Here’s a fun blog post by former religion editor for Time Magazine Dick Ostling, now blogging his way into or in retirement. He correctly characterizes the three ring circus that is the SBL/AAR convention upcoming—–

“Each year, thousands upon thousands of religion scholars assemble during the days preceding Thanksgiving for simultaneous conventions of the American Academy of Religion (AAR) and the professional counterpart for Scripture specialists, the Society of Biblical Literature (SBL). This year, the two organizations gather November 17-20, in Denver. Coverage this month, or planned for a year hence, is a good investment for forward-looking media with the cash and the interest.

The Religion Guy has attended several of these egghead extravaganzas and attests that it’s no simple task. The 300 pages of program listings accessible here (.pdf) and here (.pdf) offer many #MEGO (my eyes glaze over) sessions aimed at specialists. But you’ll discover journalistic wheat amid the hyper-technical chaff, usually concepts for future stories rather than breaking news (though one year The Guy scored a dandy AP spot story).

Equally important, you can prowl the exhibit hall and corridors to greet and collect contact info from a dizzying variety of expert sources. AAR’s communications director Amy Parker can facilitate coverage of both the AAR and SBL (phone 404-727-1401 or email via that website mentioned above).

The two conventions are such a magnet that several organizations schedule meetings in conjunction with the big show, as in the following examples.

Speakers at the Biblical Archaeology Review “fest” November 16-18 will range from star skeptic Bart Ehrman to evangelical exegete Ben Witherington. This magazine is in the business of translating historical disputes for non-specialists and it’s must reading for reporters who want to follow such developments.

Westar Institute, whose much-publicized “Jesus Seminar” strived to debunk New Testament authenticity, will meet November 16 on two follow-up projects, promoting varied movements that fought orthodoxy in Christianity’s early centuries, and pondering “post-theism,” including this: “Why should we talk about God at all?”

If The Guy were in Denver he’d pursue trends in two relatively unknown conservative groups, the Evangelical Theological Society (ETS), which gathers November 13-15, followed by the Institute for Biblical Research (IBR), meeting November 16-19.

ETS, the older and larger of the two, asks members to affirm that “the Bible in its entirety is the Word of God written and is therefore inerrant in the autographs.” That last word refers to the original writings, no longer in existence, that are the basis for the texts we know. IBR members, who work in “an evangelical context,” affirm “the unique divine inspiration, integrity, and authority of the Bible.”

So, why do evangelical Bible scholars have two separate organizations? You could ask ETS President David Dockery, leader of Trinity International University and formerly of Union University, and IBR President Tremper Longman III of Westmont College. IBR’s sessions (also Westar’s) are included in the SBL program book, but not those for ETS.

IBR mostly discusses trends in biblical scholarship, whereas ETS has a few items with more hard news potential. Topics there include the oldie of why so many evangelicals support President Donald Trump, also religious liberty for Muslims, and conservatives’ controversial Nashville Statement on sexual and gender morality.

A session on “sexual abuse, gender and power” hosts attorney Rachael Denhollander, who led the #MeToo takedowns at U.S. Gymnastics and Michigan State University and sharply criticizes some Protestant churches.

Oh, yes. Good luck booking a hotel room.”

The two fundamentals listed in post one are independent of each other, in the sense that Fredricksen could be right about 1) and wrong about 2) or vice versa. In fact I think she is seriously mistaken about the first (here we go again with reading Paul through Schweitzerian eschatology just when we thought his ghost had been exorcised from the Pauline discussion) and is mostly wrong about the second one (Paul remained within the pre-existing spectrum of early Judaism) It is amazing to see the tired old view of Weiss and Schweitzer recycled yet again by a very diverse group of contemporary scholars— besides Fredricksen, there is Allison and Ehrman for example. But in any case, she is right that there were Christ-following assemblies set up by Paul which were in competition with synagogues in the Empire in some respects.

As becomes apparent early on in the book (see e.g. p. 2) Fredricksen wants to argue that Paul did not take the message about Jesus to Jews, but rather specifically to pagans, almost exclusively. In order to come to this conclusion a good deal of exegetical gymnastics are required, not only in regard to the book of Acts, but also even in regard to the capital Pauline letters specifically Galatians, the Corinthian correspondence, Romans, Philippians, and 1 Thessalonians too.

For example, 1 Cor. 7.18 refers to circumcised believers within his Corinthian ekklesia. Fredricksen argues that these could be proselytes who got themselves circumcised before following Jesus. Really? But proselytes who get themselves circumcised and keep the laws of Moses are simply Jews, like those who are Jews by birth. And in any case, only two chapters later Paul in 1 Cor. 9.20 talks about becoming a Jew to the Jew in order to win Jews! Not just proselytes or God-fearers, Jews. Win them to what or whom? He tells us plainly enough—win them to Christ.

It is extraordinary that someone who once was a Pharisee could now say “to those under the Mosaic Law, I became as one under the Mosaic law (though I myself am not under the Law) so that I might win those under the Law. To those outside the Law…..” and so on. This is very clearly talking about Paul’s attempts to win both Jews and pagans to Christ, and no amount of exegetical gymnastics is going to be able to get around that fact. Paul is not talking about previously before his conversion being a missionary to Jews, trying to get them into Pharisaism either. As 1 Cor. 9.19 makes all too clear, he is talking about having currently ‘made myself a slave to all, so that I might (now) win more of them.’ (9.19).

Here’s an excellent post by my friend and colleague Larry Hurtado on the so-called mythical Jesus which I am reposting ten days after he first posted. See what you think.

Why the “Mythical Jesus” Claim Has No Traction with Scholars
by Larry Hurtado

The overwhelming body of scholars, in New Testament, Christian Origins, Ancient History, Ancient Judaism, Roman-era Religion, Archaeology/History of Roman Judea, and a good many related fields as well, hold that there was a first-century Jewish man known as Jesus of Nazareth, that he engaged in an itinerant preaching/prophetic activity in Galilee, that he drew to himself a band of close followers, and that he was executed by the Roman governor of Judea, Pontius Pilate.

These same scholars typically recognize also that very quickly after Jesus’ execution there arose among Jesus’ followers the strong conviction that God (the Jewish deity) had raised Jesus from death (based on claims that some of them had seen the risen Jesus). These followers also claimed that God had exalted Jesus to heavenly glory as the validated Messiah, the unique “Son of God,” and “Lord” to whom all creation was now to give obeisance.[i] Whatever they make of these claims, scholars tend to grant that they were made, and were the basis for pretty much all else that followed in the origins of what became Christianity.

The “mythical Jesus” view doesn’t have any traction among the overwhelming number of scholars working in these fields, whether they be declared Christians, Jewish, atheists, or undeclared as to their personal stance. Advocates of the “mythical Jesus” may dismiss this statement, but it ought to count for something if, after some 250 years of critical investigation of the historical figure of Jesus and of Christian Origins, and the due consideration of “mythical Jesus” claims over the last century or more, this spectrum of scholars have judged them unpersuasive (to put it mildly).

The reasons are that advocates of the “mythical Jesus” have failed to demonstrate expertise in the relevant data, and sufficient acquaintance with the methods involved in the analysis of the relevant data, and have failed to show that the dominant scholarly view (that Jesus of Nazareth was a real first-century figure) is incompatible with the data or less secure than the “mythical Jesus” claim. This is true, even of Richard Carrier’s recent mammoth (700+ pages) book, advertised as the first “refereed” book advocating this view.[ii] Advertisements for his book refer to the “assumption” that Jesus lived, but among scholars it’s not an assumption—it’s the fairly settled judgement of scholars based on 250 years of hard work on that and related questions.

You don’t have to read the 700+ pages of Carrier’s book, however, to see if it’s persuasive. To cite an ancient saying, you don’t have to drink the whole of the ocean to judge that it’s salty. Let’s take Carrier’s own summary of his key claims as illustrative of the recent “mythical Jesus” view. I cite from one of his blog-postings in which he states concisely his claims:

“that Christianity may have been started by a revealed [i.e., “mythical”] Jesus rather than a historical Jesus is corroborated by at least three things: the sequence of evidence shows precisely that development (from celestial, revealed Jesus in the Epistles, to a historical ministry in the Gospels decades later), all similar savior cults from the period have the same backstory (a cosmic savior, later historicized), and the original Christian Jesus (in the Epistles of Paul) sounds exactly like the Jewish archangel Jesus, who certainly did not exist. So when it comes to a historical Jesus, maybe we no longer need that hypothesis.”[iii]

Carrier’s three claims actually illustrate his lack of expertise in the relevant field, and show why his “mythical Jesus” doesn’t get much traction among scholars. Let’s start with the third claim. There is no evidence whatsoever of a “Jewish archangel Jesus” in any of the second-temple Jewish evidence. We have references to archangels, to be sure, and with various names such as Michael, Raphael, Yahoel, and Ouriel. We have references to other heavenly beings too, such as the mysterious Melchizedek in the Qumran texts. Indeed, in second-temple Jewish texts and (later) rabbinic texts there is a whole galaxy of named angels and angel ranks.[iv] But, I repeat, there is no such being named “Jesus.” Instead, all second-temple instances of the name are for historical figures.[v] So, the supposed “background” figure for Carrier’s “mythical” Jesus is a chimaera, an illusion in Carrier’s mind based on a lack of first-hand familiarity with the ancient Jewish evidence.[vi]

Now let’s consider his second claim, that “all similar savior cults from the period” feature “a cosmic savior, later historicized.” All? That’s quite a claim! So, for example, Isis? She began as a local Egyptian deity and her cult grew in popularity and distribution across the Roman world in the first century or so AD, but she never came to be treated as a historical woman. How about her Egyptian consort Osiris? Again, a deity who remained . . . a deity, and didn’t get “historicized” as a man of a given date. Mithras? Ditto. Cybele? Ditto. Artemis? Ditto. We could go on, but it would get tedious to do so. Carrier’s cavalier claim is so blatantly fallacious as to astonish anyone acquainted with ancient Roman-era religion.[vii] There is in fact no instance known to me (or to other experts in Roman-era religion) in “all the savior cults of the period” of a deity that across time got transformed into a mortal figure of a specific time and place, such as is alleged happened in the case of Jesus.[viii]

OK, so two strikes already, and one claim yet to consider: a supposed shift from Jesus as “a celestial being” (with no earthly/human existence) in Paul’s letters to “a historical ministry in the Gospels decades later.” The claim reflects a curiously distorted (and simplistic) reading of both bodies of texts. Let’s first look at the NT Gospels.

It’s commonly accepted that the Gospel of John is the latest of them (with differences of scholarly opinion on the literary relationship of GJohn to the others), and that perhaps as much as a decade or more separates the earliest (usually thought to be GMark) from GJohn. So, on Carrier’s claim, we might expect a progressively greater “historicization” of Jesus, and less emphasis on him as “a celestial being,” in GJohn. Which is precisely not the case—actually, the opposite. Most readers of GJohn readily note that, in comparison with the “Synoptic” Gospels, the text makes much more explicit and emphatic Jesus’ heavenly origins, his share in divine glory, etc., right from the opening chapter onward with its reference to the “Logos” as agent of creation and who “became flesh” and “dwelt among us” (1:1-5, 14).

In contrast, GMark simply narrates an account of Jesus’ itinerant ministry of teaching, performing exorcisms and healings, conflicts with critics, and then a lengthy account of his fateful final trip to Jerusalem. There are allusions or hints in GMark that Jesus’ larger identity and significance surpass what the other characters in the account realize, as, e.g., in the cries of recognition by the various demoniacs. But Jesus has a mother, brothers and sisters (3:31-32; 6:3), is portrayed as known local boy in his hometown (6:1-6), and to all the other human characters in the narrative Jesus is variously a prophet, teacher, blasphemer, Messiah, or criminal. Most indicative that the Jesus of GMark is a genuine mortal is the account of his crucifixion, his death, and burial of his “corpse” (Mark’s clinically precise term, 15:45). Whatever his higher significance or transcendent identity, in GMark Jesus is at least quite evidently a real mortal man.[ix] Now, to be sure, GMark (as all the NT Gospels) presupposes that intended readers also regard Jesus as the exalted “Lord”. But the story the Gospels tell emphasizes his historic activity.

As far as the other “Synoptic” Gospels are concerned (GMatthew and GLuke), it’s commonly accepted that they took GMark as inspiration, pattern and key source, each of them, however, producing a distinctive “rendition” (to use a musical term) of the basic narrative. GMatthew, for example, emphasizes Jesus’ Jewishness, adds a birth narrative with lots of allusions/connections to OT texts, and gathers up traditions of Jesus’ teachings into five large discourse blocks. GLuke, writing, it appears, more for a Gentile readership and with more of a nod to generic features of Greek history and biography of the time, inserts dates (3:1-2), and has his own birth narrative and genealogy that links Jesus more to world history.

But the overall point here is that across the years in which the Gospels were composed, there isn’t a trajectory from a “celestial being” with no earthly existence to a “historicized” man. If anything, the emphasis goes in the opposite direction.[x] Certainly, it appears to most scholars that the Gospels reflect the growth of legendary material about Jesus, the birth narratives being a prime example. But legendary embellishment is what happens to high-impact historical figures, and doesn’t signal that the figures are “mythical”.

One further point about the Gospels. Yes, a few decades separate them from the time of Jesus’ execution under Pontius Pilate and from the commonly accepted dates of Paul’s undisputed letters. The NT Gospels, with their bios-shaped narratives do mark a noteworthy development in the history of earliest Christian literature.[xi] But it’s dubious to posit that they mark some major departure theologically from earlier Christian beliefs about Jesus.[xii] Instead, they echo and develop the crucifixion-resurrection focus that we see in our earliest texts, drawing upon the emergent biographical genre to produce a noteworthy “literaturization” of the gospel message.

And some 250 years of critical study of the Gospels has continued to show that they draw upon various earlier sources, both written and oral that had been circulating for decades, including collections of sayings and disputations of Jesus, likely also a body of miracle stories, and narratives of Jesus’ crucifixion. Indeed, the Gospels (especially their variations in their respective accounts) reflect multiple and varied stories and traditions about Jesus that were taught and transmitted across the decades between Jesus’ execution and the composition of these texts. Which means that treating Jesus as the Messiah and exalted Lord whose teachings and earthly actions were significant did not begin with the Gospel writers, but has its roots deeply back into the earlier decades. The earmarks of the traditions on which the Gospel writers drew are there and have been readily perceived by scholars for a long time, whatever differences there are among scholars about precisely the form and extent of these traditions. Treating Jesus as a historical figure didn’t commence late or with the authors of the Gospels.

But, in a sense, the “mythical Jesus” focus on the Gospels is a bit of a red-herring. For the far earlier references to an earthly/mortal Jesus are in the earliest Christian texts extant: the several letters that are commonly undisputed as composed by the Apostle Paul.[xiii] These take us back much earlier, typically dated sometime between the late 40s and the early 60s of the first century. So Carrier’s final claim to consider is whether Paul’s letters reflect a view of Jesus as simply an angelic, “celestial” being with no real historical existence.

Unquestionably, Paul affirms and reflects a “high” view of Jesus, as the true Messiah, the unique Son of God, and the exalted Lord to whom now God requires obeisance by all creation.[xiv] After his initially vigorous opposition to the young Jesus-movement, he had an experience that he regarded a divine revelation, which confirmed to him Jesus’ exalted status and validity as God’s unique “Son” (Galatians 1:14-16), after which he became a trans-national exponent of the claims about Jesus. Corresponding to this, and still more remarkable in light of Paul’s firm Jewish heritage and continuing self-identity, his letters reflect a developed devotional pattern in which the resurrected and exalted Jesus features programmatically along with God as recipient and focus.[xv]

But for Paul and those previous Jesus-followers whom he had initially opposed prior to the “revelation” that turned him in a new direction, Jesus was initially a Jewish male contemporary. It was what they took to be God’s resurrection and exaltation of the crucified Jesus that generated their view of him as having a heavenly status. And, in keeping with ancient apocalyptic logic (final things = first things), God’s heavenly exaltation of him as Messiah and Lord generated the conviction that he had been “there” with God from creation, as “pre-existent”.[xvi] So, there are two major corrections to make to the claim espoused by Carrier.

First, Paul never refers to Jesus as an angel or archangel.[xvii] Indeed, a text such as Romans 8:38-39 seems to make a sharp distinction between angelic powers and the exalted Kyrios Jesus. Moreover, although Paul shares the early Christian notion that the historical figure, Jesus had a heavenly back-story or divine “pre-existence” (e.g., Philippians 2:6-8), this in no way worked against Paul’s view of Jesus as also a real, historical human being.

And, secondly, there is abundant confirmation that for Paul Jesus real historical existence was even crucial. Perhaps the most obvious text to cite is 1 Corinthians 15:1-11, where Paul recites a tradition handed to him and then handed by him to the Corinthians, that recounts Jesus’ death (v. 3), his burial (v. 4), and then also his resurrection and appearances to several named people and a host of unnamed people. Now, whatever one makes of the references to Jesus’ resurrection and post-resurrection appearances, it’s clear that a death and burial requires a mortal person. It would be simply special pleading to try to convert the reference to Jesus’ death and burial into some sort of event in the heavens or such.

Indeed, Paul repeatedly refers, not simply to Jesus’ death, but specifically to his crucifixion, which in Paul’s time was a particular form of execution conducted by Roman authorities against particular types of individuals found guilty of particular crimes. Crucifixion requires a historical figure, executed by historical authorities. Jesus’ historical death by crucifixion was crucial and central to Paul’s religious life and thought.[xviii] To cite one text from many, “We preach Christ crucified” (1 Cor. 1:23).

Or consider Paul’s explicit reference to Jesus as “born of a woman, born under the Law” (Galatians 4:4). Paul here clearly declares Jesus to have been born, as mortals are, from a mother, and, further, born of a Jewish mother “under the Law.”[xix] Birth from a mother, and death and burial—surely the two clearest indicators of mortal existence! Moreover, Paul considered Jesus to be specifically of Davidic descent (Romans 1:3), and likewise knew that Jesus’ activities were directed to his own Jewish people (Romans 15:8).[xx]

Paul refers to Jesus’ physical brothers (1 Corinthians 9:5) and to Jesus’ brother James in particular (Galatians 1:19). Contrary to mythicist advocates, the expression “brothers of the Lord” is never used for Jesus-followers in general, but in each case rather clearly designates a specific subset of individuals identified by their family relationship to Jesus.[xxi] Note particularly that in Paul’s uses, the expression “brothers of the Lord” distinguishes these individuals from other apostles and leading figures. The mythicist claim about the expression is a rather desperate stratagem.

Paul knows of a body of teachings ascribed to Jesus, and uses them on several occasions, as in 1 Corinthians 7:10-11, where he both invokes a specific teaching discouraging divorce, and also acknowledges that he has no saying of Jesus at other points and so has to give his own advice (e.g., 7:12). Rather clearly, the source of the sayings of Jesus was not some ready-to-hand revelation that could be generated, but instead a body of tradition that Paul had inherited. Certainly, Paul refers to his many visions and revelations (2 Corinthians 12:1), and even recounts one at length (vv. 2-10). But he also refers to a finite body of teachings of “the Lord” that derived from the earthly Jesus and were passed to him.

It would be tedious to prolong the matter. In Paul’s undisputed letters, written decades earlier than the Gospels we have clear evidence that the “Jesus” referred to is a historical figure who lived among fellow Jews in Roman Judea/Palestine, and was crucified by the Roman authority. There is no shift from a purely “celestial being” in Paul’s letters to a fictionalized historical figure in the Gospels. For both Paul and the Gospels, Jesus is both a historical figure and (now) the “celestial” figure exalted to God’s “right hand” in heaven. Whatever you make of him, the Jesus in all these texts is never less than a historical mortal (although in the light of the experiences of the risen Jesus he became much more).

We have examined each of Carrier’s three claims and found each of them readily falsified. It’s “three strikes you’re out” time. Game over.

There are much better reasons offered by people for finding Christian faith (or any kind of belief in God) too much of a stretch. The attempts to deny Jesus’ historical existence are, for anyone acquainted with the relevant evidence, blatantly silly. So, let those who want to argue for or against Christian faith do so on more serious grounds, and let those of us who do historical investigation of Jesus and Christian Origins practice our craft without having to deal with the strategems-masquerading-as-history represented by the mythical Jesus advocates.

[i] The validity of the claim that God resurrected Jesus and exalted him is beyond historical investigation to determine. But the early eruption of these claims is a historical datum not typically disputed.

[ii] Richard Carrier, On the Historicity of Jesus: Why We May Have Reason for Doubt (Sheffield Academic Press, 2014).

[iii] From a posting by Carrier: http://www.bibleinterp.com/articles/2014/08/car388028.shtml#sdfootnote1sym.

[iv] See, e.g., Saul M. Olyan, A Thousand Thousands Served Him: Exegesis and the Naming of Angels in Ancient Judaism (TSAJ 36; Tübingen: J. C. B. Mohr, 1993); and Michael Mach, Entwicklungsstadien des jüdischen Engelglaubens in vorrabinischer Zeit (TSAJ 34; Tübingen: J. C. B. Mohr, 1992); Maxwell J. Davidson, Angels At Qumran: A Comparative Study of 1 Enoch 1-36, 72-108 and Sectarian Writings From Qumran (JSPSup 11; Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1992); L. W. Hurtado, “Monotheism, Principal Angels, and the Background of Christology,” in The Oxford Handbook of the Dead Sea Scrolls, ed. Timothy H. Lim and John J. Collins (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010), 546-64; Paul J. Kobelski, Melchizedek and Melchiresa (CBQMS 10; Washington: The Catholic Biblical Association of America, 1981). Carrier refers to Philo, but Philo never mentions an archangel named “Jesus”. Philo makes a theological/conceptual distinction between the ineffable God and God revealed, and calls the latter God’s “Logos,” but he makes it clear that they don’t really comprise two separate beings.

[v] Tal Ilan, Lexicon of Jewish Names in Late Antiquity, Part 1: Palestine 300 BCE – 200 CE, TSAJ 91 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2002), gives a list of male and female Jewish names in second-temple evidence. Note also Margaret H. Williams, “Palestinian Jewish Personal Names in Acts,” in The Book of Acts in Its First Century Setting, Volume 4: The Book of Acts in Its Palestinian Setting, ed. Richard Bauckham (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1995), 79-113, who notes numerous instances of the name for figures referred to by Josephus, on ossuaries (sometimes the Aramaic form, Yeshua, sometimes the Greek form, Iesous). The name “Jesus” is an anglicized form of the Greek, Iesous, which in turn is a Graecized form of the Hebrew name, Yehoshua (“Joshua”), its Aramaic/shortened form, Yeshua. There are about ten individuals with the name in the Hebrew OT (usually translated “Joshua”), and others with the name “Jesus” in the Greek NT (Matt. 27:16; Col. 4:11; Luke 3:29). And note also the Jesus, the grandfather of the author of Ecclesiasticus (or the Wisdom of Jesus son of Sirach).

[vi] For a survey of the various types of “chief agent” figures in second-temple Jewish tradition, including high angels, see my book, One God, One Lord: Early Christian Devotion and Ancient Jewish Monotheism (3rd ed.; London: Bloomsbury T&T Clark, 2015; original edition, 1988). None of these figures, however, gives a full analogy for the programmatic place of Jesus in the devotional practices of earliest Christian circles.

[vii] See, e.g., Mary Beard, John North and Simon Price, Religions of Rome (2 vols; Cambridge University Press, 1998); Robert Turcan, The Cults of the Roman Empire, trans. Antonia Nevill (Oxford: Blackwell, 1996). On the many “mystery cults,” see now Jan N. Bremmer, Initiation into the Mysteries of the Ancient World (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2014).

[viii] Carrier seems to misconstrue the classic Euhemerist theory, which postulated that the various gods derive from ancient human heroes who across time developed into gods, not the opposite.

[ix] Among many studies of Mark’s presentation of Jesus, e.g., Elizabeth Struthers Malbon, Mark’s Jesus: Characterization as Narrative Christology (Waco: Baylor University Press, 2009).

[x] Perhaps the authors of the Gospels were concerned to re-assert the importance of the historical ministry of Jesus as indispensable. See Larry W. Hurtado, “Resurrection-Faith and the ‘Historical’ Jesus,” Journal for the Study of the Historical Jesus 11.1 (2013): 35-52; and my discussion of the Gospels as literary expressions of Jesus-devotion in my book, Lord Jesus Christ: Devotion to Jesus in Earliest Christianity (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2003), 259-347.

[xi] E.g., Larry W. Hurtado, “Gospel (Genre),” in Dictionary of Jesus and the Gospels, ed. J. B. Green, S McKnight and I. H. Marshall (Downers Grove: Inter-Varsity Press, 1992), 276-82; David E. Aune, The New Testament in Its Literary Environment (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1987); and more fully on the Gospels, R. A. Burridge, What Are the Gospels? A Comparison with Graeco-Roman Biography, SNTSMS 70 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992).

[xii] Larry W. Hurtado, “The Gospel of Mark: Evolutionary or Revolutionary Document?” Journal for the Study of the New Testament 40 (1990): 15-32.

[xiii] These are Romans, 1 Corinthians, 2 Corinthians, Galatians, Philippians, 1 Thessalonians, and Philemon. The other Pauline letters in the NT are judged by most scholars to be either posthumously produced in Paul’s name (especially Ephesians, 1 Timothy, 2 Timothy, and Titus), or are disputed as to authorship (especially Colossians and 2 Thessalonians).

[xiv] Matthew V. Novenson, Christ Among the Messiahs: Christ Language in Paul and Messiah Language in Ancient Judaism (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012), shows persuasively that in Paul’s usage “Christ” (Greek: Christos) retained the sense of “Messiah,” correcting an earlier scholarly view that the term had become an empty name for Jesus.

[xv] See my discussion of Pauline Christianity in my book, Lord Jesus Christ, 79-153; and my more concise treatment, L. W. Hurtado, “Paul’s Christology,” in The Cambridge Companion to St. Paul, ed. James D. G. Dunn (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 185-98.

[xvi] Larry W. Hurtado, “Pre-Existence,” in Dictionary of Paul and His Letters, ed. G. F. Hawthorne and R. P. Martin (Downers Grove: Inter-Varsity Press, 1993), 743-46.

[xvii] Charles A. Gieschen, Angelomorphic Christology: Antecedents and Early Evidence, Arbeiten zur Geschichte des Antiken Judentums und des Urchristentums, no. 42 (Leiden: Brill, 1998), argued that early Christians appropriated “angelomorphic” language and motifs in articulating the heavenly status and glory of the risen Jesus, but, he emphasizes, this did not amount to treating Jesus as an angelic being. Cf. Bart D. Ehrman, How Jesus Became God: The Exaltation of a Jewish Preacher from Galilee (San Francisco: HarperOne, 2014), e.g., 250-51, who gives a confused representation of matters.

[xviii] The mythicist attempt to make Paul’s reference to Jesus’ crucifixion by “the rulers of this age” (1 Cor 2:7-8) into some kind of heavenly event is bizarre. All else in Paul’s letters confirms that he knew Jesus’ crucifixion as an earthly, historical event, and the “rulers” here are likely those under whose authority it was carried out. If, however, “the rulers” (archontes tou aiwnos toutou) designate spiritual beings, the statement would reflect the view (well attested in Jewish and early Christian sources) that spiritual forces are behind the earthly rulers, acting through them. But there is no basis for making the event something that took place solely in some spiritual realm apart from earthly history.

[xix] Contra Carrier’s ill-informed claim, the Greek verb ginomai is frequently used in various Christian and non-Christian texts to mean “born.” There is nothing in Paul’s statement to justify Carrier’s strange claim that it portrays something other than a normal birth. Any lexicon will confirm this: e.g., The Brill Dictionary of Ancient Greek, ed. Franco Montonari (Leiden: Brill, 2016), s.v. γινομαι.

[xx] As a devout believer in the one God, in Paul’s view, Jesus’ death was for redemptive purposes, and Paul could therefore also refer to God having sent Jesus for redemptive death, or having “handed him over” for redemptive death, as in Romans 3:21-26; 4:24-25.

[xxi] The term “brothers” (of fellow Christians) is a frequent intra-group designation in the NT, but “brothers of the Lord” is not. For a thorough study of this and other terms, see now Paul Trebilco, Self-Designations and Group Identity in the New Testament (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012).

BEN: Reading your review of Stark’s 10 factors on why a religious movement succeeds, you point to the fact that the movement on the one hand must maintain some continuity with its cultural setting so it is not seen as totally alien and incomprehensible, but at the same time it must have some distinguishing features, presumably appealing distinguishing features, that set it apart from its setting, including certain behavioral demands made on insiders. The boundaries between insider and outsider must be porous enough to readily allow outsiders in, but at the same time the identity formation must be clear enough that the difference between between insiders and outsiders is reasonable clear. This brings to mind the good results from group-grid analysis of early Christianity which in essence points out, that a community that is both high group and high grid (very stratified leadership structure and strict boundaries) would not explain the growth of Christianity, any more than a very low group low grid (where there seems to be little difference between the group and the outsiders). Somewhere between these extremes is the balance Christianity struck at its most successful– in some ways being in the world, and doing good to the world, but in some ways not ‘of the world’ distinctive. Yes? Have you an opinion of group-grid analysis?

LARRY: It’s been a few decades since I studied grid-group cultural theory, but at the time it seemed to me basically plausible and useful. I was more drawn to Stark’s work because it (1) was based heavily on empirical data, and (2) pertained more directly to the growth of religious movements.

BEN: Towards the close of the first chapter, you, rightly in my view, stress that there was something called proto-orthodoxy which contained a spectrum of diversity within it, but not so much diversity that it could not be distinguished from more fringe groups at the edges of Christianity. The NT reflects this earliest proto-orthodoxy and orthopraxy, and is not the product of later state approval or political maneuverings by Constantine or others, the Da Vinci Code not withstanding. In other words, there were some perceived boundaries to belief and behavior and praxis in earliest Christianity such that ‘false’ teaching and false teachers could be distinguished from true ones by the standards of this evolving proto-orthodoxy. Already in the first and second century there were things and ideas deemed ‘beyond the pale’ by the proto-orthodox Christians, whether because they were never an original part of the Christian movement or not a legitimate development thereof.

This being the case, I would say it is a mistake to talk about radically dueling Christianities at the outset or in the first century setting of the movement, ala the theory of Bauer which is echoed by Ehrman and others that want to suggest multiple Christianities from the outset. To the contrary, it seems to me, this was a Jewish led movement, that had reasonably clearly boundaries of belief and behavior (but not so strict that it made evangelism impossible), and the social networks were reasonably close knit, in contact with one another and by no means as diverse as for instance we find in the second century when we have a majority of Christians being Gentiles and we genuinely see things like Marcionites and Gnostics. Does this in broad strokes represent how you see the nature of earliest Christianity?

LARRY: Well, I’m not clear how anyone in the first couple of centuries would have been able to enforce boundaries such to make something “beyond the pale.” There were no monarchial bishops, and certainly no trans-local authorities able, certainly none able to coerce submission (as was the case in the post-Constantinian period). But there were concerns, nevertheless, to promote cohesion, and so there were efforts to deal with conflicts and refute those perceived as causing them. And there were conflicts: Just think of the ways that Paul refers to certain individuals whom he saw as in conflict with his gentile-mission: “false brethren” (Gal 2:4), “false apostles” and even ministers of Satan (2 Cor 11)! But they were, in social/historical terms, fellow “Christians,” likely fellow Jewish Christians, who strongly believed that Paul’s gentile mission was seriously in need of what they likely thought “reform.” For Paul, however, they were downright dangerous and opponents of the true gospel message. Likewise, what do we make of those who appear to be alluded to in 1 John, who seceded from the community to form their own group, and whose disruptive beliefs may have included claims of divine-like perfection, and may in some way have denied or minimized the historical reality/meaning of Jesus? We don’t have to wait till the second century to have real divisions!

But in addition to these hurtful divisions, there were also other differences, which were not so divisive or conflictual, as I’ve emphasized in a recent journal article: Larry W. Hurtado, “Interactive Diversity: A Proposed Model of Christian Origins,” Journal of Theological Studies 64 (2013), 445-62. What I call “proto-orthodox” Christianity was a “rainbow coalition” of sorts made up of any in that diversity that treated other believers as “brothers” (co-religionists). “Proto-orthodox” Christianity wasn’t monochrome. And the NT seems to me to reflect that posture of an inclusive diversity.

BEN: One of the topics broached at length in this study is the issue of syncretism. In fact a good deal of what you say reminds me of the interesting study by Ramsay McMullen, one of his last books entitled The Second Church, where, instead of going with the ‘multiple Christianities’ model of Ehrman, he argues instead, and I think rightly for a two levels sort of early Christianity– at the lay level there was considerable syncretism, especially as seen in the funerary practices of ordinary Christians which he documents very well (see also 1 Cor. 15 and the baptism for the dead). At the level of the leadership, and the praxis that went on in the ‘first church’ and well before Constantine, we find a much less broad spectrum of belief and praxis like unto the orthodoxy and orthopraxy advocated by the writers of the NT (as distinguished from say, the Judaizers, the libertines, the syncretists). The voices of the NT do not represent the full spectrum in the early church, but they do represent the official voice, the voice that prevailed even long before Nicaea, while ordinary Christians continued to wear their amulets, worry about untoward spirits and the like. What do you think of this argument, and have you interacted somewhere with McMullen’s case?

BRUCE:

Funny you should mention MacMullen. I have an article coming out later this year entitled “Mark’s Gospel for the Second Church of the Late First Century.” Obviously, for that article I have adopted a strong dose of MacMullen’s argument (although I’m not quite convinced that we can accurately designate “the second church” of the second through fourth centuries as comprising 95% of Christians, as MacMullen does).

The differentiation between what you call “the lay level” and “the leadership” does seem to have been a reality, not only in the years 200-400 that MacMullen outlines, but even in the first century, when there are plenty of indicators that “the second church” was alive and well. It was to “the second church” that “the apostolic voice” (as I like to call it) was frequently addressed – the “apostolic voice” that we hear in the texts of the New Testament and beyond (although even there, the voice was expressed within a spectrum of some diversity).

My essay suggests that Mark’s Gospel fits perfectly into this scenario, as the much-needed “apostolic voice” that sought to correct “the second church” of the late first century. It is easy to interpret the first half of Mark’s Gospel as tapping into the desire for spiritual power and protection of the “second church” but then, in the second half, harnessing that desire in relation to an exclusive devotion to Jesus Christ and a cruciform pattern of discipleship.

It was when the Pompeii pieces of first-century Jesus-devotion fell into place that I came to a new appreciation of Mark’s Gospel. The old adage that Mark’s Gospel links a “theology of glory” to a “theology of the cross” (with a variety of scholarly variations on that theme) came alive with new urgency, in light of what I was finding about Jesus-devotion in Pompeii, where Jesus-devotion seems intricately tied to strategies of protection in a dangerous world. Against this backdrop, Mark’s Gospel is not simply an interesting theological contribution to Christian discourse but is an urgent corrective to the “second church” of the first century – the sort of thing that we might be seeing in Pompeii, and if in Pompeii, no doubt elsewhere as well. (Of course, Mark’s Gospel may well have been doing other things as well, but if it was a text written “for all Christians” [to use Richard Bauckham’s term], the Pompeian data opens up one vista in which see one application of its potential impact in its original setting.)

BEN: Your discussion of the Hebrew +, or Taw, the last letter of the Hebrew alphabet used on ossuaries and elsewhere to signify God’s property and the devotion of the person in question is fascinating. (It of course flatly contradicts the Talpiot tomb folks who think that the + symbol must indicate a Christian tomb, even a tomb of Jesus himself, with bones intact.) I wrote you an email asking if you had considered not only the connection between Ezekiel’s mark on the saints and the + and the reference in Rev. 7, but also the possibility that John in Revelation envisions not the + or Taw but the Omega or even Alpha and Omega mark as the one the saints bear (since the alpha and omega is predicated of both the Father and the Son in Revelation). This would contrast quite nicely with the mark of the beast on the Emperor worshippers. What do you think?

BRUCE:

I’m not sure about your idea in particular, but then again, nothing would surprise me in this regard. The first-century world of religious symbolism was extremely rich. Jews and Christians frequently probed deeply into symbolism that they found embedded within Jewish scripture and tradition.

And the more you dig around in the ancient world, the more you recognize that what seems extraordinary to us was not out of the ordinary for people of the past. Some ancient people appreciated theological connections of the most subtle and intricate kinds. I tried to demonstrate this in relation to Luke’s Gospel in my little book, Hearing the Silence, which argues that the Lukan evangelist expected his audience to explore subtle theological connections – both intratextual connections within his narrative and intertextual connections beyond it (especially with reference to Psalm 91).

But pride of place in this regard is the book of Revelation. I often think that anyone interested in exploring the religious imagination of a first-century creative mind needs to start by reading through Richard Bauckham’s book The Climax of Prophecy. It is a fascinating study of that text, demonstrating just how creatively

agile an ancient mind could be in terms of making theological connections between resources within the Judeo-Christian tradition.

The journey has been a long one for me. It’s taken reading several thousand books over the years. It really began back in high school when I read The Screwtape Letters by C.S. Lewis. That really stuck with me. So did Leslie Weatherhead’s little book on The Will of God. I remember a book on the Shroud of Turin which was fascinating too. Of course I also read all the Tolkien, and Lewis, and Williams, and Sayers volumes I could manage starting in high school and continuing through college. Somebody handed me Evidence that Demands a Verdict, probably at an Inter-Varsity meeting, and I went to hear Josh, it’s author. Reading is rather like the snow that keeps falling in my yard. It accumulates, it adds to what has come before, it piles up and becomes weighty. Eventually it changes things. Old paradigms collapse. New mental structures have to be erected, and it never stops. And by what criteria do you decide something is a ‘best book’? I don’t pay any attention to the category ‘bestseller’ because a lot of that stuff is popular for all the wrong reasons. Is it a best book because it made the biggest impression on you? But what if it didn’t make that kind of impression on many others? Is it a best book because its the best summary of some topic of importance whether well written or poorly written? You see my dilemma. This series of posts will simply be about the books that most shaped my thinking along the way, though of course some of them I later saw were less accurate or zingy than I first thought. This is what happens when you continue to learn.

My real education to be a teacher of the Bible began at Carolina, under the tutelage of Dr. Bernard Boyd of blessed memory. I took his OT and NT courses and his seminars. Heck, I took everything I could possibly take with him. He was the best lecturer, best Christian, best mentor ever. He was in the James A. Gray chair long before Bart Ehrman. Unfortunately, he died suddenly and prematurely in Charlotte while I was in Boston in seminary. The line at the funeral home was longer than for Dean Smith. That tells you something about that man’s impact. One estimate is that over 5,000 went into Christian ministry of some sort due to the impact of Dr. Boyd. I was one of them.

Some of the books I read early on in college which impacted me were as follows: 1) John Bright’s classic, that went through many editions starting in 1959 A History of Israel. In fact there were a variety of books by Bright, and G.E. Wright of Harvard and S.F. Albright. They made up the so-called Wright, Bright, and Albright school. Dr. Boyd was an archaeologist and so these folks were seminal to his work at Beersheba and elsewhere. 2) I began to read things recommended by Inter-Varsity as well, like for instance J.I. Packer’s classic Knowing God which first emerged in 1973 while I was at Carolina; 3) C.S.Lewis’ Mere Christianity closely followed by John Stott’s Basic Christianity. These were books talked about endlessly at Carolina by a variety of people. Thank goodness I had a good Bible pastor, Jim, who week after week was teaching the Word and giving guidance at the Chapel Hill Bible Church. He’s still at it! 4) I began to become interested in the works of G.Eldon Ladd, and the book that really got me thinking about the Kingdom of God was his classic The Presence of the Future. 5) I remember a huge concern about Biblical Authority in Campus Crusade for Christ, Navigators, and Inter-Varsity. We read Clark Pinnock’s A Defense of Biblical Infallibilty and it produced a host of discussion.

In the next post I will start talking about seminary books we read.

News Weak— “The Problems with Kurt Eichenwald’s screed entitled “The Bible: So Misunderstood it’s a Sin”

It is all too easy these days to bemoan Biblical illiteracy and castigate fundamentalists for their misuse of the Bible, and provide compelling evidence that in regard to both matters our culture is guilty as charged. Were that all that Kurt Eichenwald, (a writer for Vanity Fare with exactly no credentials or expertise to warrant his write an article on the Bible for a national news magazine), was ranting and raving about in his Christmas present to our nation, served up in the Dec. 23rd issue of Newsweek magazine, then one might pass over this article with benign neglect as an op-ed piece at best.

But in fact early in this lengthy article Eichenwald says the following: “This examination—based in large part on the works of scores of theologians and scholars, some of which dates back centuries—is a review of the Bible’s history and a recounting of its words.” The article goes on to cite exactly three scholars, Bart Ehrman, Jason David BeDuhn (a professor of religious studies, who has a terminal degree in ‘comparative religions’ not the Bible), and Richard Elliott Friedman (who does indeed have a terminal degree in the Hebrew Bible, rather than the New Testament) who can hardly be called representative of the spectrum of non-fundamentalist Biblical scholarship in general, even in America. There is, in short, no evidence whatsoever in this article that ‘scores’ of theologians and scholars’ have been consulted. There is also no evidence that there was any attempt to be fair and balanced in the scholars one would cite or draw on to base conclusions in this lengthy article.

In this regard, this article is light years away from some of the helpful pieces by Richard Ostling or David van Biema or other fair-minded journalists in past years who actually know the field about which they are writing, and the spectrum of views held by scholars and pastors in regard to the Bible. In regard to either of the issues of familiarity or fairness Eichenwald gets a failing grade as a journalist. Indeed, ironically he serves up the very same sort of biased interpretations and polemics that he accuses fundamentalists of, not without some justification. And here is where I say fundamentalism is basically a mindset, not a position on the theological spectrum. Believe it or not, there are fundamentalist liberals in our land as well as fundamentalist conservatives. In both cases, what characterizes them is rigidity of opinions and the failure to evaluate all views critically, including their own. In short it involves a bad mixture of arrogance and ignorance.

One of the typical missteps in arguing about the Bible, that Eichenwald falls prey to is the argument that all we have are bad translations of the Bible. Here’s what he claims— “At best, we’ve all read a bad translation—a translation of translations of translations of hand-copied copies of copies of copies of copies, and on and on, hundreds of times. About 400 years passed between the writing of the first Christian manuscripts and their compilation into the New Testament. (That’s the same amount of time between the arrival of the Pilgrims on the Mayflower and today.)”

This is not merely misleading, it’s historically incorrect! It is not true that the original manuscripts are hopelessly remote from us and cannot hope to be recovered. Nor is it the case that the vast majority of modern preachers are oblivious to the actual state of the Biblical text that stands behind various modern translations. This is not only a caricature of the majority of America’s clergy, it is an even worse caricature of the state of play in regard to the text criticism of the Bible. As Dan Wallace, one of the real experts in text criticism of the NT, says in his own critique of Eichenwald’s article, “we have Greek manuscripts—thousands of them, some reaching as far back as the second century. And we have very ancient translations directly from the Greek that give us a good sense of the Greek text that would have been available in those regions where that early version was used. These include Latin, Syriac, and Coptic especially. Altogether, we have at least 20,000 handwritten manuscripts in Greek, Latin, Syriac, Coptic and other ancient languages that help us to determine the wording of the original. Almost 6000 of these manuscripts are in Greek alone. And we have more than one million quotations of the New Testament by church fathers. There is absolutely nothing in the Greco-Roman world that comes even remotely close to this wealth of data. The New Testament has more manuscripts that are within a century or two of the original than anything else from the Greco-Roman world too.” (http://danielbwallace.com/2014/12/28/predictable-christmas-fare-newsweeks-tirade-against-the-bible/).

Exactly. Rumors that we cannot recover the vast majority of the original substance of the Biblical text are false. Indeed, the doyen of all text criticism in the last 50 years, Bruce Metzger of Princeton (the teacher I might add, of both Bart Ehrman and myself) was willing to say that we can know with a high degree of certainty what about 90% of the NT originally said, and in regard to the rest which is textually dubious, no major doctrine or theological or ethical principle is at issue in these variant readings. Of course you might not know this from reading the sensationalistic fare that Eichenwald has read, for instance Ehrman’s Misquoting Jesus (critiqued in detail on this blog a long time ago), but apparently Eichenwald has not gotten the memo that even Ehrman backs off from some of his more strident claims from time to time.

Is it true however that John 7.53-8.11 and the so-called long ending of Mark (Mark. 16.9-20) are likely not an original part of the New Testament? Eichenwald goes some lengths to point this out, and he is actually likely right about this, but sadly for him it simply refutes his own previous argument that ‘we can’t really know what was in the original text of the Bible’. If we can’t know that, then of course, we can’t know these two passages were not part of the original text of the Greek NT. So which is it Mr. Eichenwald, because you can’t have it both ways? Can we establish with a high degree of probability what the NT originally said, such that we could conclude that because these two passages are not part of our earliest and best Greek manuscripts, then they are likely later additions, or not? Or are we simply ‘lost in translation’ in regard to such matters? It is amazing to me that an article with so many self-contradictory statements and obvious errors of fact could even have been published in a major news periodical. This is not journalism, this is shoddy, yellow journalism, rightly so-called.

Then there are many further problems when Eichenwald tiptoes into the arena of actual exegesis. For example, talking about Phil. 2.5-11 he says “the Greek word for form could simply mean Jesus was in the image of God. But the publishers of some Bibles decided to insert their beliefs into translations that had nothing to do with the Greek. The Living Bible, for example, says Jesus “was God”—even though modern translators pretty much just invented the words.” Anyone who has studied the Greek text of Phil. 2.5-11 will know that the Greek word in question is morphe which is not the word for ‘image’ but rather for ‘form’. These are two different terms and two different concepts. What morphe means is the outward manifestation of the actual nature of something. It doesn’t refer to the mere appearance of something. This is why diverse translations, not just conservative ones have rendered the verse in question ‘being in very nature God, he did not consider the having of equality with God something to be taken advantage of”. In other words, here as elsewhere Paul is perfectly happy to include Jesus within the definition of deity. Indeed this very passage refers to how he pre-existed and took on human form.

It may be an old canard, but it still remains a falsehood that the idea of the deity of Christ was later imported into the NT text through dodgy translations like the KJV. This is wrong both historically and theologically. Furthermore, Jesus was prayed to and worshipped from the very beginnings of early Christianity, something Jews (and all the earliest Christ followers were Jews) would only do if they believed that person was part of the divine identity. As the great German scholar Martin Hengel demonstrated a long time ago, the earliest Christology was very high Christology, and it is found in the letters of Paul, our earliest Christian documents. This is not something foisted on the NT by later orthodox translators.

At times Mr. Eichenwald seems to lose his grasp on what could possibly count as a contradiction. He brings out that tired old argument that the Christmas story in Lk. 1-2 contradicts the Christmas story in Mt. 1-2. Indeed, he argues ‘contradictions abound’. Really? Just because one Gospel mentions shepherds and another mentions magi visiting Jesus after his birth does make these stories contradictory. Different yes, but contradictory no. A contradiction requires that one source claim ‘A is true’ and the other claim ‘A is not true’. It would have been better if he had started by noting that both Matthew and Luke affirm: 1) that Jesus was virginally conceived, and therefore Joseph was not his biological father; 2) that Jesus was born in Bethlehem during the reign of Herod the Great, and 3) that the family lived not in Bethlehem, the birth place, but rather in Nazareth, which is why Jesus came to be called Jesus of Nazareth in all four Gospels.

A careful reading of the genealogy in Matthew 1 would have led to the conclusion that not even Matthew suggests that Jesus was the biological son of Joseph. This is why Mary suddenly appears at the end of Joseph’s genealogy! Jesus’ connection with her is the only way Jesus could get into that genealogy. In short Mr. Eichenwald should have listened to better scholars and a broader and fairer representation of scholarship instead of just the deconstructionists who would like us to believe what Paul Simon once said about another matter– it’s “all lies and jests, still a man believes what he wants to, and disregards the rest”.

In fact Christianity is an historical religion, based on a certain irreducible amount of historical substance. It is not a mere religious philosophy, nor a mere collection of religious opinions. It makes claims about history, again and again, and as such it must be evaluated on the basis of such historical claims. From a Christian point of view, nothing can be theologically true that is historically false, if claims are actually being made about history in this or that passage. Christian belief is not a mere ‘matter of opinion’. It is a set of beliefs based in facts and their interpretation. It is not mere ‘chicken soup for the soul’.

I could go on and on about the errors of method, fact, and interpretation of the Bible, its translation, and Christian history in this article which stretches to an amazing 24 pages ‘full of sound and fury, but signifying nothing’ but I will simply say this— Eichenwald’s article is opinion strong, and news (and facts) weak, precisely what he accuses fundamentalists of. And that is not ‘good news’ for a once proud magazine that once strove to be a presenter of fair and balanced journalism, even about the Bible and early Christianity.

BW3

There are all sorts of myths floating around about Christmas, and some of the worst come from the myth-makers supreme (e.g. the Zeitgeist sort of people). I am referring to those who: 1) deny that Jesus existed; 2) insist that all Christian celebrations are really adaptations of earlier pagan practices such as some Egyptian rites, or Roman rituals like Saturnalia and the like. It is surprising to me that this sort of nonsense has gained such a hearing in a skeptical age. If you doubt that it has gained a foothold even in religious America, check out the reaction to Bart Ehrman’s recent book Did Jesus Exist? (to which Bart quite rightly answer— yes, he surely did exist).

I suppose it is because the will to disbelieve the Gospel story is so strong in some quarters that the only way some people can exorcise those Gospel things from their brains is by creating an aetelogical myth that explains the origins of Christianity without the necessity of a real person named Jesus of Nazareth. It just shows that such people’s skepticism is only exercised in one direction— towards Christianity. Otherwise they are gullible enough to believe all sorts of things without the benefit of solid historical evidence. They have of course also forgotten that when it comes to ancient history, it is very difficult to prove a negative– prove that someone in the ancient records actually didn’t exist, or that something didn’t happen, even though there is positive testimony that it did.

The problem of course in dealing with the modern mythmakers is that there is occasionally a grain of truth in the midst of a beach full of pure sand, pure nonsense. For example, it has been argued that Christmas was a celebration cooked up to replace the pagan festival of Saturnalia, and this was why Christmas began to be celebrated on December 25th. If we are making the general point that the medieval church did sometimes try to replace pagan festivals with Christian ones, then there is a bit of truth to that.

But in regard to the specific point about Christmas and Saturnalia here are a few major points: 1) Saturnalia was celebrated during the Roman Empire on the basis of the Julian calendar, and occurred beginning on Dec. 17th, and ran through the 23rd of December. It was celebrated in conjunction with the winter solstice, which of course was on Dec 21. 2) Saturnalia’s rituals are not fully or adequately described in any ancient source, such that a comparison could actually be made with Christian celebrations of Christmas, ancient or modern. Macrobius’ treatment of the matter is from late antiquity, which is to say, after Christians were already celebrating ‘the Feast of the Nativity’.

However, when the church went to the practice of celebrating ‘the Twelve Days of Christmas’ there seems to be a few similarities with Saturnalia (e.g. a celebration of light coming into the world). Others have pointed to the gift-giving done on Dec. 22nd in the celebration of Saturnalia, or even the practice of reversal— slaves become masters for a day and vice versa. What we do not have at all in the celebration of Saturnalia is: 1) the celebration of the incarnation of a deity, never mind the Jewish messiah; 2) the celebration of a virginal conception (which despite disclaimers to the contrary has no clear parallel in pagan sources— stories of literal divine rape of a human female are nothing like the stories in Mt. 1-2 and Lk. 1-2). So where does this leave us?

Is the heart of the theology of Christmas derived from pagan notions? No, definitely not. Is the heart of Christian celebration of the birth of Jesus derived from pagan celebrations— no, for there is very little overlap, and the overlap does not include the date December 25th. If one wants to simply make the point that Christians sometimes adopted and adapted a few of the best aspects of their broader culture’s celebrations, this is true enough, but it does not at all demonstrate the notion that Christmas was simply derived from such practices. In short, the nonsense of non-Christmas deserves to be laid to rest for a long winter’s snooze.

The last main chapter in Craig’s book deals with the subject of miracles, both ancient and modern. Craig relies not only on the various analyses of the Biblical miracles available in scholarly works, but also the recent large compilation of modern testimonies about miracles compiled by my Asbury colleague, Craig Keener. To this Craig adds some personal testimonies about miracles in his own life, or that of his close family. While reading this chapter I remembered a conversation I once had with Bart Ehrman about miracles in which he said to me ‘miracles don’t happen because they can’t happen’. How exactly he could be so omniscient to know that miracles couldn’t possibly happen is a mystery to me, and such a dogmatic statement from an agnostic seemed equally improbable. This is especially the case when there are millions of testimonies to miracles happening, some of them verifiable and even verified by doctors, even now. What that conversation with Ehrman reminded me of is that faulty presuppositions about what can or can’t happen are often the real impediments to believing in a religion full of miracles like Christianity.

Craig reminds us at the outset that miracles by definition, as one off events, precisely because they cannot be duplicated exactly under laboratory conditions and so lie outside the bounds of the kind of scrutiny empirical science can give such phenomena. (p. 179). This is correct and reminds us that there are plenty of realities in this world that are not duplicatable under laboratory conditions. Real is one thing, scientifically verifiable is another, which is a much smaller category of reality. For example, one cannot prove that person X loves person Y doing scientific tests in a lab on the two persons. Love is not quantifiable in terms of size, shape, color, smell, taste etc. Empirical reality is only a part of reality. We could say the same thing about pain. While science can study the causes of pain, and can tell us nerve endings are the sensors that detect or make possible pain, you cannot open up a person and find pain. It can’t be seen, smelled, touched, tasted as it is not a material thing and so it can’t be tested. Craig also makes the point that miracles, since by definition they are extraordinary events that take place randomly rather than regularly or periodicially, can’t be predicted either using probability models. I would tend to agree that they transcend the normal causal mechanisms in nature, but don’t contravene them. As such, they are inexplicable in simply medical or empirical terms.

On p. 181, Craig makes the interesting point that no other founders of world religions outside of the Judaeo-Christian tradition have miracles attributed to their founders in their earliest foundational documents. Not Mohammed, not Buddha etc. There are such claims in Hinduism, but it is the only other major religion in which miracles are regularly claimed, and it should be noted that miracles continue to be claimed in Christianity today, but I know of no such parallel claims coming out of modern Judaism, but there may be some.

One of the usual comparisons made to Jesus from antiquity is of course the stories about Apollonius of Tyana, which Craig deals with on pp. 187ff. He is right that the biography of the man comes from the third century A.D. and there is something of a parallel in that biography to the raising of Jairus’ daughter. This story is too late to have influenced the Gospel tradition (though Apollonius was a first century resident in Capadoccia) in the first century, but the influence could well have gone the other way, since Christianity was a religion on the rise in the 2nd and 3rd centuries. Craig reminds us that “nowhere in any ancient mythology or folklore do we ever find even the claim that an indisputably human individual who died within the living memory of others was raised bodily” (p. 186), apart that is from the Apollonius story just mentioned. And the claim that there were many such Greco-Roman miracle works is not validated by the scrutiny of the sources (p. 190). The NT miracles in any case are closest to various OT ones, as Craig stresses, except for the exorcisms.

On p. 188-89 Craig deals with the supposed parallels with Mithraism but that was a male only cult, indeed it was a soldiers cult supported by the imperial authorities, and the parallels with the celebration of a deity on Dec. 25th do not even exist before Christians began to do that in the third century A.D. Furthermore, the claim that there is a virgin birth story that’s part of Mithraism is false— there is a story of a bull-slaying god springing forth from a rock, which hardly parallels a virginal conception! Craig also deals with the Horus/Osiris/Isis supposed parallels with the early Christian stories about Jesus resurrection. It was never claimed in these stories that Horus was crucified and resurrected. Nowhere. Horus was a falcon born by Isis after she had sex with her dismembered and dead and then reassembled husband Osiris.

What were the function of miracles in the NT, besides being acts of compassion. They were meant to indicate that God was doing a new thing, the divine eschatological saving reign of God was breaking into history and with this the divine savior. The miracles in acts differ in that they are done on the basis of Jesus’ name and his power. Jesus himself however has the inherent power to do them.

Craig’s conclusion chapter is carefully based on the evidence and arguments of the previous chapters and provide a summary of the six major points that he has been making throughout. This is a fine book, by a mature and experienced scholar, and my hope would be it gets a wide hearing and use.