When it comes to assessing which parts of the Gospels are historically credible and which aren’t, Bart Ehrman adheres to the generally accepted methods of biblical scholarship that, in and of themselves, are perfectly fine and reasonable. In a nutshell, the criterion Ehrman uses is the following:
- The Criterion of Independent Attestation: If a story is found in independent traditions, then there’s a higher likelihood of it being authentic.
- The Criterion of Dissimilarity: If something is dissimilar to what Christians would have wanted to say about Jesus, then it probably is authentic.
- The Criterion of Contextual Credibility: If a story or saying fits with the first century Jewish context, then it probably is authentic.
Now all three of these things are good guidelines: if you find the same story in different accounts, if something in a story reflects poorly on the group or person writing it (and thus actually has a ring of honesty to it), and if the story fits into that given historical context—yes, those are all things that heighten confidence in the text as a historical document.
Hypothetical Sources and Independent Attestation
Yet one cannot apply these criteria in mechanistic, blind fashion. They are guidelines, and not iron-clad rules. And furthermore, I think there are some very questionable claims made by historical-critical scholars when it comes to the Gospels in the first place—namely their attempts to identify “sources” within the Gospels themselves. Let me just comment on the criterion of independent attestation.
To simplify a rather complicated topic, scholars have long noted that Mark was probably the earliest Gospel (written roughly around AD 65-70). Then both Matthew and Luke (circa AD 70-80) borrowed large chunks of Mark and incorporated them into their own Gospels—Matthew introducing some material of his own, as does Luke. This is known as the Synoptic Problem—it’s not really a “problem,” as it is simply an attempt to understand how each of these three Gospels were composed. When one breaks down everything, one comes up with the following:
- 41% of Luke and 46% of Matthew is found in 76% Mark—this is known as the triple tradition: the parts all three Gospels share
- Another 23% of Luke and 24% of Matthew are held in common that isn’t in Mark—this is known as the double tradition: the parts that Matthew and Luke share that aren’t in Mark
- An addition 35% of Luke and another 20% of Matthew is unique to Luke and Matthew
- Finally, the final 1% of Luke is found in Mark, but not Matthew; and the final 10% of Matthew is found in Mark, but not in Luke.
Now, when I see that, here is what I conclude:
- Mark wrote his Gospel using a number of sources—material, if you will, but we in no way can know if there were earlier documents.
- Matthew and Luke obviously used Mark and then used other material, some of it the same material, some of it not—but again, we do not know, nor is there any evidence of, any other earlier documents.
Beyond that, we really don’t know any more. But what many modern historical-critical scholars have done is claim that (A) the material common to Matthew and Luke but not Mark came from an earlier document they have called “Q;” (B) the material found only in Luke came from an earlier document they have called “L;” and (C) the material found only in Matthew came from an earlier document they have called “M.” Thus, they claim to have isolated the various “earliest traditions” of the Gospels: Mark, Q, L, and M. In addition, Ehrman includes the later second century Gnostic text, “The Gospel of Thomas” and another second century text, “The Gospel of Peter.”
Therefore, when Ehrman ends up playing a bit of a shell game when looking for “independent attestation.” Instead of saying, “Hey, this passage in Mark is attested to in Matthew and Luke as well—hence, multiple attestation,” Ehrman has already grouped the common material in Mark, Matthew, and Luke as one hypothetical earlier source document, and thus any material common in Mark, Matthew, and Luke only is counted as one source. And then, quite obviously, that given passage that is common in Mark, Matthew, and Luke (but only counted as one source!) is not going to be found in the hypothetical “Q,” because by definition “Q” is comprised of material Matthew and Luke share, but not Mark. In addition, that given passage obviously won’t be found in “L” or “M” either, given the fact they have been defined as material unique to Luke and Matthew respectively.
And, in addition to all that, for the life of me, I don’t know why anyone would include two second century documents as “source material” for Matthew, Mark and Luke—all of which were written in the previous century. The result of all this should be clear. When you divide the known documents we actually have into earlier hypothetical documents that do not exist, and you divide them up according to what parts are held in common and what parts aren’t, the end result is that none of your hypothetical documents are going to have anything in common, because you’ve made sure your hypothetical documents can’t.
Such a “method” isn’t scientific at all. It actually dismisses the real documents we have, and instead claims it can analyze so-called earlier documents that we’ve never had and that do not exist. That’s not scientific inquiry and historical method—that’s guesswork and speculation based on imaginary documents.
The only thing we can honestly say about where Mark, Matthew, and Luke came from is this: Mark got his material from somewhere; and Matthew and Luke seemed to have gotten their material both from Mark and from somewhere else. But when it comes down to the actual historical sources we have, Mark, Matthew, and Luke are it. They are the documents that give us the window back to the time of Jesus—they are not some opaque curtain historians are able to peer behind; they are the only window we’re given.
Ehrman’s Jesus: A Failed Apocalyptic Prophet
Now, as far as giving his take on just who the historical Jesus saw himself as, Ehrman is quite clear: Jesus was a first century apocalyptic prophet who preached “the imminent end of the age and the arrival of God’s good kingdom” (102). Ehrman claims it is quite clear that Jesus’ entire ministry both began and ended with an apocalyptic message: he was baptized by John the Baptist, who clearly preached an apocalyptic message; and many of his teachings near the end of his ministry (i.e. Matt. 25:31-46—the Sheep and the Goats) clearly talk about judgment at the end of the age. And then we see that in the early Christian communities of Paul that there was a clear expectation that judgment day was going to come very soon (i.e. 1 Thess. 4:17; I Cor. 15:51-53).
Now, all that is true. Of course, where Ehrman takes things from there ends up being not so true, to say the least.
Tone it Down!
The first way he goes wrong is in his claim that Jesus’ apocalyptic message got “toned down” and eliminated over time by his later followers because they were embarrassed by the fact that his prediction that the apocalypse would happen within his own generation didn’t come true, thus proving that Jesus was actually a failed apocalyptic prophet.
According to Ehrman, the earliest traditions (i.e. Mark, and the hypothetical Q, M, and L sources) that eventually became the Olivet Discourse in Mark 13, Matthew 24, and Luke 21 all clearly have Jesus preaching about the apocalyptic end of the age. But then Ehrman notes that the Gospel of John (written circa AD 90) doesn’t have an apocalyptic message; and then the Gospel of Thomas (written later in the 2nd century) actually has Jesus preach against an apocalyptic message. Thus, according to Ehrman, that’s proof enough: Jesus preached apocalypse, it didn’t happen, so his embarrassed followers just changed his message entirely.
There are two fundamental flaws in that thinking: (1) Ehrman’s assumption that what Jesus prophesied didn’t come true, and (2) Ehrman’s assumption that if what Jesus prophesied hadn’t happened, that not only would his followers continue to follow and worship him, but they would actively cover up his blatant blunders. Of course, a third flaw would be Ehrman’s claim that a clearly 2nd century Gnostic Gospel in should be considered part of the apostolic, Orthodox Christian faith—but I digress.
Now that second flaw should be self-evident. Why would later followers of Jesus continue to follow him if the centerpiece of his entire prophetic ministry had proven to be false? But we don’t even have to go that far because Ehrman’s fundamental claim that Jesus’ Olivet Discourse prophecy didn’t come true is simply false. (I actually wrote a blog series on the Olivet Discourse a while back: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, and Part 5).
In a nutshell, in the Olivet Discourse, Jesus uses apocalyptic language in his prophecy that the temple in Jerusalem would be destroyed within a generation. That event would signal Jesus’ vindication as both prophet and Messiah (using the “Son of Man” language of Daniel 7:13-14) and God’s judgment on the nation of Israel and Jerusalem itself for rejecting him (shockingly identifying the Jews, and specifically the Jewish priesthood, as the “little horn” of Daniel 7).
Therefore, contrary to what Ehrman claims, what Jesus prophesied in the Olivet Discourse had come true—in fact, I am convinced that the fulfillment of that prophecy was the very impetus for the collecting of the early Church’s teaching about Jesus and putting them into the Synoptic Gospels we have to day. Simply put, the Synoptic Gospels were the testimony that what Jesus had prophesied had come true.
The reason why the Gospel of John doesn’t include the Olivet Discourse is because it was written 20 years later and was addressing a different situation. The Synoptics were specifically written to draw attention to the fulfillment of Jesus’ prophecy of the temple’s destruction; John was specifically written to show how Jesus is the fulfillment of Old Testament Judaism.
Jesus was not the Son of Man?
The second way in which Ehrman goes wrong is his claim that Jesus wasn’t referring to himself when he used the term “Son of Man.” He writes, “In none of them is there any hint that Jesus is talking about himself when he refers to the Son of Man coming in judgment on the earth. Readers naturally assume that he is talking about himself either because they believe that Jesus is the Son of Man or because they know that elsewhere the Gospels identify him as the Son of Man” (107).
Did you catch that? Ehrman acknowledges that there are places in the Gospels that identify Jesus as the Son of Man, but then he simply turns around and says, “Oh, but those places where Jesus talks about the Son of Man coming in judgment? He’s not talking about himself there.” Instead, Ehrman claims that when Jesus was talking about the Son of Man, he was referring to someone else—a cosmic figure who would come and judge the earth. And then after that happened, Jesus thought he himself would be installed as the king in God’s future kingdom. As Ehrman writes, [Jesus] “did not consider himself to be the Son of Man, and so he did not consider himself to be the heavenly angelic being who would be the judge of the earth. But he did think of himself as the future king of the kingdom, the messiah” (125-126).
This is truly remarkable, for it is crystal clear (A) that Jesus did identify himself with the title “Son of Man” from Daniel 7, (B) that (as seen in the Olivet Discourse) he did equate the destruction of Jerusalem with “the coming of the Son of Man” and (C) (as I just mentioned) the impetus for the Synoptic Gospels being written Jesus’ followers realizing the temple was about to be destroyed, just as he prophesied.
Somehow, though, Ehrman completely misses all that, and instead reads the relevant passages with the wooden literalism of his fundamentalist past, and proceeds to jumble everything up into a giant mess. Remember, Ehrman said that Jesus claimed the Son of Man was someone else, and that he himself was the future king-messiah of Israel. Ehrman then (correctly) notes that the Jews expected their messiah to defeat Rome (i.e. bring judgment on the Jews’ enemies…something that the Son of Man in Daniel 7 does—but wait, Jesus didn’t think he was the Son of Man!).
But then Ehrman says that it was surprising that some Jews thought Jesus might be the messiah because, “Jesus did nothing during his life to make anyone think that he was the anointed one. That is to say, he did not come on the clouds of heaven to judge the living and the dead [Wait! That is something the Son of Man does in Daniel 7—but Jesus didn’t think he was the Son of Man, but the messiah…but Ehrman says Jesus didn’t do the things the messiah was believed to do, like coming on the clouds of heaven to judge the living and the dead!]; he was not a priest; and he never raised an army and drove the Romans out of the promised land to set up Israel as a sovereign state” (116).
That simply makes no sense: Jesus wasn’t the Son of Man, but thought he was the messiah, but then he wasn’t the messiah because he didn’t do the things that the Son of Man was thought to do…as the messiah? This is the kind of incoherent confusion that happens when a fundamentalist turns agnostic but still reads the Gospels through the lens of wooden literalism. Perhaps we should just realize that (A) Jesus claimed to be the messiah, (B) he talked about himself and the destruction of the temple using the apocalyptic language of Daniel 7, and (C) in a twist the Jews didn’t expect, he said the judgment the Son of Man inflicted on the enemies of God’s people in Daniel 7 wasn’t going to be upon Rome, but upon Jerusalem itself, because the Jews had proven themselves to be God’s enemies in their rejection of him as their messiah.
Conclusion
More could be said about Ehrman’s comments regarding “Did Jesus think he was God?” but these last two posts should suffice to show that much of what Ehrman bases his conclusions on is extremely faulty and questionable. When you bend the Gospels into a pretzel to ensure that they’re not saying what they clearly are saying, and then proceed to give a revisionist version of Jesus based on hypothetical documents that do not exist, your conclusions are not going to make much sense. They will only convince people who do not realize just how fast and loose you are playing with the Gospel texts, and just how much you are passing your own imagination off as accepted scholarship.
