbol with a range of meaning or we could have an image so ambiguous that we can't discern the engraver's intentionality, given our limited evidence. But what does it mean to say that the image is ambiguously a nephesh and a fish and an amphora? I don't think Charlesworth means that the engraver could have intended such an ambiguity (see page 4, paragraph 4, beginning "It is easy..."). He seems to mean that the image is ambiguous to us and we find it very difficult to discern the engraver's intentionality. Even so, as I have pointed out, Charlesworth himself offers plenty of considerations towards resolving the ambiguity. So is his appeal to the multivalency of symbols no more than a warning to us not to seize too quickly on an interpretation, but to engage, as he says, in "a dialogue that appreciates the input of others, whether philologists, archaeologists, biblical scholars, or specialists in ancient art" (p 5). If that is all it amounts to, then I must say it seems to me that a good deal of such dialogue has actually occurred in the extensive discussions, especially in the highly reputable location of the ASOR Blog. I can say this as someone who has not contributed to that particular dialogue myself (reserving my own contributions to the discussion of the Greek inscription).

Appended Note 2: See also James Tabor's comments on the earlier draft of Charlesworth's article at Taborblog.  Tabor echoes Charlesworth's focus on the "intention" of the engraver and suggests that "Often only a trained eye can decipher what the writer intended".  This may well, of course, be the case, but the "intention" of the writer still has to be demonstrated on the basis of what s/he actually wrote.

Tabor also echoes Charlesworth's stress on the notion that all the strokes at the base of the vessel / fish are accounted for:

Also, as Charlesworth points out, those who read these markings as intentional Hebrew letters do not claim that all the marks in the mouth of the fish are part of the letters, some are related to the fish itself (i.e., the straight line of the mouth), whereas others seem to form the eye of the fish as well as the arms and legs of a stick-like figure, attached to the large head. What does seem to be the case is that all of the inscribed markings (not the scratches or imperfections in the stone) are intentional.

There are, I think, a couple of difficulties here.  First, Charlesworth does not appear to be convinced that the image is a fish.  He thinks it might be, but he also finds the nefesh and amphora theories compelling, even suggesting some conflation of all three, with ambiguity and multivalence. But if it is not a fish, then all the extra lines in its "head" need explanation because they can no longer be relegated to the background in order for the alleged YONAH inscription to stand out.  

Second, even if some lines are attributed to YONAH, some to a stick man (variously configured) and some to a fish head and mouth, there are still some lines left over.  See, for example, Bob Cargill's helpful graphic here:

Notice especially the several "ignored lines". 

Third, both Charlesworth and Tabor make clear that they don't see all the marks here as forming Hebrew letters.  Charlesworth writes:

Obviously, I never intimated that all the lines in "the head of the fish" are letters; anyone who imagined that I did make such a claim or that I ignored some lines simply was dependent on a journalist's summary of my rather lengthy and detailed comments (9).

And Tabor here echoes the comments.  I am puzzled by their insistence on this point since I am unaware of anyone who says that they claimed that  "all the lines . . . are letters".  It is a fact, though, that several of the lines in the "head of the fish" do not do service as letters or lines in the fish head or lines on a stick man.  But to repeat my earlier point, I think it is always preferable to cite those against who one is arguing so that one can check up on whether the argument is fairly represented.

Update (13 June): Thanks to George Makrauer for letting me know that Prof. Charlesworth's article now also appears here (PDF) on the Foundations on Judaism and Christian Origins website.  As far as I can tell, the two versions are identical (with the exception of the preparatory material) but the page numbers to not tally.  The page numbers in my response above refer to the Bible and Interpretation version.

How would Jesus have proved his own existence?

I like to dabble in the discussions on Jesus' existence from time to time, all the more so since I had a stab at putting together my own thoughts in NT Pod 47: Did Jesus Exist? last year.  James McGrath continues to keep the issue alive in his blog and his latest post Mythicism Around the Blogosphere provides links to recent activity.  I particularly enjoyed Loren Rosson's post on The Existence of Jesus and Doug Chaplin's Inventing the Mythical Jesus. Of course a lot of the discussion comes on the back of the new book by Bart Ehrman, Did Jesus Exist?, which I was lucky enough to read and comment on in manuscript.

If I were in facetious mood, I would say: If only people were as interested in things that really matter, like the existence of Q!   I must admit that the question of the existence of Jesus strikes me as an extraordinary one.  Are there any other ancient figures about whom we torture ourselves in this way?  In my podcast on the topic, I said that in some respects it is a good question because it can keep us honest.  It pushes us to wrestle with the primary sources and to reflect on the nature of ancient history.  These are good things.  But good academic study is often a matter of asking good academic questions and it is not clear that the question "Did Jesus exist?" always produces the best academic discussions.

I am tempted to say that the problem with the question "Did Jesus exist?" is that it depends what we mean by "Jesus".  Where mythicism has popular appeal is in providing an antidote to fundamentalist Christianity and a particular version of a wonder-working superman. Most scholars don't believe in the fundamentalists' Jesus, practically by definition.  For those who do not know a lot about New Testament scholarship, mythicism can provide a refreshing one-stop shop for dealing with something they find problematic on other grounds.  I am not here talking about those who publish on mythicism as much as those who find their works appealing.

Even if we refine the question to "Did the historical Jesus exist?", we still don't have an easy time of it.  There are so many different reconstructions of the historical Jesus, each one only an approximation of what the historian can know on the basis of the extant sources.  There are lots of historical Jesuses that I do not believe in.  I don't believe in Crossan's historical Jesus because I don't believe in his sources.  I don't believe in Wright's historical Jesus because he believes all his sources.  I don't believe in Morton Smith's historical Jesus because he composed one of his sources.

And in this context, the word "exist" means what?  There's a kind of absurd reductionism in trying to load complex historical analysis of ancient source material into one natty little question.  I don't have any doubt whatsoever that the primary sources are, ultimately, witnessing to traditions some of which emerged in connection with Jesus of Nazareth but the really interesting work is not going to emerge from asking the question "Did Jesus exist?"

I wonder what Jesus would have made of the question?  How would he have established his own existence?  Herod the Tetrarch was rumoured to have worried that the figure they were calling Jesus might actually be John the Baptist risen from the dead.  John the Baptist is reported to have worried about who Jesus was too -- was he the coming one, or should they expect somebody else?  And according to the accounts of Jesus' arrest, they needed Judas to identify which one was Jesus, like Spartacus, or Brian.  

There is a delightful Roman joke that Mary Beard tells in her fantastic recent series Meet the Romans, here reported in The Guardian,

Beard tells me a Roman joke. "A guy meets another in the street and says: 'I thought you were dead.' The bloke says: 'Can't you see I'm alive?' The first replies: 'But the person who told me you were dead is more reliable than you.'" It slayed them in 4BC Rome. Beard takes the joke to have a serious point: "You realise that in Roman society, where there were no ID cards or passports, proving your existence required different criteria. The evidence of a reliable person was perhaps the strongest you had. It was very different from our society, but who's to say it was worse?"

I love this joke, and I like the lesson that Beard draws from it.  And it reminds us once again, as if we needed it, that doing ancient history is not like doing modern history.  The vast majority of ordinary punters made no impact on the archaeological record from antiquity.  Their impact, their "existence", if you like, can only be measured in so far as they influenced the memories of those who told their stories, and only in so far as those embellished, interpreted, creative memories ultimately found their way into the texts that managed to survive.

Bible in the Public Square -- Conference at Duke Sept 9-10

This just in from my colleagues in Jewish Studies:

Duke University is proud to be hosting a conference entitled “The Bible in the Public Square:” September 9-10, 2012, a special 2-day conference with experts speaking to the role of the Bible in everything from Public Schools and American Politics, to the Middle East and popular culture.  We hope you will consider attending this free conference which will address several key issues from top scholars in the field, including:

• “Battling over the Bible in Public Schools,” Charles Haynes, First Amendment Center


• “Right Dividing the First Amendment?  An Evaluation of Recent Decisions regarding the Bible and Public Schools,” Melissa Rogers, Wake Forest Center for Religion & Public Affairs


• "The Bible in the Presidential Elections of 2012, 2008, 2004 and the Collapse of American Secularism," Jacques Berlinerblau, Georgetown University

For the complete conference schedule, online registration, and parking information, please visit: http://jewishstudies.duke.edu/the-bible-in-the-public-square.

Steve Walton and David Wenham on the Synoptic Problem

I have been working my way through the recently released second edition of Steve Walton and David Wenham's excellent Exploring the New Testament, Volume 1: A Guide to the Gospels and Acts.  As regular readers will know, I do like to look at New Testament introductions to see how they treat the Synoptic Problem.  Normally speaking, I have a lot to complain about, especially when the Farrer Theory gets ignored.

Well, with Walton and Wenham's introduction, there is good news for Q sceptics: the Farrer theory is treated in its discussion of the Synoptic Problem including its own diagram, brief discussion, and bibliographical references to Farrer's article, my introductory book (Way through the Maze), my monograph (Case Against Q) and even the NT Gateway (70, 73, 87).  Although it is naturally disappointing to see them dismiss the theory as having "many of the same objections as the Griesbach hypothesis" leading to the view being "not very widely held" (73), it is nevertheless encouraging to see the theory finding its way -- at last -- into the introductory literature.

What, though, of the substance of their exploration of the Synoptic Problem?  There are several reasons to find it refreshing.  For one thing, there is some discussion of the data before there is any discussion of the proposed solutions (61-5) echoing even those like me who advocate the colouring of the Synopsis (62, though I think that students will find my primary colour scheme more straightforward than their four-colour scheme).  For another, there is one sample synopsis (63, Sadducees' Question) and several lists taken over from Robert Stein's book (64, 68, 69) and one from Sanders and Davies (72).

Regular readers will not be expecting me to be unambiguously positive, though, and I don't want to disappoint them.  I would like to focus on a couple of difficulties in the discussion, the first with the way that they treat the Griesbach or Two Gospel (not "Two Gospels", 71) Theory.  Walton and Wenham offer several criticisms of the hypothesis, most of them well sustained, but the following criticism does not conceptualize the Griesbach theory fairly:

Luke's rearrangement of Matthean material   Consider the material shared by Matthew and Luke, but not found in Mark (the Q material on the two source hypothesis).  Apart from rare examples (such as the temptation of Jesus, Matt. 4.1-11; Luke 4.1-13), Luke and Matthew do not present this material in conjunction with the same Markan material, but locate it in different settings in their Gospels.  In fact, on the Griesbach hypothesis, in editing Matthew, Luke has systematically moved almost all this material from its Matthean contexts to somewhere else in his Gospel.  This seems unlikely: a better explanation is that Luke is using Mark as a main source and other material to supplement Mark (73).

The difficulty with this explanation is that on the Griesbach Hypothesis, Luke is writing without reference to Mark, before Mark has been written, so the distinction between "Markan material" and "Q material" is irrelevant.  There is no option, then, for Luke and Matthew to present this material "in conjunction with the same Markan material".  For Griesbach's Luke, the distinction between double tradition and triple tradition does not exist.  This means that on the Griesbach hypothesis, Luke often follows Matthew's order; it is just that he does so most recognizably in the material that we call triple tradition.

On the Griesbach hypothesis, this material becomes "triple tradition" by virtue of Mark's subsequent action, according to which Mark shows preference for material that is in the same order in his sources Matthew and Luke.  In other words, it is an important element in the Griesbach hypothesis that Mark effectively creates the triple tradition by his selections from Matthew and Luke, a selection that is at least partly done on the basis of Matthew's and Luke's agreements in order.  Under such circumstances, it is a little unfair to criticize the theory for failing to explain Luke's ordering of double tradition.  The data set double tradition is generated by a subsequent move made by Mark, partly on the basis of the question of order, and not by Luke's editorial decisions.

The second difficulty I would like to mention also relates to the question or order, but this time for the Farrer Theory.  Griesbach is presented as the major alternative to the Two-Source theory (71-3) and Farrer is given a paragraph at the end under "Other Views".  It is dismissed in one sentence as follows:

This view faces many of the same objections as the Griesbach hypothesis, for it still holds that Luke has edited Matthew in ways that appear hard to understand and this has meant that, like the Griesbach view, it is not very widely held (73).

I disagree, of course, that it is hard to understand Luke's editing of Matthew, and it may be that Walton and Wenham's difficulty arises from their conceptualizing this work under the heading of criticizing the Griesbach hypothesis.  So let's take a look at what they say on the topic when they are discussing Griesbach:

Why does Luke break up Matthew's teaching blocks?  As we saw, Luke has most of the teaching found in Matthew's sermon on the mount (Matt. 5-7), but spread around his Gospel (see p. 69), and something similar happens with Matthew's four other teaching discourses (Matt. 10, 13, 18, 24-25).  If Luke is using Matthew, this seems unusual behaviour. (72).

On the Farrer theory, though, Luke's primary source for the structuring of his Gospel is Mark and paying careful attention to the way that Luke works with Mark helps to explain his use of Matthew.  His attitude towards lengthy discourses in his source material is consistent, and we would not expect him to retain all of Matthew's huge, theme-based structures when we can observe him reworking material in a plausible, biographical narrative (Case, chapters 4, 5 and 6; Maze, 123-8).

Take, for example, the third of the big Matthean discourses listed by Walton and Wenham,  Matthew 13.  Matthew 13, the parable chapter, is a massively expanded version of Mark's parable discourse in Mark 4.1-34.  Luke's parallel, in Luke 8.4-18, is a greatly reduced version of Mark 4, less than half its length, omitting some material and redistributing the rest.  Given that Luke here halves the length of Mark's version of the very discourse in question, it is hardly "unusual behaviour" to see him behaving in the same way towards Matthew's expansion of it (cf. Walton and Wenham's chart on 72 that nicely illustrates Matthew's expansion and Luke's reduction of Mark 4).

One last issue.  One of the things I like about Walton and Wenham's chapter is that it encourages students to pay careful attention to the Gospel Synopsis, and they provide an example of one themselves on 63, the Sadducees' Question.  Their English translation, however, masks an issue that is often missed, a telling minor agreement.  They have Matt. 22.27, "Last of all, the woman herself died", Mark 12.22, "Last of all, the woman herself died" and Luke 20.32, "Finally, the woman also died".  But Matthew and Mark are not identical here.  Matthew has ὕστερον δὲ πάντων . . . whereas Mark has ἔσχατον πάντων . . .  Luke follows Matthew and not Mark with his ὕστερον.  Why is this worth mentioning?  Because  ὕστερον is 7/0/1+0, seven times Matthew, never Mark, only here in Luke-Acts.  It is Matthew's way of representing the last in a series.  It's one of those nice minor agreements that illustrates Luke's knowledge of Matthew in triple tradition.

BibleWorks 20th Birthday Contest

Jim Barr has been in touch to mention the BibleWorks 20th Birthday Contest.  They are giving away two copies of BibleWorks to the best entries.

Matthean and Lukan Special Material, Part 2

Last week I posted part one of my review of Brice Jones, Matthean and Lukan Special Material in Matthean and Lukan Special Material, Part 1. I focused there mainly on Jones's selection of M and L passages, which is derived from Mark Allan Powell's partial list in the Fortress Introduction.

In the second part of this review, I will look at Jones's essay, "Literary Relationships Among the Gospels", which he uses to explain the role played by M and L in discussions of the Synoptic Problem.

Jones's essay forms Chapter 1 of the book (1-17) and is subtitled "A Brief Introduction to the Synoptic Problem and Matthew and Luke's Special Source Material".  He defines the Synoptic Problem and provides a little history (2-3), introducing the Griesbach Hypothesis (4) and explaining the Two-Source Theory (5), briefly offering arguments for it (6) before answering objections (7-8). Jones then introduces M and L, the main topics of the book, looking at how they functioned in Streeter's work (8-10) and in scholarship today with special reference to Stephenson Brooks and Kim Paffenroth (10-13).  The remainder of the chapter (13-17) explains the presentation and selection of data in the rest of the book.

Jones's essay typifies an approach to Synoptic Problem introduction that I have often criticized, working on the basis of the Two-Source Theory and refracting the Synoptic data through that theory.  Thus there is no encouragement for the new student to attempt to understand the data first, to study the Synopsis without prejudice to a particular way of describing the evidence.

The dominance of the Two-Source Theory is expressed in other ways in the chapter.  The Griesbach Hypothesis and the Two-Source Theory each have their own diagrams (4-5) but the Farrer Theory does not.  This is also important for new students, where visualizing a theory can greatly help in properly understanding it.   And while I am grateful to Jones for his brief reference to my work (7), I am a little disappointed to see no reference to my main book on the topic which is called The Case Against Q.

Jones lists Streeter's five points in favour of Marcan Priority (6), most of which are simple descriptions of how Matthew and Luke proceeded if they used Mark and several of which are reversible.  I think there are better arguments for Marcan Priority than those offered by Streeter and, on the whole, those supporting the "Two Gospel Theory" have had little trouble demonstrating this.  References to more recent literature by Two Gospel advocates might have helped here, especially Beyond the Q Impasse and One Gospel from Two.

Somewhat surprisingly, Jones does not offer any arguments in favour of the Q hypothesis and appears to regard it as established on the basis of Streeter's arguments for Marcan Priority.  He does, however, discuss three arguments against the Two-Source Theory (7-8), the Mark-Q overlaps, the minor agreements and the hypothetical nature of Q.  I will deal with each in turn.

(1) Mark-Q Overlaps.  Jones notes that there are Mark-Q overlap passages but does not explain why they are problematic for the Two-Source Theory.  He says:

Most advocates of the Two-Source hypothesis, however, do not think that the Mark-Q overlaps pose any real threat, since two independent yet similar traditions are bound to have existed prior to the composition of the Gospels as we know them (7).

Jones is right that advocates of the Farrer theory draw attention to the Mark-Q overlaps, but they do not do so because they think it surprising that "independent yet similar traditions" existed.  This would be a weak argument, and it is not one that I have seen. The difficulty with Mark-Q overlaps is not a general one about the plausibility or otherwise of overlapping materials.  Rather, it is specific: this data set contradicts the claim that Matthew and Luke never agree against Mark in major ways, and it contradicts the claim that Luke never takes over Matthew's redaction of Mark.  These are used as arguments for the existence of Q, arguments that are contradicted by this data set.

(2) Minor Agreements.  Jones refers to "the few cases where Matthew and Luke agree on wording with each other against Mark" (7), drawing attention specially to the minor agreement at Mark 14.65, and asking "How is this to be explained if Matthew and Luke did not know each other and the story is not found in Q?" (7).

Jones suggests that they could have been caused by shared oral tradition, or by corruption of the texts or by harmonization (though he does not explain how the last two differ).  The difficulty with the oral tradition theory is that several of the key minor agreements, including the one at Mark 14.65, feature verbatim agreement in Greek including the use of hapaxes in the Gospel in question.  The difficulty with the text-critical explanation is that it cuts both ways -- harmonization is as likely if not more likely to have diminished the number of minor agreements than to have increased them.

(3) A Hypothetical Document.  Here Jones writes:

Another difficulty is that the theory requires a hypothetical document, which is not physically attested outside of the Gospels.  This position is especially popular among advocates of solutions to the Synoptic Problem that posit Matthean and Lukan dependence.  There are difficulties in sustaining this argument, however, and most scholars tend to believe that the Two-Source Hypothesis makes the most sense of the data. (8). 

Jones here characterizes the position he is arguing against in such general terms that it is difficult to know what he is referring to.  It is true that Q sceptics will often have contexts in which noting Q's hypothetical nature will be relevant.  I have, for example, often noted the flexibility that its hypothetical nature allows for the redaction critic.  Similarly, I have drawn attention to problem of scholarly works that fail to mention its hypothetical nature, and so on.

That Q is hypothetical is a fact.  It is not an "argument" or a "position".  The question is whether positing a hypothetical text is the best way of explaining the double tradition in Matthew and Luke and the best way of establishing this is to look carefully at the evidence.

Transcription of Codex Sinaiticus available for download

Over on the ITSEE site, the good news that a Transcription of Codex Sinaiticus is now available for download.

More on the Earthquake and Jesus' Crucifixion

I commented last Friday (Earthquake Research and the Day of Jesus' Crucifixion) on a Discover News Article Quake Reveals Day of Jesus' Crucifixion.  I was somewhat sceptical about the article's claim that earthquake research had helped to pinpoint the day of the crucifixion, not least because the article appeared to suggest a ten year window for the earthquake in question (26-36 CE) but also because of all the passages in Matthew's Gospel, this is one that causes the historian to raise an eyebrow.

I was grateful to hear subsequently from the primary author of the article that had given rise to the Discovery News report, Jefferson Williams.  And over the last few days, it has been a pleasure to exchange emails and to get a feeling for his research.  Our new dean at Duke is often telling us about the importance of interdisciplinary work, and perhaps this is one of those occasions when the arts and sciences come together in a surprising way!

After having corresponded with Dr Williams, I find myself reassured that his approach does not fall into the "Science proves religion" camp.  It is clearly not an attempt to engage in careful scientific research with a view to the alleged corroboration of details found in the Bible.  Indeed, it is clear that his approach is open and exploratory, and is essentially asking questions about possible correlations between the broad dates suggested by his research alongside textual data that may or may not witness to the same events.

The details of the article are Jefferson B. Williams, Markus J. Schwab & A. Brauer, "An early first-century earthquake in the Dead Sea," International Geology Review 54/ 10 (2011): 1219-28.  I am sure it goes without saying that I have no expertise whatsoever in Geology and earthquake research and my comments will deal solely with the article as it relates to the study of the New Testament.  Here is the abstract:

This article examines a report in the 27th chapter of the Gospel of Matthew in the New Testament that an earthquake was felt in Jerusalem on the day of the crucifixion of Jesus of Nazareth. We have tabulated a varved chronology from a core from Ein Gedi on the western shore of the Dead Sea between deformed sediments due to a widespread earthquake in 31 BC and deformed sediments due to an early first-century earthquake. The early first-century seismic event has been tentatively assigned a date of 31 AD with an accuracy of ±5 years. Plausible candidates include the earthquake reported in the Gospel of Matthew, an earthquake that occurred sometime before or after the crucifixion and was in effect ‘borrowed’ by the author of the Gospel of Matthew, and a local earthquake between 26 and 36 AD that was sufficiently energetic to deform the sediments at Ein Gedi but not energetic enough to produce a still extant and extra-biblical historical record. If the last possibility is true, this would mean that the report of an earthquake in the Gospel of Matthew is a type of allegory.

I had wondered about the strange coincidence between the decade of Pontius Pilate's governorship (26-36 CE) and the date range for this earthquake, also roughly 26-36.  However, it seems that this was accurately reported in the Discovery News article.

What was much less accurately conveyed in that piece was the implication that this research helped to pinpoint the date of the crucifixion.  If anything, the flow of interpretation goes in the opposite direction.  Williams and his co-authors in fact have a date range of "31 AD with an accuracy of ±5 years" and, having established this, they inquire about possible candidates in the textual record, one of which is the earthquake mentioned in Matt. 27.51.  The authors conclude their article in the following manner:

This leaves three possibilities for the cause of the 26–36 AD earthquake observed in the Ein Gedi section:

(1) the earthquake described in the Gospel of Matthew occurred more or less as reported;

(2) the earthquake described in the Gospel of Mathew was in effect ‘borrowed’ from an earthquake that occurred sometime before or after the crucifixion, but during the reign of Pontius Pilate;

(3) the earthquake described in the Gospel of Matthew is allegorical fiction and the 26–36 AD seismite was caused by an earthquake that is not reported in the currently extant historical record. (8).

In other words, the article is not an attempt to find scientific corroboration for the events that are described with such apocalyptic flourish in Matthew 27.

Nevertheless, if Biblical scholars like us are right about Marcan Priority and right to be sceptical about the historical value of Matthew's redactional embellishments here, it is at least a delightful detail that there was indeed an earthquake in the region in roughly the right time period.  It is intriguing to think that Matthew may have been redacting Mark with some kind of knowledge of an earthquake in the period.

Perhaps that was what stimulated the imagination of the evangelist, or his tradition, as they retold the Marcan story.  I must admit that I do find that an attractive hypothesis.  However, the reluctant sceptic in me suspects that Matthew was able to add an earthquake in 27.51 without that precedent.  The fact that he introduces another in 28.2, at the resurrection, inclines one to think that this is simply the way that Matthew writes.

Williams et al suggest that this earthquake, in Matt. 28.2, could be understood as "an aftershock event" (7).  However, Matthew also uses the same term, σεισμός (seismos), in his retelling of the Stilling of the Storm (Matt. 8.24), so it may be that the terminology is simply characteristic of Matthew's dramatic style of narrative.

The difficulty in analyzing ancient texts for data relevant to scientific analysis is that there can be a certain etymological excitement in seeing a term like seismos that is so recognizable to us because of its relationship to our terms like seismic which are derived from it.  However, we have to use a little caution given that it is not a simple case of one-to-one mapping from our "earthquake" to their seismos, just as our "leprosy" does not correlate perfectly to their λεπρός (lepros), and the related words.

In cases like this, a lot depends on context.  Williams et al (3-4) also work with Josephus's report of an earthquake in 31 BCE, which features details of destruction that make it sound major.  Indeed this event is their "'anchor' earthquake", helpful because Josephus dates it to the "seventh year" of Herod's reign (Jewish War 1.370).  Some caution may be necessary in relation to the precise dating at 31, e.g. Daniel Schwartz, in comparing the account in War its parallel in Antiquities 15.121, dates it in the Spring of 30 BCE.

See further comments by David Meadows in Rogue Classicism and Thomas Verenna.

Charlesworth Article on Talpiot Tomb B: Update

On May 17, I blogged a detailed response to an article by Prof. James Charlesworth of Princeton Theological Seminary entitled "What is the Message of the 'Patio Tomb' in Talpiot, Jerusalem?", which appeared on the Foundation on Judaism and Christian Origins website.  Several days ago (at least by 26 May, possibly before), the article disappeared from the web.  I have made some inquiries and I have been told that the article was uploaded by mistake and that it was in fact only a "draft".  There are plans to upload a revised version of the article "as soon as completed".

Jesus, Criteria and the Demise of Authenticity New Conference Location

The conference connected with the release of the forthcoming book edited by Chris Keith and Anthony Le Donne, Jesus, Criteria and the Demise of Authenticity, has now been moved to the following new location, with thanks to Chris Keith for the announcement:

The 2012 Jesus Conference will be held Oct. 4 and 5, 2012 in Dayton, OH.  The co-hosts are United Theological Seminary and the University of Dayton's Center for Scriptural Exegesis, Philosophy, and Doctrine.  We're very excited to partner with these institutions and their fine faculty.  More information concerning registration, schedule, etc., will be forthcoming.

Apologies for being a little later on this announcement than many other bloggers (e.g. Matthew Montonini, Chris Skinner and others).  I am delighted that the conference will be going ahead.  After the disgraceful treatment of Anthony Le Donne, it was clear that the conference could no longer be hosted at its original location, so it's a big thank you to the new hosts.   I am looking forward very much to participating this coming October.

Mike Bird on Luke's use of Matthew and Q

Mike Bird has an enjoyable post up on the Synoptic Problem.  It's really refreshing for Synoptic nerds like me to see others enjoying the Synoptic Problem and taking it seriously and offering helpful critical engagement.  And it's good to see that Mike is not far from the kingdom, now openly working with the idea that Luke knew Matthew, albeit in what Michael Goulder calls a "soft line" approach, retaining a place for Q:

The Holtzmann-Gundry Solution to the Synoptic Problem (Three Source Hypothesis)

The solution that Mike is flirting with is one that attempts to retain what he sees as some of the advantages of the Two-Source Theory, Matthew's and Luke's knowledge of Mark and Q, while at the same time embracing what he sees as some of the advantages of the alternative theory that Luke knows Matthew as well as Mark.

On a basic level, the difficulty with this hypothesis is that it concedes defeat on the key premise for the postulation of Q.  Normally speaking, the existence of Q is predicated on the basis of arguments that Luke could not have known Matthew's Gospel.  If Luke knows Matthew, then there is no need to explain the double tradition material on the grounds that they both independently accessed a hypothetical document.

While commenting on Mike's post, I realized that my comment was taking on the proportions of a blog post of its own, so I am moving a revised version of that comment here.

In support of the solution, Mike notes E. P. Sanders's prophecy in 1969:

I rather suspect that when and if a new view of the Synoptic problem becomes accepted, it will be more flexible and complicated than the tidy two-document hypothesis. With all due respect for scientific preference for the simpler view, the evidence seems to require a more complicated one.

It is perhaps worth bearing in mind, though, how Sanders's own view changed over the subsequent twenty years.  In Studying the Synoptic Gospels, co-authored with Margaret Davies in 1989, he accepts Goulder's hypothesis that Luke knew Matthew as well as Mark, with the important modification that he does think Luke has other sources too, a modification with which I agree and for which I have argued too.

There is a general issue here too that the discussion of "simple" against "complex" can mask.  Scholars of yesteryear were often reticent to think seriously about issues of memory and oral tradition in the way that they configured the problem. Gundry's half-way house between Farrer and the 2ST is symptomatic of this -- he is thinking in purely literary terms as a means of configuring his solution.

Mike's post is to some extent falling prey to the same issue by finding Q a solution to issues of "alternating primitivity". The Two-Source Theory projects every variation onto a textual base and does not take seriously what Luke himself tells us, that he was working with both oral and literary sources (Luke 1.1-4).  It's a point I have often made, but here is a quotation of one iteration of it:

One of the potential difficulties with the Q hypothesis, and something endemic to the discussion of “alternating primitivity”, is the routine confusion between literary priority and the relative age of traditions.  For a long time scholars have accepted that Matthew and Luke might witness to different, sometimes more primitive versions of material they share with Mark.  It is an obvious extension of this principle to see Luke sometimes witnessing to more primitive versions of material he nevertheless shares with Matthew.  The reduction of the variety and richness of oral tradition to the level of the reconstruction of the precise wording of an hypothetical document is one of the more unfortunate consequences of the Q theory, in which consideration of the double tradition is inevitably forced into purely literary terms.  The recognition that Luke was literarily dependent on Matthew (as well as Mark) challenges the exegete to take seriously those places where he apparently witnesses to a different, perhaps more primitive tradition, leading to a reassessment of – and perhaps ultimately a more nuanced role for – oral tradition in Synoptic relationships (Case Against Q, 188).

The main difficulty, though, with the Holtzmann-Simons-Gundry approach is that once Luke's knowledge of Matthew is (rightly) conceded, there is no need for Q. The high verbatim agreement between Matthew and Luke means that we are not dealing with later, secondary overlay, but direct copying by Luke of Matthew -- Q actually causes problems for making sense of that high verbatim agreement.

The issue of order is similar.  Gundry appeals to Q in order to explain Luke's order.  This approach works with the notion that an evangelist's order was largely dictated by source constraints, the kind of perspective that made sense in the 19th and early 20th centuries, but makes less sense now. Further, as I have often pointed out before, postulating a Q to explain Luke's order only throws the problem back to Matthew's order. The different ordering of the double tradition is a fact; at least one person, Matthew or Luke or both, has done some rearranging.

Mike's specific concern, though, is that Luke's use of Matthew "leaves us wondering why he broke up Matthew’s speeches quite so abruptly and artlessly".  This remark takes us back to the value judgements that I and others have criticized in the past. I suppose that I have a higher opinion of Luke's art than Mike who is here in the tradition of Streeter, Kümmel and others, but I would repeat that (a) Luke does the same with Mark's speeches; (b) the value judgement is not shared by contemporary artists; (c) narrative-critical reflection on the alleged artless episodes provides further pause.  There is no point repeating all of these arguments here, though I would encourage at least some reflection on the issues raised in any assessment of Luke's alleged abrupt and artless rearrangement.

Mike rightly points out that Luke's knowledge of Matthew helps to explain the minor agreements between Matthew and Luke against Mark, but he adds that the "three source" approach may also help to explain the Mark-Q overlaps.  I am not so sure.  If anything, it tends to confuse the issue. The problem with the so-called Mark-Q overlap material is that it contradicts the assertion that Luke and Matthew never agree in major ways against Mark, something that is used to argue for the independence of Matthew and Luke, and so Q. But since Matthew and Luke do indeed agree in major ways against Mark, one of the key reasons for postulating Q is removed. Having Luke working with Q and Matthew here has no explanatory advantage.

To illustrate the point rather than leaving it at the abstract level, Mark has "He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit" (Mark 1.8).  Matthew and Luke have "He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire. His winnowing fork is in his hand . . ." (Matt. 3.11-12, Luke 3.16-17).  We gain nothing by suggesting that Q is finishing Mark's sentences here if one already has a theory in which Matthew is redacting Mark. No, Matthew is the one finishing Mark's sentences and he is copied by Luke.

Thanks again to Mike for his stimulating post.

Earthquake Research and the Day of Jesus' Crucifixion

Usually speaking, these stories crop up around Easter so it's a surprise to see this one appearing now.  As usual on these occasions, it's a shame that journalists did not check in with Biblical scholars before going to press with a problematic article.  Here's the piece on Discovery News:

Quake Reveals Day of Jesus' Crucifixion

It's been debated for years, but researchers say they now have a definitive date of the crucifixion.

Jennifer Vegas

The article focuses on a detail in Matthew's story of the crucifixion:

Matt. 27.51: And behold, the veil of the temple was torn into two, from top to bottom.  And the earth shook and the rocks split open.

Geologist Jefferson Williams has investigated earthquake activity to see if he can use it to pinpoint the date of Jesus' crucifixion:

To analyze earthquake activity in the region, geologist Jefferson Williams of Supersonic Geophysical and colleagues Markus Schwab and Achim Brauer of the German Research Center for Geosciences studied three cores from the beach of the Ein Gedi Spa adjacent to the Dead Sea. 

Varves, which are annual layers of deposition in the sediments, reveal that at least two major earthquakes affected the core: a widespread earthquake in 31 B.C. and an early first century seismic event that happened sometime between 26 A.D. and 36 A.D.

Now I should say at this point I have not been able to consult Williams's work directly, but from this report, it becomes apparent that the research pinpoints the crucifixion to the decade between 26 and 36.  Given that the traditions locate Jesus' death during the time when Pontius Pilate was prefect, and given that Pilate was prefect from 26-36, this is not big news.  In fact, the precise correlation between Pilate's governorship and the window for the earthquake seems so striking that I wonder whether there is some confusion over the reporting.

Nevertheless, the article goes on to pinpoint the date of Jesus' crucifixion using other means, primarily the work of Colin Humphreys and Graeme Waddington, which dates back to 1985 (see The Date of the Crucfixion).  At least on the basis of the reports in the article, then, the earthquake research is only able to locate the crucifixion within the ten year period 26-36, but the older Humphreys and Waddington article is required for more precision.  

Several bullet-points are offered in order for the pinpointing:

• All four gospels and Tacitus in Annals (XV,44) agree that the crucifixion occurred when Pontius Pilate was procurator of Judea from 26-36 AD.
• All four gospels say the crucifixion occurred on a Friday.
• All four gospels agree that Jesus died a few hours before the beginning of the Jewish Sabbath (nightfall on a Friday).
• The synoptic gospels (Matthew, Mark, and Luke) indicate that Jesus died before nightfall on the 14th day of Nisan; right before the start of the Passover meal.
• John’s gospel differs from the synoptics; apparently indicating that Jesus died before nightfall on the 15th day of Nisan.

The "all four gospels" is the kind of thing that might sound impressive to someone not acquainted with scholarship on the Gospels because it gives the impression of multiple independent attestation.  However, it is consensus in New Testament scholarship that Matthew and Luke knew Mark and were dependent upon Mark for their crucifixion narratives, so this is not independent attestation.  Views differ a little on John, but many (like me) think that John knew the Synoptics too. 

The first three bulletpoints are taken over from the article by Humphreys and Waddington, which also uses the rhetoric of "all four gospels".  The latter two bullet points contain errors.  The Synoptics appear to place the death of Jesus on the day of Passover, 15 Nisan, and not on 14th.  They depict Jesus engaging in the Passover meal at sunset, when the day begins, and being crucified that same day.  John does indeed differ from the Synoptics, but not in the way claimed here.  John depicts Jesus' death as occurring not on the day of Passover (15th), but on the day before (14th).  So either Williams is confused or the journalist is confused or both.

Typically, the same errors are taken over without any checking in other versions of the report, e.g. the Daily Mail.

However, the real problem with this kind of work is that it fails to take seriously the nature of the texts that are being studied.  What Matthew appears to be doing here is to rewrite his Marcan source in typical Matthean fashion.  Of all the evangelists, Matthew is the one who likes to add earthquakes to his accounts.  There is one again at the resurrection (Matt. 28.2).  Indeed, one should probably be wary of using the term technical term "earthquake" to describe all of these -- it is the evangelist's way of saying that the earth was shaking and something dramatic was happening.  He describes the big storm (Matt. 8.23-27) as a great earthquake (seismos) on the sea.

To take Matthew's "earthquake" as a geological report is to misread his account.  The story he is presenting here is one of those that very few New Testament scholars would take seriously as history.  It's even read with caution by the most conservative scholars, and for good reason.  The Discovery report ends its quotation of Matt. 27.51-2 with the tombs opening, but if it had continued its quotation, the reader would have seen how Matthew goes on to recount what some people call the Zombie Pericope, when bodies come out of the tombs, walk around and meet people.  This is not history but legend.

Matthean and Lukan Special Material, Part 1

I am grateful to Wipf and Stock for sending over a review copy of Brice Jones's new book:

Matthean and Lukan Special Material
A Brief Introduction with Texts in Greek and English

It's actually cheaper ($10.18) to buy direct from Wipf and Stock than from Amazon although the latter gives a decent preview of the book.  See already the notice and comments on Mike Bird's blog.

The idea of Jones's book is to gather together under one cover the passages that appear in Matthew alone and Luke alone, the "Matthean and Lukan Special Material".  Each passage is written out in full, first in Greek (NA²⁷) and then in English translation (NRSV) and the short volume is prefaced with an introductory essay on the Synoptic Problem.

I will comment on the book in two posts.  In this first post, I will comment on the presentation of Special Matthew and Special Luke. In the second post, I will comment on Jones's introductory essay on the Synoptic Problem.

The presentation of Special Matthew and Special Luke may provide a useful introductory sketch of the contours of some of this material for undergraduate students and the interested beginner.  The presentation is clear and uncluttered.  For advanced students and scholars, however, the book's usefulness will be limited. The passages are presented without text-critical apparatus, marginal notes, Biblical citations or commentary, and there are several issues related to the selection of passages.

Jones's selection of passages (14, n. 31) is dependent on Mark Allan Powell, Fortress Introduction to the Gospels (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1998), 62 and 86.  His Special Matthew is practically identical to Powell's list list (adding only Matt. 5.39a) and his Special Luke is identical to Powell's list.  The problem is that Powell is offering in each case what he calls a "Partial List".  They are not comprehensive lists of the contents of Special Matthew or Special Luke.

Jones's presentation therefore retains all of the anomalies of Powell's partial lists. The opening of Luke (Luke 1.1-4) is included , but the opening of Matthew (Matt. 1.1) is not.   The Lord's Prayer is included in Special Matthew (Matt. 6.9-13) but excluded from Special Luke (Luke 11.2-4). Matthew's Birth Narrative ends two verses early (Matt. 2.21).  Luke's Birth Narrative excludes the first note about Jesus' growth (Luke 2.40) but includes the second (Luke 2.52). Jesus' words to the repentant thief are included in L (23.43) but the rest of the conversation (23.39-42) is not.

The difficulty with relying on Powell's lists is that they are not comprehensive.  They are introductory, illustrative handlists for the newcomer.  Powell's lists exclude some famous pieces of Special Matthew, like John the Baptist's reluctance (Matt. 3.14-15) and Pilate's Wife's Dream (Matt. 27.19), but it excludes still more from Special Luke, the dating of John the Baptist's Mission (Luke 3.1-2), Luke's Woes (Luke 6.24-26), True Blessedness (11.27-29), Casting Fire (12.49-50), Herod's threat (13.31-3), Tax-collectors and sinners (15.1-2), Servant of all Work (17.7-10), Kingdom within you (17.20-1), and Peter at the tomb (24.12).  All of this material is absent from Jones's presentation.

Moreover, because Powell's partial list of Special Matthew throws the net more widely than his partial list of Special Luke, there is an imbalance in Jones's presentation of each set.  The presentation of M is relatively maximizing when compared to the presentation of L.  I am not sure why Powell's partial list of L material incorporates a little less than Powell's partial list of M but it may be that Powell had to exclude more of L in order to squeeze it into one page in the book (86). Whatever the reason, though, the holes should be filled in when one moves from a list to a book.

To be fair to Jones, it is not straightforward to decide what material to include and what to exclude, and if he had made his own lists, no doubt they would have raised their own questions.  But that itself draws attention to the difficulty of simply presenting partial data without any commentary or notes.  The reader can never be sure why one piece is included and another is excluded.

The difficulty with delineating Special Matthew and Special Luke is that one person's Sondergut is another person's Matthean or Lucan redaction.  So Jones, following Powell, includes Luke's version of the Rejection at Nazareth (Luke 4.16-30, cf. Mark 6.1-6), the Call of the Disciples (Luke 5.1-11, cf. Mark 1.16-20) and the Anointing (Luke 7.36-50, cf. Mark 14.3-9) which others would regard as triple tradition.  Similarly, variant double tradition passages often find their way into M (e.g. Matt. 18.21-22, cf. Luke 17.4) but not L.

One of the lessons here is that mastering the Synoptic data is indeed a key element in understanding the Synoptic Problem.  While the introductory sketches are of course always welcome, in the end there is no substitute for detailed work with synopses and texts, with exploration of the nuances and details that make the problem so interesting.

In the second part of this review, I will look at Jones's essay, "Literary Relationships Among the Gospels", which he uses to explain the role played by M and L in discussions of the Synoptic Problem.

More on the RBL "Rejoinders" Issue

Further to my post yesterday on RBL Innovation: Scholarly Rejoinders to Reviews, see the related post from Tim Bulkeley at Sansblogue.  Bob Buller wrote to Tim and me and I reproduce the following with his permission:

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Let me begin by thanking you for noting the two author responses announced in today's RBL newsletter. I am of course grateful for any publicity that bloggers offer RBL, but I also am curious to see how you, your readers, and other bloggers respond to the notion of authors responding online to reviews published online. That being said, I must note that this "innovation" is not exactly new. The RBL blog has invited comments almost from the beginning (2008), and we published the first authorial response in September 2009 (http://rblnewsletter.blogspot.com/2009/09/20090930-ramelli-and-konstan-terms-for.html). At that time we also established the policy that, although we will not announce all comments in an RBL newsletter, we will announce author responses in a newsletter, so as to promote greater dialogue between reviewer and author. For additional author responses (unfortunately, a small number of authors use the blog to respond), see:

http://rblnewsletter.blogspot.com/2009/11/20091140-mason-josephus-judea-and.html (December 2009)
http://rblnewsletter.blogspot.com/2010/12/20101238-williamson-ephesians.html (January 2011)
http://rblnewsletter.blogspot.com/2011/02/20110206-pervo-making-of-paul.html (February 2011)
http://rblnewsletter.blogspot.com/2011/02/20110209-terrell-pauls-parallels.html (February 2011)

All of these were, I believe, announced in an RBL newsletter; if any were omitted, it was a mistake, not a matter of policy.

I should also note that RBL blog comments are carefully moderated: commenters must identify themselves either in the comment heading or within the comment (no truly anonymous comments), and we will not publish ad hominem attacks. In short, we hold commenters to the same standards as we expect of our reviewers (see http://www.sbl-site.org/assets/pdfs/ReviewerInstructions.pdf), in order to promote meaningful and productive dialogue.

Thanks again for your blog posts today. I do hope that more authors and readers will avail themselves of the opportunity to comment on the many reviews that we publish.

Bob Buller
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