The Fourth Synoptic Gospel

I have written a new book! I'm afraid it takes me a while, especially as I have been in university administration for some years. Even without that, it does not come easy, and I don't even write these massive books like my friends and colleagues write. This one is about John's knowledge of the Synoptics. 

I joke in the preface that it's the third part of my trilogy. The first part, The Case Against Q (2002), argued that Luke knew Matthew and Mark. The second part, Thomas and the Gospels (2012), argued that the Gospel of Thomas knew the Synoptics. This book argues that John's Gospel likewise used all three Synoptic Gospels. 

It's a joke because I had no plan at all, but rather followed the research wherever it led. My interest in Gospel interrelations helped me to see, I hope, some links between the Gospel of Thomas and the Synoptics that others might have missed. And this book is not a million miles away from that.

I argue in the new book that John's Gospel knew the Synoptics, presupposed their narratives, dramatically transformed them, and Christologically absorbed them. 

The Fourth Synoptic Gospel actually began as the Speaker's Lectures in Biblical Studies in Oxford in 2017. There are only seven chapters in the book, and four of the them are expansions of those lectures. I also tried my ideas out in multiple other forums, and I promise to acknowledge those in future blogs. 

I hope to blog and podcast about the book some more in the coming weeks. 

In the meantime, here are some links:

The Fourth Synoptic Gospel (Amazon)

The Fourth Synoptic Gospel (Eerdmans)

NT Pod Joy!

Earlier this week (NT Pod Woes!), I shared my deep frustration about my failure to get my podcast's website sorted. It had stalled on Spotify, and I tried all sorts of things to fix it, including a massive transfer over to WordPress. 

Well, I didn't give up. I tried a bunch of other things and at last, one of them worked. I hate to say it, but I got the tip in a very helpful conversation with ChatGPT, which suggested I try Feedblitz as a replacement for Feedburner, and it worked! Feedblitz does cost money, but it's worth it since it has fixed my big issue, and will help me to get back on track again, including setting up email followers again. I may even get some of the money back; I made the link there a referral (affiliate) link!

When I get the chance, I'll set up Feedblitz here too, and see if I can restore the possibility of following the blog by email. 

Anyway, if you're a Spotify user, here's where you can subscribe to my podcast:

NT Pod on Spotify

And that's not an affiliate link. I don't earn money from the podcast. Existing Spotify subscribers shouldn't need to change their subscription, by the way. Likewise Apple, Amazon and others: there shouldn't be any need to make adjustments (but please let me know if you have any problems, and we may be back to NT Pod Woes again!).

NT Pod Woes!

This follows on from my relatively optimistic post the other day on the NT Pod's birthday. You don't need to know any of this, but I thought that writing about it might be cathartic. Back in 2009, I made what turned out to be a terrible decision in choosing Google's Blogger (blogspot) to host my new podcast. I had already used Blogger for years here on the NT Blog, and Google was in the ascendant, so it seemed like a good idea. Alas, over the years, Blogger turned out to be a pretty poor option for podcasting. Feedburner actually fixed some of the issues, so you could take your Blogger feed, and burn a better feed in Feedburner, and for years, that helped. But then Google purchased Feedburner, and Feedburner has been sadly neglected.

My Blogger / Feedburner feed has hobbled along over the years, but has just about done the job, so I just stuck with it. Until Spotify came along. Most of my subscribers used to come through Apple Podcasts, but in recent years, Spotify has become a massive player in the podcast world. Several people asked me if I could get the NT Pod onto Spotify.

Well, I tried. I really tried. Spotify just hates Feedburner and Blogger, and try what you can, you just can't get Spotify to read their RSS feed properly. And I understand why -- Blogger is not really designed for podcasts, and Feedburner doesn't care any more.

Given that I am at last trying to invest some more time in the podcast (new episode!), I decided that I really should get the existing configuration sorted in planning for the future (and you can still hear some of that optimism in the post from last week). After many, many, many hours working on this, I am beginning to think that a neat solution is impossible. 

My first idea was to try to port over all the Blogger content to RSS.com, but they could not process all of the Blogger content, and it was a no-go. So I tried WordPress. They have a dedicated tool to redirect blogger content, and it seemed to work. I was very encouraged. I did a bit of a redesign in WordPress, and moved the hosting all to my own new subdomain. OK, the redesign needed work, but the tech side seemed to be working. 

Happy with where things were, I tried submitting the new WordPress feed to Spotify. They rejected it. No "author" or "email" attributes in the new feed. So I worked out how to add those, and pinged them again. Still no good: you have no "enclosures" in your feed, they said. Somehow, the port over from Blogger had not included any of the enclosures.

More research. It turned out it was virtually impossible to automate all those "enclosures" (the actual audio files). I'd have to add them manually to the RSS feed. By this point, I was getting better at manipulating RSS feeds in WordPress, using a plug-in called All-in-one SEO, and after a lot of experimentation, I worked out not only how to add the enclosures, but also how to add the "length" of each episode, something that is impossible to do in Blogger or Feedburner, and which really improves the feed. 

I manually added the relevant enclosures to every episode (going back to Ep. #83; I wanted to see if this fix would work first), and had to find the length of each ep., again manually, and added it all in (in bytes -- that's how it's done in enclosures in RSS). The RSS feed validated, and I felt like it was an Alleluia moment. I submitted the new beautiful feed to Spotify and guess what? 

More problems. Now Spotify was only showing seven episodes, eps. #83-89. I got in touch with their support team for the umpteenth time and they told me that there were problems with the "GUIDs" in the feed, the "Globally Unique Identifier". More research; more googling. Even more difficult than the previous issues. Why does no one else on the internet seem to have these issues? Perhaps because they were sensible enough not to choose Blogger for their podcast back in 2009. 

So where do we go from here? Pretty close to giving up and going back to the status quo, but the difficulties here are that it does not solve the Spotify problem, and I'm stuck with a poor option, on Blogger, for the longer term future. 

I still have a couple of things to try, and it's not impossible that I could still fix everything, but my optimism is waning. If the worst comes to the worst, I may simply have to stick with Blogger with all its issues, and simply begin a fresh podcast on Spotify, and submit it directly, beginning from ep. 110. 

In the process, I've learned a huge amount about the tech of podcasting. When I attempted to switch to the new feed on Apple podcasts, it eliminated every episode except those that were appearing on the new WordPress feed. And do I really want an RSS feed that goes on for 50 pages?

Perhaps the most frustrating thing is that I had dedicated the time to recording several new episodes. Hey-ho. 

This post is mainly for my own catharsis. Somehow writing about these things helps. I really should not have abandoned this blog for so long! 

The Latest NT Pod News on Its 16th Birthday

 

It's the NT Pod's birthday! I released my first podcast 16 years ago today. There 109 episodes so far, though there are a few more "extended episodes" too from when I was numbering those differently. I actually wish I'd done far more episodes. The day job gets in the way more than I would like, and there are always more pressing and less enjoyable things to do. Occasionally, I prophesy a resurrection, only for the podcast to go back on hiatus. 

Well, recently I have been working hard to get it relaunched properly. I'm in the middle of porting all 16 years' worth over to WordPress, with a new URL, but I want to make sure that it's working properly, and that those subscribed through Apple, Amazon, etc., won't notice any difference, and that new episodes will arrive on time in the same place. The biggest headache that I am having is with Spotify, which has stopped picking up the feed altogether since ep. 107. Once I have everything sorted out, I'll do a proper relaunch. 

In the mean time, the last episode I mentioned here was NT Pod 104: The Synoptic Translation Problem. Since then, there have been five more episodes:

NT Pod 105: What is Translation Inertia? 

NT Pod 106: NT Introductions & Johannine Communities with Hugo Méndez

NT Pod 107: Why Do We Translate New Testament Names the Way We Do?

NT Pod 108: The Jesus / Joshua Problem

NT Pod 109: The Last Supper (2025)

Episodes 105, 107 and 109 continue the theme begun in 104 on problems with Bible translation. I have at least one more episode to come on that theme. The most recent episode is my review of a recent Jesus film, and I have a couple more coming on that theme too. 

I have also begun exploring the idea of recording NT Pod Shorts over on my Youtube Channel. So far they are mainly hot takes on recent Jesus films like The Chosen: Last Supper but I am hoping to do more of these in the coming weeks and months. 

What, Exactly, Did Josephus Write About Jesus? Guest Post by Stephen Goranson

What, Exactly, Did Josephus Write About Jesus? (That Is, If He Did Mention Jesus)

Guest Post by Stephen Goranson

Two new books address this question, whether Flavius Josephus, who wrote Antiquities of the Jews, or Judean Antiquities, in about the year 94 of the first century CE, mentioned Jesus of Nazareth. This most famous portion of his book eventually came to be called the Testimonium Flavianum, often abbreviated as the TF. Both books conclude that Josephus did indeed mention this Jesus, though they arrive at that conclusion via somewhat different paths. They significantly differ as to exactly what Josephus wrote about Jesus, as far as we can tell, which may have been partially altered in later manuscripts. Though all available manuscripts of Josephus’ book include the passage about Jesus, there are at least three different camps of thought that interpret this fact: either Josephus wrote it all, or nearly all of it; or Josephus wrote something, but the Jesus section was considerably rewritten and expanded; or Josephus wrote none of it, because it was all added, fully interpolated, later.

The new books are:

Daniel R. Schwartz, Flavius Josephus: Translation and Commentary, Judean Antiquities, Books 18-20, edited by Steve Mason (Leiden: Brill, 2025)

Followed soon after by

T. C. Schmidt, Josephus and Jesus: New Evidence for the One Called Christ (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2025). An open access download is freely available here:

https://josephusandjesus.com/

Schwartz updates and elaborates on what is the current mainstream view, that Christians added text to the original description, to make it more complimentary.

Schmidt argues that the extant text is practically all by Josephus. But Schmidt includes two restored brief omissions--later subtractions, not additions—that he now retrojects here from later translations from the Greek. Put together, in context, the Schmidt-proposed text originally was not complimentary. It was just a report, not a commendation. As such, it would not have been especially useful to early Christian writers, so arguments from silence before Eusebius may mislead. Origen of Alexandria and Caesarea, though, may well have learned from the Antiquities 18 section, in the manuscript version available to him, circa 245-249 CE, that Josephus was not a Christian (see his Commentary on Matthew 10.17 and compare Against Celsus 1.47). 

Both Schwartz and Schmidt argue against the view, held by Ken Olson and others, that Josephus did not include Jesus at all, and that such was totally a later Christian addition, maybe by Eusebius. What would Josephus do? Analyzing this question involves checking what else Josephus wrote, to see if the TF suits his work or stands out as foreign to him. See, e.g., K. A. Olson, “A Eusebian Reading of the Testimonium Flavianum,” pages 97-114 in Eusebius of Caesarea: Tradition and Innovations (Cambridge: Harvard UP for the Center for Hellenic Studies, 2013).'

Schwartz’s mandate, as part of a Josephus series edited by Steve Mason, was to translate and comment on Antiquities books 18 through 20. Antiquities 18.63-64 [3.3], in surviving manuscripts, mentions Jesus and then--note this--later, 18.116-119 [5.1], John the Baptist; Antiquities 20.197-203 [9.1] mentions James, the brother of Jesus.

Schmidt’s mandate was to focus on evaluating the history of scholarship on the question whether and how Josephus mentioned Jesus. And to make new contributions. Schmidt surely provides the most thorough account ever of the reception history of the Josephus TF text and its setting.

Schwartz’s volume, then, offers more on the general context of who Josephus was, and what were his methods and his intended, largely Roman, audience in writing Antiquities, especially in book 18, which was not the best-organized portion of the work. The series editor, Steve Mason, has often written about the audience Josephus wished to persuade in his apologetic presentation concerning the history of his Judean people. Given that Josephus was familiar with Jerusalem and Galilee and Rome, he would have known that some of his readers had heard about Jesus and were curious about his place in history. If the population estimates by Rodney Stark, in his 1996 book, The Rise of Christianity, are even ballpark accurate, then by 94 CE, there may have been over 50,000 current Christians. (Neither book cites Stark.) Because the Schwartz volume conveniently includes book 20, it also addresses the account of James, brother of Jesus and whether it, too, mentions Christ. More could be said, in both books, about the spelling, Chrestus, good, in some accounts, such as Tacitus.

Both books are well produced results of excellent scholarship. A major difference is in the means of access. The Schwartz volume, available only in paper, is expensive. The Schmidt volume is available in paper and also digitally, so it is easier to browse before deciding whether to fully read. If a visit to a library or an interlibrary loan scan is required to consult Schwartz, be sure to include, at a bare minimum, pages xvii, 9, 75-77. 91-94, and 305-306, though, of course, preferably all of it, including Bibliography and Indexes.

The Schmidt book, given its focus, is the more important one for this question, even though, unfortunately, given the dates of publication, it makes only slight use of the Schwartz volume.

Schwartz, understandably, dedicated his volume to the late, great scholar and gentleman Louis H. Feldman, who was so generous with his learning (including to me, in correspondence), but, for example, Schwartz’s bibliography, though it is fully 32 pages long (!), has nine by Feldman, but missed one important publication, Feldman, Louis H. “On the Authenticity of the Testimonium Flavianum Attributed to Josephus.” In New Perspectives on Jewish- Christian Relations: In Honor of David Berger, edited by Jacob Schacter and Elisheva Carlebach, 13– 30. The Brill Reference Library of Judaism 33. (Leiden: Brill, 2012).

The Schmidt volume may occasionally tilt towards excessive respect of Josephus. For example, we read that Josephus had, from his youth, an excellent memory; at least, he says so in his Life! Schmidt (143) duly recognized that as “likely self-aggrandizement,” but somewhat undercuts that by adding what a productive author he was. More skepticism might be called for when Josephus claimed to know all about the Essenes. His timeline just does not add up; he was not a full Essene initiate, not a reader of the pesharim. It is interesting that Josephus mentions John the Baptist after Jesus--a mistake—but with no connection to Jesus, so having in this case a non-Christian source? (Compare Mandaeans.) 

Schmidt shows convincingly that Josephus knew specific people who either knew Jesus or at least knew of him. On the other hand, wondering whether Josephus had access to written official records of the trial of Jesus seems a vanishingly-small possibility.

Any new scholarly treatment of Josephus on Jesus must properly address both books’ insights as well as their debatable assertions.

This is merely a preliminary note and a recommendation of two books. Congratulations to both authors. Learned reviews will follow in due course, as well as a dedicated session in the SBL meeting in November in Boston.

The Aseneth Home Page: Revised and Relaunched

Back in 1999, when I was working at the University of Birmingham, I taught a course on Joseph and Aseneth. And those were the days when I was enjoying handcoding websites. I had already got a website on Q online, which later morphed into The Case Against Q Website, and I was developing what became The New Testament Gateway, as well as other things. So it seemed natural to attempt a website on Joseph and Aseneth, all the more given that it was a very manageable undertaking.

In 1999, there were only a handful of Aseneth-related things available online, and I could be exhaustive. But I didn't want to have an Aseneth website without a text, so I asked David Cook and Oxford University Press if I could have permission to use the translation that appears in Sparks's Apocryphal Old Testament.

I attempted to check in on the site over the years, but like a lot of my websites, they became ever more time-consuming as my time became ever more limited. So it languished. Until now:

The Aseneth Home Page

Viola Goodacre took the content from the original site and completely redesigned it, and using WordPress so that it would be easier for me to edit in the future. I have spent a lot of time in recent weeks adding in new content. I eventually gave up trying to have an exhaustive bibliography, but the bibliography is now three times as long as it was, and I think I have at least all the major books and monographs. I have revamped the Resources page since most of that 26 year old content had vanished, and many great new resources have arrived. 

I hope you enjoy the new site. It is at a new URL, but I have set up a redirect from the old URL (had to remind myself how to do that!) so old links should still work. Please send in your suggestions for things that I've missed.

NT Pod 104: The Synoptic Translation Problem

There are lots of Synoptic Problems! The latest episode of my podcast focuses on one of them, "The Synoptic Translation Problem." It  investigates a problem in English translations of the Gospels. The translations frequently mangle the agreements and disagreements between the Synoptic Gospels, and between the Synoptics and John. The podcast attempts to show how pervasive the problem is by drawing attention to conflicting translations in the NRSVUE (the New Revised Standard Version Updated Edition), and proposing a way forward for future translations of the New Testament. 

NT Pod 104: The Synoptic Translation Problem (mp3)

Key texts:

(1) Matt. 27.50 // Mark 15.37 // Luke 23.46; Psalm 31.5

(2) Matt. 26.51 // Mark 14.47 // Luke 22.50 // John 18.10

(3) Matt. 26.6-13 // Mark 14.3-9 // Luke 7.36-50 // John 12.1-8

(4) Matt. 28.10 // John 20.17

Feel free to leave your feedback below, on our Youtube channel, or on social media.

Thanks to Ram2000, "Me and You", for the opening theme, released under a Creative Commons agreement.

The Mysteries of the Synoptic Gospels

Hi everyone. I have been neglecting the NT Blog and the NT Pod for far too long because of the demands of the day job, and my frantic attempts actually to write something! But I am daring to hope that it really won't be very long until the blog and the podcast are back. In the mean time, I am happy to share my involvement with the following new project:

 

My colleague and friend over at UNC Chapel Hill, Bart Ehrman, is launching the Biblical Studies Academy (BSA), and he talks about it here. I am offering the first online course in this venue, and it is entitled "The Mysteries of the Synoptic Gospels," and I have a short introduction to it in this venue, at around the three minute mark. 

Further details about my course, as well as the BSA, are here:

The Mysteries of the Synoptic Gospels

I am really looking forward to teaching in this new online forum. 

In association with the new course, I have recorded a few conversations. The first was with Megan Lewis here:

What are the Synoptic Gospels?

I look forward to seeing lots of you soon on this new course. 

And I promise that I will be back in the saddle to be podcasting and blogging again before too long. 

The Resurrection of the NT Pod

After spending a lot of time in university administrative jobs (Director of Undergraduate Studies, Department Chair, and so on), I find myself back in the happy position this semester of being able to devote time to the things I love doing, like teaching, research -- and my too long neglected podcast! 

I began podcasting back in 2009, and in the early years I was fairly prolific, but as life took over, I produced fewer and fewer episodes. There have been a few false dawns before, but I am happy to say that this one seems to be real!

There are three new episodes so far, one for each of the last three weeks. These are the new episodes:

NT Pod 100: New Ways Through the Maze

NT Pod 101: 100 Bible Films: In Conversation with Matthew Page

NT Pod 102: Has Q Been Discovered?

Eps. 100 and 102 are both the traditional short episodes with me talking about something, but Ep. 101 is an extended episode featuring a conversation with the brilliant Matthew Page about his new BFI book on Bible Films. Episode 103 is currently in what they call "post production" (it's another extended episode), but it will be out by the end of the week. 

To coincide with the NT Pod's resurrection, I've been finding ways of making it easier to find. It's now on Amazon Music, Spotify, and Google Podcasts, as well as Apple Podcasts, where it has always had a home (back when it was iTunes, and iTunes U). 

And today, I finished the Herculean task of getting the entire archive uploaded to Youtube. You can find every episode now on my Youtube Channel, @podacre. Please head over there to subscribe if you'd like to see some of the forthcoming video episodes of the NT Pod. 

As well as the Facebook and Twitter pages, there is now a new Instagram page. So if you'd like to stay bang up to date, please follow one of these. And huge thanks to Lauren Aguilar for her work on the NT Pod's social media profile in recent weeks. 

I am hugely grateful too to Viola Goodacre for the revised version of the NT Pod logo.

Theodore J. (Ted) Weeden Obituary

Many thanks to Ken Olson for sending over the sad news of the death of Theodore J. Weeden. His obituary is here:

Rev. Dr. Theodore (Ted) Weeden

Weeden's Mark: Traditions in Conflict was one of the first books of academic Biblical Studies I read as an undergraduate student in Oxford. I was doing the Mark's Gospel paper with Canon John Fenton at Christ Church, and I think it was the second essay (of eight) that asked us to explore Mark's portrait of the disciples, still a perennial question. 

I hadn't heard anything of Theodore Weeden for many years until one day, on the old "Crosstalk" email list (dedicated to the study of the historical Jesus), a certain "Ted Weeden" began posting. One of us asked, "Are you, by any chance, related to Theodore J. Weeden, author of Mark: Traditions in Conflict?" "The very same!" he replied. 

In the early 2000s, Weeden began attending the SBL Annual Meeting, and when I was organizing a panel on Richard Bauckham (et al)'s book about gospel communities, I invited Weeden to participate. I was delighted that he accepted, and I well remember the fondness with which he was greeted by the packed room, all of whom knew his classic book. 

As the obituary above mentions, he was involved with the Jesus Seminar and the Westar Institute in his later years, and he became very interested in Historical Jesus research. One of the most interesting contributions was his critique of Kenneth Bailey's model of "informal controlled oral tradition", which built on observations made by Ken Olson. 

Dr Laura Robinson's Crocheted Dolls

 Lots of readers will know Laura Robinson from the podcast she co-hosts with Ian Mills, New Testament Review. Others will know her from her hugely popular Twitter posts. Perhaps fewer readers will know her as a master crocheter, and on the day of her recent PhD defense (congratulations, Laura!), she did an interview with Trinity Communications at Duke. Today's Duke Daily newsletter draws attention to this, and here is the feature:

Crocheted Dolls by Class of 2023 Ph.D. Highlight Women in Christianity

June 13, 2023

Shaun King, Trinity Communications

Here's the video:

Is Mary, the Mother of Jesus at the cross and the tomb in Matthew?

It is sometimes pointed out that Mary, the Mother of Jesus, could be present at the cross, burial, and resurrection in Mark 15.40, 15.47, and 16.1. Although there are significant variants, the relevant character is generally read as

Mark 15.40: Μαρία ἡ Ἰακώβου τοῦ μικροῦ καὶ Ἰωσῆτος μήτηρ (Mary mother of James the younger and of Joses)

Mark 15.47: Μαρία ἡ Ἰωσῆτος (Mary of Joses)

Mark 16.1: Μαρία ἡ τοῦ Ἰακώβου (Mary of James)

Most commentators assume that this second Mary in Mark's list is the same woman each time, though it's confusing that Mark varies the way he names her. Some have postulated that this is the same woman as Mary the mother of Jesus, given that Mark tells us that Jesus's brothers included a James and a Joses (Mark 6.3), and Joses was not a particularly common name. This would then align Mark interestingly with John who famously does have "his mother" at the cross (John 19.25).

I think the first time I saw this identification was in Kathleen Corley's work, though I know it has subsequently popped up elsewhere.

In general, Matthew receives much less comment when it comes to this question, but while writing about female disciples in Matthew recently, it occurred to me that Matthew is even more likely than Mark to be depicting the mother of Jesus at the cross, the burial, and the resurrection. 

Matthew has parallels to all three of the Marcan passages above, though he has no Salome, and he has "the mother of the sons of Zebedee" in his parallel to Mark 15.40-41 in Matt. 27.55-56. But the other person in the lists he describes in the following ways:

Matt. 27.56: Μαρία ἡ τοῦ Ἰακώβου καὶ Ἰωσὴφ μήτηρ (Mary mother of James and Joseph)

Matt. 27.61: ἡ ἄλλη Μαρία (the other Mary)

Matt. 28.1: ἡ ἄλλη Μαρία (the other Mary)

Matt. 27.56 is pretty similar to Mark 15.40. James is no longer "the small", and "Joses" becomes "Joseph", as in Matt. 13.55, his parallel to Mark 6.3, so the same possibility obtains, that this could be Jesus's mother. With respect to Matt. 27.61 and 28.1, I have always thought that Matthew got a bit impatient with Mark's variations, and so went with the simple, "the other Mary", as if to say, "Whoever that might have been".

But it occurred to me recently that there are probably only two Marys in the whole of Matthew's gospel, Mary Magdalene (Matt. 27.56, 27.61, 28.1) and Mary the mother of Jesus (Matt. 1.16, 1.20, 1.24, 2.11, 13.55). So if we were thinking Matthew-wide of a "Mary Magdalene" and "the other Mary", the latter would clearly be the mother of Jesus. Leaving Matt. 27.56 to one side, she is the only "other Mary" in Matthew's gospel. 

The thing that is so baffling about Mark, and it now seems Matthew too, is why they are so coy about naming Jesus's mother here, all the more as Luke (Acts 1.14) and John (19.25) have no qualms about placing her in Jerusalem either during (John) or after (Acts) the Passion. It could be part of that distancing from Jesus's family that we see especially in Mark (Mark 3.21, 3.31-35, 6.1-6) but also in Matthew (Matt. 12.46-50, 13.53-58). Or could it simply be that Jesus, at this point in the narrative, has died, and so his mother is not defined in relation to him?

I don't think I'd quite realized how potentially simple the Marcan and Matthean pictures are -- only two women named Mary, one named Mary Magdalene, and "the other" the mother of Jesus, James, Joseph / Joses, and the rest. I wonder whether Luke and John, with their additional Marys (Mary and Martha, Mary of Clopas) can cause us to miss this?

Counting the Twelve (or so) Disciples

Michael Goulder once said that New Testament scholars often substitute counting for thinking, and I confess to enjoying some counting myself. I'm writing about the disciples in John's Gospel at the moment, and found myself writing that John (son of Zebedee) is the disciple mentioned most often in the Synoptics after Peter. So then I had to check to see if that is true, and it is.

It's likely that someone else has done a similar count, but if so, I couldn't find it, and Googling was useless. Anyway, here are the figures. These are numbers of appearances of each disciple (of the "twelve"; more to come on others), and not the number of times their names appear (thus passages in which disciples' names appear multiple times are counted once; "sons of Zebedee" = James and John; the Peter list includes "Simon" and "Simon Peter").

Simon Peter: 40 (Matt: 12; Mark: 14; Luke: 14):

Matt. 4.18, 10.2, 14.28-33, 16.13-20, 16.21-23, 17.1-8, 17.24-27, 18.21-22, 19.27-30, 26.31-35, 26.36-46, 26.58 and 69-75.

Mark 1.16-20, 1.29-31, 1.36, 3.16, 5.37, 8.31-3, 9.2-8, 10.28-31, 11.20-24, 13.3, 14.26-31, 14.32-42, 14.54 and 14.66-72, 16.7.

Luke 4.38-39, 5.1-11, 6.14, 8.45R, 8.51, 9.18-20, 9.28-36, 12.41, 18.28-30, 22.7-13, 22.31-34, 22.54-62, 24.12, 24.34.

James: 18 (Matt: 5; Mark: 8; Luke: 5):

Matt. 4.21, 10.2, 17.1-8, 20.20-28, 26.36-46 (plus one bonus appearance from mum in 27.56).

Mark 1.16-20, 1.29-31, 3.17, 5.37, 9.2-8, 10.35-45, 13.3, 14.32-42.

Luke 5.10, 6.14, 8.51, 9.28-36, 9.51-56.

John: 21 (Matt: 5; Mark: 9; Luke: 7):

Matt. 4.21, 10.2, 17.1-8, 20.20-28, 26.36-46 (plus one bonus appearance from mum in 27.56).

Mark 1.16-20, 1.29-31, 3.17, 5.37, 9.2-8, 9.38-41, 10.35-45, 13.3, 14.32-42.

Luke 5.10, 6.14, 8.51, 9.28-36, 9.49-50, 9.51-56, 22.7-13. 

Andrew: 7 (Matt: 2; Mark: 4; Luke: 1):

Matt. 4.18, 10.2. 

Mark 1.16-20, 1.29-31, 3.18, 13.3.

Luke 6.14. 

Judas: 13 (Matt: 5; Mark: 4; Luke: 4)

Matt. 10.4, 26.14-16, 26.20-25, 26.47-56, 27.3-10.

Mark 3.19, 14.10-11, 14.17-21, 14.43-52.

Luke 6.16, 22.3-6, 22.21-23, 22.47-53.

Matthew: 4 (Matt: 9.9-10; Matt. 10.3 // Mark 3.18 // Luke 6.15)

Everyone else appears only in the disciple lists (Philip, Bartholomew, Thomas, James son of Alphaeus, Thaddaeus / Lebbaeus / Judas son of James, Simon the Cananaean / Zealot, Matt. 10.2-4 // Mark 3.13-19 // Luke 6.12-16). 

It should be easy to arrange the data above synoptically too, and then to add figures for John and Acts. I'll do that soon. 

Turin Shroud on the Sunday Programme

While writing my previous post on Talking About Jesus Films on the Sunday Programme, I ran a quick search on previous posts about Radio 4's Sunday Programme, and I didn't find one from when I was last a guest, talking about the Turin Shroud with Ed Stourton, a few years ago. I looked it up and found it, so for the sake of completeness, here is that episode:

BBC Radio 4 Sunday, 21 June 2015

The interview with me about the Turin Shroud begins at 11:53. On this occasion, I was at the studio in Salford, and not on the phone. 

Talking about Jesus Films on the Sunday Programme

 I did a short interview with Emily Buchanan on BBC Radio 4's Sunday programme last week. The topic was Jesus films, and we touch on the possibility of a new Martin Scorsese Jesus film, on The Chosen, and on several of the classics like Jesus of Nazareth, Jesus Christ Superstar, and Life of Brian. We also touch on the probably apocryphal story of John Wayne, in The Greatest Story Ever Told, "saying it with awe" (see previous posts on this topic here). 

Here's a link to the BBC iPlayer episode, which you can also download as a podcast:

BBC Radio 4: Sunday, 4 June 2023

The interview with me begins at about 5:10. 

Jesus' Activity in the Gospels: "only some three weeks"?

There is an idea attributed to B. H. Streeter (1874-1937) that attempts to articulate how much time Jesus' narrated ministry, in the canonical gospels, actually takes up. He is reported to have said that the action described in the gospels, with the exception of the Temptation story, would actually only occupy about three weeks. The point he is apparently making is a good if rather obvious one -- that what is narrated about Jesus' life in the Synoptics and John, even if it is were all historical, amounts to the tiniest fraction of Jesus' life. 

But did Streeter actually say this, and if so, when and where? I have been searching for the origins of the idea, and the earliest reference I can find is the following:

"They [the gospels] are extremely brief - B. H. Streeter once cal­culated that, apart from the forty days and nights in the wilderness (of which we are told virtually nothing) everything reported to have been said and done by Jesus in all four gospels would have occupied only some three weeks, which leaves the overwhelmingly greater part of his life and deeds unrecorded."

This is from Dennis Nineham, "Epilogue", in John Hick (ed.), The Myth of God Incarnate (London: SCM, 1977), 186-204 (188-9). I can't find the idea that he attributes to Streeter in any of his written works, and Nineham himself does not reference it, so is Nineham reporting an oral tradition? As far as I can tell, Nineham himself did not learn directly from Streeter. Although Nineham did go to Oxford, he was too young to have met Streeter -- only 16 years old when Streeter died in a plane crash in 1937.

On twitter, Brandon Massey speculated that Nineham might have picked it up from his teacher, R. H. Lightfoot, who perhaps reported this as a Streeter comment, which I think sounds quite plausible. 

It is also possible that the "three weeks" comment is a mis-remembered or mis-applied distortion of something that Streeter actually said. What is making me wonder here is that Streeter does in fact talk about "three weeks" in a related context:

Now of the last journey to Jerusalem, and the events of Passion Week, Mark presents a clear, detailed, and coherent account; and this, dealing with the events of, at the outside, three weeks, occupies about one-third of the whole Gospel. The rest of the Gospel is clearly a collection of detached stories as indeed tradition affirms it to be; and the total number of incidents recorded is so small that the gaps in the story must be the more considerable part of it. (B. H. Streeter, The Four Gospels (London: Macmillan, 1924), 424).

And if Streeter thought that Mark's Passion Narrative occupied "three weeks", could he also have maintained that "everything reported to have been said and done by Jesus in all four gospels would have occupied only some three weeks"? So we are now at at least six weeks, and there is clearly a contradiction here, unless the oral tradition also forgets the "three weeks" of the Passion Narrative.

Chasing down oral traditions is notoriously difficult since they only survive, before and outside of oral / aural recordings, in the writings in which they are represented, but this case provides an interesting analogy to first century Jesus research. Nineham's comment in 1977 is at least forty years removed from when the historical Streeter may or may not have made these remarks, rather as Mark is at least forty years removed from what he reports about Jesus, whose actual lifetime contained a great deal more activity than is reported in (pseudo?)-Streeter's "three weeks". 

Interview with Ariel Sabar on the NT Pod

Over on my podcast, I enjoyed a conversation earlier today with Ariel Sabar, author of Veritas: A Harvard Professor, A Con Man and the Gospel of Jesus's Wife. It is an hour and thirteen minutes long and you can find it here:

NT Pod 95: Interview with Ariel Sabar, Author of Veritas (mp3) 

Or go to that page to find links to Apple Podcasts, Duke's Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, etc. 

The book is: Ariel Sabar, Veritas: A Harvard Professor, A Con Man and the Gospel of Jesus's Wife (New York: Doubleday, 2020)

This is the sixth in a series of podcasts on the Gospel of Jesus's Wife. The links to the others are here:

NT Pod 87: What is the Gospel of Jesus's Wife?

NT Pod 88: Is the Gospel of Jesus's Wife a forgery?

NT Pod 89: How was the forgery of the Gospel of Jesus's Wife proved?

NT Pod 90: How was the forgery of the Gospel of Jesus's Wife confirmed?

NT Pod 94: Review of Ariel Sabar's Veritas

Previous NT blog posts on the Gospel of Jesus's wife (55 or so) are here (most recent first):

NT Blog: Gospel of Jesus's Wife

"Tahime . . . She's true and not fake!"

Over the last eight years or so of blogging about the Gospel of Jesus's Wife, I have occasionally thought about posting a piece of fun speculation. Every time I think about it, I think "Shall I post this?" and then I think, "Nah; it's stupid. Move on." To be fair, I often think that about a lot of things. 

I probably would have forgotten all about it if it were not for one of the journalists covering the Jesus's Wife story seriously wondering if there might be something in it when I told her about it for a laugh. Even so, they wisely did not publish on something so speculative. Andrew Bernhard and I have talked about this occasionally, and after chatting about it this morning, I have decided there is nothing to lose at this point in airing my fun speculation.

So I preface this with the comment: this speculation is probably ridiculous! 

But here's the thing. The Urban Dictionary allows people to go in and create words and definitions of the kind of everyday slang that would never find its way into proper dictionaries. Back in September 2012, I was wondering how easy it would be for a forger to find the Coptic phrase tahime ("my wife") on the internet given that it would not have been possible for the forger to find it in Coptic Thomas. So I googled the transliterated tahime and found very little except this, in Urban Dictionary:

Tahime

She is a girl that is very unique, cool ,calm, and a little bit loud. She has a temper. She is so pretty and very beautiful. She always has little self-confidence because she doesn't feel accepted or pretty. She thinks nobody likes her. That isnt [sic] true. She is loved by everyone! She is a sensitive girl and tries to make everyone happy. She doesn't bitch at people. SHE IS SOOO FUNNY!!! She is true and not fake. She will be your best friend till forever. She sometimes may act a little cocky and nerdy. She is so random at times but it will make you laugh. She loves friends.

"Hey that girl is so Tahime." "You mean she's unique?" "HELL YEAH BRO! "

I wouldn't have given it a second look but for a couple of things. "She is true and not fake" made me wonder, and then there is the author / date stamp:

 by goo goo gaa gaa 456 December 07, 2011

Karen King's article gave the date of the owner's visit to Harvard, to hand over the fragment, as "December 2011", the same month that this entry was added to Urban Dictionary by "goo goo gaa gaa 456". Sabar dates the visit to December 14, 2011, within a week of the entry appearing.

There is no evidence that I can find anywhere that Tahime has any such meaning. Absolutely nobody uses it that way. And in so far as Tahime crops up, it is as a male name (e.g. the character "Tahime Sanders" in Life of a King), and not a female slang term.

It is, of course, highly likely to be a coincidence. This is just some random entry by who-knows-who? about who-knows-who? in what is probably an in-joke that will never be known to others.

Yet one of the things that made me dismiss the possibility of a link every time I considered it was that I couldn't imagine the forger of the fragment being so playful, and imitating, in a rather irritating way, how he imagines young people speak. I was working on the assumption that his motivation was financial given all the talk about selling the manuscripts in King's article. But now, having read Sabar's Veritas, I can't help wondering again if Fritz might just have done this in another attempt at humour. There are so many playful elements that Sabar reveals, including Fritz's love of Monty Python, and his use of "abdicate" in his interlinear, that I am now wondering if it is really quite as ridiculous as I had first thought that this too could be a playful addition by the forger himself.

This blog post will self-destruct as soon as someone points out the flaw in the comments below!

* "The current owner contacted Karen L. King via email requesting that she look at the fragment to determine its content. The owner then delivered the papyrus by hand to Harvard Divinity School in December, 2011, and generously gave permission to publish" (Karen King, "Jesus said to them . . . " draft, September 17 2012, p. 3).

Ariel Sabar's Veritas, and the latest on the Gospel of Jesus's Wife

Regular readers will know that I have posted many, many times over the years on the Gospel of Jesus's Wife, whether breaking news, offering round-ups of the latest news, or hosting contributions from others like Andrew Bernhard and Francis Watson. I have just finished reading Ariel Sabar's remarkable new book about the affair, and I realized that it's time, once again, to return to this topic.

The new book is out today, and I strongly encourage you to read it. It's very, very good: Ariel Sabar, Veritas: A Harvard Professor, A Con Man and the Gospel of Jesus's Wife (New York: Doubleday, 2020). I have podcasted my thoughts here:

NT Pod 94: Review of Ariel Sabar's Veritas (mp3) 

In providing this update, I realized that I hadn't also drawn attention to earlier podcasts in the series, which I released as classes were all going online in March in the wake of the pandemic. (I was at the time teaching my Non-canonical Gospels class). Here are some links to those podcasts:

NT Pod 87: What is the Gospel of Jesus's Wife?

NT Pod 88: Is the Gospel of Jesus's Wife a forgery?

NT Pod 89: How was the forgery of the Gospel of Jesus's Wife proved?

NT Pod 90: How was the forgery of the Gospel of Jesus's Wife confirmed?

I realize that podcasts are not to everyone's tastes, and the good news is that there is already some excellent academic commentary on the release of Sabar's book. I would draw special attention to the following:

Interview with Ariel Sabar about his new book, Veritas

James McGrath (ReligionProf Blog)

How a Star Harvard Professor Got Suckered by Jesus' Wife

Candida Moss (Daily Beast; not her title!)

Ariel Sabar's Veritas: Some First Reactions

Brent Nongbri (Variant Readings Blog)

More to come!

Trump and Fatigue

Over the last twenty years or so, I have occasionally drawn attention to "the phenomenon of fatigue", according to which one can see an author making characteristic changes to a source at the beginning of a passage, only to lapse into the wording of the source later on. I have argued that one can see this in Matthew's use of Mark, Luke's use of Mark, Luke's use of Matthew, the Protevangelium of James's use of Matthew and Luke, and Hypostasis of the Archons's use of Genesis (the latter forthcoming). [*Links at the bottom of this post.]

When I am teaching, I of course like to use contemporary analogies for the phenomenon, and one of my favourites comes from the adaptation of one of Enid Blyton's Noddy books for television. But yesterday, I noticed a good example of the phenomenon in Trump's remarks on the coronavirus in his Press Briefing.





Trump likes to call coronavirus "the China virus". It is a typical (and profoundly problematic) trope of his, and although in the earlier briefings, he was beginning to drop the use of the term, it has come back in a major way in the renewed briefings this week.

In yesterday's briefing, Trump was clearly reading from a script that had been prepared for him, but he also appeared to be editing it on the hoof, substituting "China virus" every time that "coronavirus" appeared. Until, later in the speech, he lapses into the wording of the script, and he accidentally says "coronavirus". I quote here from the relevant sections of the speech, in order (full transcript here):

Thank you very much.  Thank you, everybody. Thank you. 

We’ve had a tremendous week uniting the country in our fight against the China virus.  I have reminded people of the importance of masks when you can’t socially distance, in particular.  A strong message has been sent out to young people to stop going to crowded bars and other crowded places . . . . 

. . . .And I said, “There’s nothing more important in our country than keeping our people safe, whether that’s from the China virus or the radical-left mob that you see in Portland” — where I want to thank Homeland Security and others in law enforcement for doing a fantastic job over the last few days . . . . 

. . . . Our goal is to protect our teachers and students from the China virus while ensuring that families with high-risk factors can continue to participate from home.  Very important . . . .  

. . . . Fortunately, the data shows that children are lower risk from the China virus, very substantially.  When children do contact the virus, they often have only very mild symptoms or none at all, and medical complications are exceedingly rare.  Those that do face complications often have underlying medical conditions.  Ninety-nine percent of all China virus hospitalizations are adults.  And 99.96 percent of all fatalities are adults.  That means that children are a tiny percentage — less than 1 percent, and even a small percentage of 1 percent. 

In a typical year, the flu results in more deaths of those under 18 in the United States than have been lost thus far to the coronavirus.  Many different names.  Many, many different names . . . . 

. . . . We’re asking Congress to provide $105 billion to schools as part of the next coronavirus relief bill.  This funding will support mitigation measures, such as smaller class sizes, more teachers and teacher aides, repurposing spaces to practice social distancing, and crucially, mask-wearing. 

Trump uses his idiosyncratic, problematic term "China virus" five times in the speech, and I think that each time he is editing "coronavirus" on the hoof, substituting the Trump term for the normal, accepted term. But then he lapses. He uses the correct, universally accepted term "coronavirus", and immediately realizes what he has done, and qualifies with "Many different names. Many, many different names", a standard Trump qualification for when he has veered away from his intended language. From here, he then uses "coronavirus" one more time, in the name of the "coronavirus relief bill", and "China virus" does not recur.

* Links:

Mark Goodacre, "Fatigue in the Synoptics", New Testament Studies 44 (1998): 45-58
NT Pod 39: "Fatigue in the Synoptics