Note:
Only those reader comments which are given a response are listed in
this Index:
Martin
writes:
Your website is excellent. Thank you for making your work freely
available. I found it when looking for some informed criticism of Lee
Strobel's book [The Case for Christ]
which a "committed christian" friend of mine lent to me after I asked
for a good case for his faith. I did not have a solid response to the
book and I look forward to benefiting from your work [Challenging the Verdict: A
Cross-Examination of Lee Strobel's 'The Case for Christ': see
excerpts at StrobelIntro.htm and ctvadvert.htm].
While I have been an atheist for almost 40 years, I have
never really had a coherent picture of how christianity arose. Your
work on the mythicist position provides answers beyond anything I could
have hoped for. Oddly, I felt after cursory research that the mythical
Jesus view seemed plausible despite the ready dismissal about which you
so rightly complain, and the non-christian "evidence" for his
historicity seemed weak, but I was unaware that such a coherent thesis
as you lay out could be constructed. Now that I have read it, it seems
that no other account comes close to making as much sense. It has the
kind of power that I remember plate tectonics had when it emerged as
the successful organizing principle for a wealth of disparate
geological observations. Suddenly elements which made no sense fitted
together - like a puzzle - and previous silly speculations of orogeny
through geosynclines or the spread of organisms across mysterious land
bridges could be discarded.
Keep
up the good work. If I have one complaint, it is that you have written
so much that I am spending most of my free time on your website!
Roger writes:
As a victim of a
Jesuit education, it has taken me a long time to shed the Christian
religion. Your writings have helped enormously. I am still endeavoring
to understand why I, and other people that I regard as reasonably
intelligent, can believe such (now obvious to me) constructed rubbish.
Bruce writes:
For the last several days I have been reading the web
sites concerning your work, The Jesus Puzzle. The work is masterful and
quite readable.
I wish I had this information when I was 12. It would have
spared me a lot of anguish; a comforting shining light in a dark world.
I was raised in an unnecessarily strict Irish-Catholic world that made
no sense to me. I questioned the myths from about age 8 onward, much to
the consternation of a long line of nuns which, in turn, got me in a
lot of trouble at home. I spend several decades after that studying and
arguing most of the same issues you present so well.
Randy
writes:
I count you
as one of the early influences in my own research into the origins of
that
religion which plagues us. Though my focus has been more on the
origins
of Judaism, which I have come to believe was greatly influenced by the
Persians
and Zoroastrianism, I am beginning to see those same roots as having so
much in
common with Christianity that I cannot understand how it could be
ignored. Not only did Zoroastrianism provide aspects of Christian
belief
ranging from angels, Heaven, Hell, Satan, etc., but the first
monotheistic
religion
to preach an eschatology that would be resolved by a divine savior
(they called
him the Sayoshant) who would redeem mankind and establish a kingdom of God was Zoroastrianism. I think a
pretty clear case could be made that Judaism was consistently
influenced by
Zoroastrian beliefs and that ultimately, after Alexander's destruction
of the Persian Empire, these influences were covered up
by the Hasmoneans.
The point
is I wondered if you had ever considered that a lot of the mystery
religion
beliefs were examples of Persian influence on the religions of their
captive
nations. It simplifies the creation of the Jesus myth.
Revelation reads like the Avesta (much of the Zoroastrian
holy book
was destroyed by Alexander and then later by the Muslims so there are
large
parts of it that could not be reconstructed), as it fits closely the
eschatology
therein expressed. In fact there have been a few books published
about
the parallels between the Avesta, Daniel and Revelation (both
Lawrence
H. Mills and Mary Boyce have written extensively on this subject).
Thanks for
the site and your views. I think anyone who does not
seriously
consider your arguments and professes to be a biblical scholar is
simply
fooling themselves.
Gary writes:
Thanks for your
great web site and your jesus puzzle work. The two new
articles on Hebrews and Galatians were very welcome. I have spent the
last half year examining these and the other "Pauline" letters. After
reading your work and that of G. A. Wells, I decided to read the
letters through and see how well the mythicist argument held up. It
holds up very well.
Noel
writes:
I've been simply
taken over by your web site, sir. I recently came across it and am so
happy to have access to the wealth of material there. Thank you for
your efforts. I love your way of reasoning, your writing voice has to
be near-perfect, and the writing itself is quite clear and correct, a
quality I appreciate as a copy editor. So far, for purely logical
presentation, you are the man.
Tom writes:
I'm a regular visitor to
your website, and have enjoyed your articles and reviews. I
accept your
mythicist arguments (as much as I can understand without Greek skills),
including your newest analysis of Hebrews.
Rod writes:
I am a big fan of your
work and consider your website to be a valuable source of information
and
enlightenment. I would especially like to thank you for turning me on
to
the “Testament of Man” series by Vardis Fisher (I had never heard of it
until I
visited your website). I located and purchased the books one by one
through the ABE.com website and finished reading the series this past
summer.
Wow. Someone really needs to bring that series back into print.
David writes:
Just a quick note to say 'Many thanks' for your website and all the valuable
information contained in it. After being a
fundamentalist in my teen years and then rejecting this and all
religious belief, I have retained my interest in the subject. I
was wholly 'converted' to G. A. Wells in the 1980s and
therefore always welcome discussion from the Mythicist stance. I have heard
numerous various Christian counter-arguments and as these invariably fail
to produce anything useful and, sadly, are primarily devoted
to unpleasant personal insult, these, to me, merely confirm
the weakness of the Christian position on the historicity
question.
Larry
writes:
Thanks so
much for your excellent book, "Challenging The Verdict" and please,
please, please tell me you plan on writing a book (or at least a
review) on
Lee's new book, "The Case for the Real Christ". Best wishes in our
quest to find happiness and to avoid suffering.
[E.D.: I have no plans for a
review. Once you've read one of Lee Strobel's books you've
read them all, since he uses the same kind of devices and special
pleading methods no
matter what his specific subject matter, and once you've read one
review exposing those devices, you can safely dismiss anything he has
written. However, there is a very good amateur review on the web of his
The Case for the Real Christ. Check out Paul Doland's http://www.caseagainstfaith.com/articles/therealjesus.htm]
David writes:
As a former Lutheran Pastor, who began to question as a
result of NT studies in
seminary, I have one thing to say to you: thank you.
Nick writes:
My name is Nick, and i am writing to you from Athens, Greece. I have
read your book 'The Jesus Puzzle' and i want to congratulate you for
writing such a book. I am a devout Christian and i believe not only
that Jesus existed, but also that he is God incarnate, although i have
to admit that your argument for the non-existence of Jesus is worthy of
serious consideration. Your book provides new insights and is thought
provocative.
"In love with God" writes:
You
have to be the dumbest person out there to blasphemy God. You
won't be talking like this when your in hell burning. Its not too
late to change your wicked ways. You make me sick to my stomache,
all the hypocrites and blasphamers do. No respect for God, He is
the reason you are alive.
Ben
writes:
As a
former child member of a Christian cult (Armstrongism), I have made
slow progression towards the realisation that religion is a purely
human construct. Such things as the various inconsistencies in
the gospels etc are never mentioned in churches. Yet even as a
child I read and questioned them, yet no good answer was given to me as
to why the "holy accounts" did not coincide. The evolution from
brainwashed Christian to atheist has been slow and painful. It is
still an issue of contention between members of my family.
I have read with interest your thesis The Jesus Puzzle. I
have also recently finished "Forgery in Christianity" by Joseph
Wheless. If your thesis is correct and Jesus never existed except as an
abstract, then I must assume you agree with Wheless that the scriptures
are "pious forgeries"; ie not written by who is claimed to have written
them. Nor written early in the 1st century but are rather the
product of doctrinal advancement in the 2nd century. For all
intents and purposes, "forged" to reinforce the particular doctrines
and authority favoured by the forger.
My question is this: Why do I see the dates of the
Gospels creeping forward from the 130-180 CE indicated by Wheless (from
the writings of Irenaeus) to 100 or even 90 CE by certain other
writers, even critical writers? I realize that Wheless' work is
old but his theories seem sound. I cannot believe that if "God's
Holy Words" were floating around for nearly 90 years that none of the
early church fathers would have mentioned them. Has new evidence
of extant early manuscripts of Gospels been uncovered proving an
earlier date?
I understand that the argument from silence is not
considered conclusive. However, for myself the idea is simply too
incredible that early religious fanatics would not have spouted from
"Holy Gospels" and quoted them at length had they known of them at all.
Response to Ben:
When were the Gospels written?
Ben has opened up a large can of worms
here. “When were the Gospels written?” may be the question which
critical commentators would place at the very head of the list of most
important and debatable issues in all of New Testament research. Those
familiar with my writings will know that I do not subscribe to the very
radical late dating of the Gospels (post-130 and beyond) held by the
likes of Joseph Wheless or the Dutch Radical School of the 19th
century, or moderns like Hermann Detering and Acharya S, and even
Robert M. Price, but would place Mark in the late first century (the
90s, let's say, as does G. A. Wells, discussed below), with the other
three canonicals following within the next few decades. The question is
a complex one, involving other non-Gospel documents, and issues
historical and theological within the Christian movement covering
almost a century. To try to bring them all together into a detailed
examination would be beyond the scope of this response. But perhaps we
can look at a few key elements.
Traditional attempts at dating have been
primarily dependent
on the analysis of the Little Apocalypse of Mark chapter 13, which most
mainstream
scholars have regarded as referring to the upheaval of the Jewish War
of 66-73
CE, centered on the destruction of the Temple
and much of the city of Jerusalem
in 70. Its key element is the reference to the “abomination of
desolation” (13:14). A
possible Jewish literary source used
by Mark has been postulated as having originally referred to the threat
by the
emperor Caligula in 37 CE to set up a statue of himself for worship in
the Jerusalem Temple.
Be that as it may (there is
no direct evidence for such a document), Mark in creating his own text
was
drawing midrashically on Daniel 11:31 and 1 Maccabees 1:54, both of
which use
the phrase “abomination of desolation” to refer to the setting up of a
pagan
altar within the Temple sanctuary in the time of the Seleucid king
Antiochus
Epiphanes (167 BCE), which led to the Maccabean revolt. (Antiochus also
imposed
the placement of pagan altars throughout Judea.)
It has
been generally assumed that Mark in 13:14
used the term to refer to the sacrilegious activities of the Romans in
the Temple
when they conquered the city in 70 (though this appears not to have
involved
the setting up of a formal pagan altar).
But there are difficulties here. The whole
tone of Mark’s
scene suggests that it is not a simple allusion to history placed in
Jesus’
mouth in the form of a prophecy. If the event of the “abomination of
desolation” lies in the writer’s—and the readers’—past, what is the
purpose of
the reference and especially its accompanying warnings? Why would Mark
include
it? Rather, it has the same content and atmosphere as other passages in
the
Synoptics (and in Q) in which prophecies are made about the future
coming of
the Son of Man, what can be expected when he arrives and how best to
prepare
for it ahead of time, even if one does not know the hour.
In other words, such prophecies are meant
to
enlighten and
caution the reader, not to recount history. Indeed, Mark goes on to
have Jesus
prophecy about the coming of the Son of Man. And the insertion of an
‘aside’ at the very reference to the abomination of desolation—“let
the
reader understand”—is Mark’s alert to his readers
that this is something cryptic,
something the reader is going to have to interpret. There would be no
necessity
for this if Mark were simply having Jesus refer to a future (for him)
historical
event every reader was familiar with.
In such a context, in fact, the passage
about
the
abomination of desolation and the urged response to it would make
little
sense. By the time the Romans have conquered Jerusalem
and desecrated the Temple,
the
campaign would essentially be over, the country overrun. There would be
no
thought of a man being “on his roof” or out “in his field” attending to
normal
chores, with still time to flee to the mountains. Nor is it easy to
understand
why Mark would place such warnings and directives in Jesus’ mouth
unless they
were relevant to his own readers—unless they were directed at those
readers,
which could hardly be the case if the whole thing referred to an event
in their
past.
To get around this problem, it is sometimes
suggested that
Mark was written in the years just prior to 70, when the war was
building and
the Gospel writer anticipated the event of the “abomination” and the
necessity
to flee. But this raises more problems than it solves. Even during the
build-up, would the writer have truly anticipated the utter destruction
of the Temple,
“not one stone left upon another”? Would he have recommended waiting
until such
a climactic moment before fleeing to the hills? Would he, from such a
vantage
point, not have been likely to view the accelerating events he was
witnessing as
a sign that the End was indeed near, and thus would not have introduced
earlier
in the chapter broad hints that a certain amount of time after
the throwing down of the Temple would be yet to pass before
the final days, that following “battles near at hand and far away”
(13:7) “the
end is still to come”? That “the Gospel must be proclaimed to all
nations” (13:10)? It is hard
to believe Mark would
consider such a requirement to have been fulfilled by the year 66. For
such
reasons it is difficult also to place the Gospel shortly after 70, as
traditional scholarship tends to. Thus, we need to look for another
‘event’ some
time after 70 to which the “abomination of desolation” and its
accompanying
advice can refer and serve as a relevant warning to Mark’s readers to
drop
everything and flee.
When stepping back and looking at the
entirety of Jesus’
prophecy in Mark 13, we find that it is a curious mix, until we
perceive that
it conforms to traditional apocalyptic writing and devices. As in the
classic
example of the book of Daniel, written between 167 and 164 BCE while
purporting
to be the product of someone earlier (in this case the prophet Daniel
some four
centuries previously), the writer of Mark has included, as part of a
prophecy by
his Jesus some four decades before the fact, the destruction of the
Temple in the
Jewish War. The writer of the book of Daniel had his Daniel ‘predict’
historical events up
to 167—predictions which of course had come true—in the hope that the
readers
would have faith in the additional prophecies being made for their own
future after that date.
Similarly, Mark ‘hooked’ the reader into thinking that the Jesus
figure—or the
movement he is meant to symbolize (we are not sure if Mark’s
allegory-Gospel
envisions a founder figure he believes existed)—had accurately
predicted a future
historical event; by this Mark hopes to convince the reader that his
own
prophecies about the arrival of the End time, beginning with the
abomination of
desolation, followed by dramatic celestial events and the arrival of
the
Son of
Man as laid out in 13:24-27, can also be trusted to happen.
The lesser apocalyptic events outlined in
13:8-13, wars and
earthquakes, false messiahs (repeated in v.21-3), floggings in
synagogues,
arrests, trials and betrayals, are likely also things that have already
been
happening, prophecies fulfilled, including between the Jewish War and
“the end still to
come.” But the abomination of desolation which Mark is predicting is
yet to
occur. The scene is clearly meant to have meaning for his readers, to
serve as
a warning for their own future. Its portrayed character seems quite
specific,
and we should presume that Mark has a real development in mind which he
perceives as potentially imminent in his own environment.
And what was that environment? Here we face
another difficulty,
in that the writer directs Jesus’ warnings to “those in Judea.”
But is Mark writing to “Judeans”? After the War, actual Judeans were to
a
great
extent dispersed, dead or enslaved. What “abomination” were they yet
facing
that they could flee from and save themselves? What Christians now
inhabited Judea?
Moreover, what members of a Jewish community would need the
explanations for
Jewish traditions which Mark supplies throughout his text? And why is
it that the writer
shows a misunderstanding of certain geographical features of Galilee
if he were part of a Judean-based Jewish-Christian community? Such
questions lead
many to
surmise that Mark was written outside Palestine,
and for a readership of non-Jewish Christians. (However, there seems no
need to
push him as far away as Rome,
especially if we assume that Mark’s Q-like environment spells a locale
not too
far from Galilee—probably Syria,
where we can see that the Kingdom-preaching movement embodied in Q had
extended.)
Thus we ought to conclude that the phrase
“those in Judea”
does not refer to literal Judeans, but to Mark’s readership, as a kind
of code
phrase. It would be pointless to construct a prophetic scene out of
scripture
and have Jesus warning a group of people who had nothing to do with
that
readership. Perhaps the “people of Judea” was
used by
Mark’s community to highlight its self-understanding as the new people
of God’s
promise.
That the scene was inspired by scripture is
clear
from the passage in 1 Maccabees which contains key elements drawn on by
Mark.
King Antiochus had set up the “abomination of desolation” in the very
Holy of
Holies of the Temple, but he had also built pagan altars throughout the
country
and ordered the Jews on pain of death to worship the gods at them (1
Macc.
1:54). Mattathias and his five sons defy the King’s orders and start
destroying
the altars throughout Israel,
killing apostates and the king’s officers. Then:
“Follow me,”
he shouted through
the town, “every one of you who is zealous for
the law and strives to maintain
the covenant.” He and his sons took to the hills,
leaving all their belongings
behind in the town.” [2:27-8, NEB]
Mark borrows the latter thought in 13:14:
But when you
see
‘the abomination
of desolation’ usurping a place which is not his (let the reader
understand),
then those who are in Judea must take to the
hills,
not stopping to take anything from the
house,
not even a coat. It
has been suggested that a closely similar situation existed in the
reign of
Domitian (81-96), specifically around the year 90, when this emperor
planned to
force Jews—which would have included Christians, since the requirement
applied
to all Rome’s subjects—to participate in the rites of emperor worship.
While we
don’t know if there was any intention to set up special altars for the
purpose,
the parallel with the situation under Antiochus as recounted in 1
Maccabees is
striking. Is this the “abomination of desolation” Mark is referring to,
the
threatened practice of pagan rites to be established in all the
empire’s
centers, which Christians could never agree to participate in? Mark,
through
Jesus’ symbolic prophecy, was warning his community about this imminent
eventuality, this new abomination. Taking his cue from 1 Maccabees, he
advised
them to “flee into the hills” as Mattathias and his sons had done. It’s
a
compelling proposition. And it would place the writing of Mark no more
than two
decades following the horrors of the Jewish War, so resonant of the
crisis
surrounding Antiochus, a time when the idea that the End and the
arrival of the
Son of Man was around the corner could still have been alive and vivid.
As
well, in a location like Syria
this resonance makes much better sense than a directive to Christians
in Rome
to flee into hills.
G. A. Wells [The
Historical Evidence for Jesus, p.108-112] presents this analysis in
detail,
drawing on E. A. Haenchen’s Der Weg Jesu.
He says in part:
Haenchen argues, then, that what Mark envisaged was an attempt
by a
Roman emperor to force pagan worship on Christians, as Antiochus had
done on
his subjects. The Book of Revelation [E.D.:
generally
dated to the 90s as well] reckons with such a possibility. The
point was
not baldly stated, since open criticism of imperial power would have
been
dangerous not only for the author but also for the community in which
his book
was used. For this reason, Revelation’s author sometimes writes “Babylon”
when he means “Rome,” and
disparages an emperor without mentioning his name. But to make sure
that he
will nevertheless be understood, he several times insists that his
readers should
seek out the secret sense of his words (“If any man hath an ear, let
him hear”;
“Here is wisdom” for him “that hath understanding,” etc.).
Haenchen argues that Mark had to be equally cautious of Rome,
and for that reason adopted the same method of warning his readers that
his
message was in coded form (“let him that readeth understand”). And he
decodes
Mark’s message to read: As soon as preparations (that is, the setting
up of an
image or altar) are seen being made for a compulsory sacrifice to a
pagan god
or to the emperor himself—as soon, then, as the sacrilege is seen
standing
“where he ought not to be”—then those in Judea (that is, Christians)
are to
flee to the mountains. Judea is named because
Mark
regards the coming Roman persecutions as fulfilling the prophecy of
Daniel; he
reproduces Daniel’s phrasing so as to be unintelligible except to his
Christian
readers, who will understand that, although only those in Judea
are mentioned, Christians anywhere in the Empire are meant…
Other features noted by Wells support the
logic of a date
around 90 for Mark’s composition of this chapter. But another
interpretation
has been raised by more radical scholarship, in keeping with the trend
noted by
Ben to date all the Gospels post-130 or even later. Could the
abomination and the warning to
flee refer to events of the second Jewish War/Revolt of 132-135 CE? By
this
reading, Hadrian’s establishment of pagan altars on the Temple
mount after 130 became the “abomination of desolation” which Mark is
referring
to, and with the revolt under Bar Kochba taking shape in response, Mark
is
warning his readers to flee to the hills. In this case, “those in Judea,”
where the revolt started, would be meant literally.
This interpretation, however, encounters
much
the same
difficulties as before. It is highly unlikely that Mark is writing in Judea
for Judeans. If his readership is as far away as Rome,
or even only in Syria,
there would be no need to urge people in those areas to take to the
hills. The
second war, as a rebellion and in terms of the Roman response, was more
limited in scope and territory than the first one.
Proponents of the later dating also point
to
the possibility
floated at the time of the Bar Kochba revolt that the Temple, destroyed
60
years earlier, could be rebuilt, and that this is what Jesus is
alluding to
when in Mark 14:58 he is accused at his trial of having said: “I will
throw
down this temple, made with human hands, and in three days I will build
another, not made with hands.” Is this meant to be a prophecy of the
Bar Kochba
situation, when Jews were holding out the expectation that the Temple
would be rebuilt? (This would require that Mark wrote before the
failure of the
revolt by 135.)
Yet this requires a serious contravention
of
the words of
the statement itself. First of all, the rebuilding of the Temple
after 60 years is hardly “three days later,” and Jesus is saying that
it is
himself who will do the building, and not “with hands.” The prophecy
clearly
bears a spiritual significance, with the three days no doubt referring
to his
resurrection. It should also be asked why any Christian would have an
interest
in seeing the Jewish Temple rebuilt, to resume the old sacrifices which
Jesus’
own sacrificial death had supposedly supplanted. Mark would be very
unlikely to
purposely associate Jesus’ prophetic intentions with the rebuilding of
the Temple,
especially at a time when Christianity had made a complete break with
Judaism
and there was mostly bad blood between the two groups.
Associating Mark 13 with the second Jewish
War of the 130s
is problematic enough to be denied credence. Besides which, there are
difficulties of a more general nature associated with such a late date.
By 130,
apocalyptic expectations among Christian’s had receded. The Gospel of
Luke, for
example, downplays any immediacy for the future Parousia of Christ,
whereas for
Mark the event was almost around the corner. And yet, if Mark was
written no
earlier than 132, this means that the other two Synoptics, and even
John, would
have had to follow as redactions of Mark almost immediately, within a
handful
of years. By the 140s, Marcion was operating in Rome
and putting together his canon of authoritative documents in support of
his own
theology. It featured a shorter version of the Gospel of Luke (probably
the
postulated Ur-Luke later doctored and expanded by the Roman Church
around or just
after the
middle of the 2nd
century). Justin, hardly a few years later, was
speaking of, and quoting from, multiple accounts he called “memoirs of
the
Apostles.” The fragment P52 of the Gospel of John, usually dated
about
125—though around 150 would be a more cautious and reasonable
‘mean’
date—would indicate that at least an early version would have been in
existence
no later than the second quarter of the century.
This would mean that all of the four
Gospels
would have to
be crammed into a window of composition not much longer than a decade.
Since it
is assumed that they were not all composed in the same center, this
would necessitate
an immediate and rapid distribution of copies of Mark to most major
Christian
communities and its equally immediate transformation into other
divergent
versions. This is something which is hardly suggested by the dearth of
witness
to the Gospel story in many centers even well past the mid-point of the
century. To get around that, some radical scholars have suggested that
in fact
Marcion’s version of Luke was the original Gospel, a suggestion too
problematic
to seriously countenance. One of the things it requires is that Mark
was actually
later, and not the first Gospel; but Mark as a drastically reduced
version of
Luke or Matthew cannot hold water.
As well, the mid
to
late 2nd
century dating of all the Gospels has required that other early
Christian
documents be judged as forgeries and placed beyond the mid-century mark
as
well. This includes 1 Clement and the epistles of Ignatius, since these
are
regarded as showing at least a basic knowledge of some Gospel elements.
(Here,
I believe the latter view is weakly supported, at least in terms of
elements
that would have been derived from circulating written documents. The
Ignatian
epistles in their simpler, “Shorter” recension may be forgeries, but
written
not too long after his death.) The epistle of Polycarp, perhaps from
the 130s,
also shows signs of Gospel knowledge, as does, rather crudely, the
epistle of
Barnabas from roughly the same time. But when most of these documents
are
pushed past the mid-century in the interests of supporting the radical
late
dating of the Gospels, we get the sense that the whole structure has
become unwieldy,
an unstable contrivance. When it is occasionally suggested that even
the works
of Justin are a later forgery (I've even encountered the same for
Irenaeus), the whole thing verges on the outrageous.
Firm attestation of written Gospels is
admittedly late, in
Justin (150s) and by inference in Marcion a few years earlier, but this
in
itself cannot determine the date of composition; especially since
modern
scholarly dismantling of the Gospels to reveal their midrashic
non-historical
nature points to a situation in which they could well have been written
decades
earlier as allegorical works, known within a limited range of
communities but not
to emerge into the wider light of Christian knowledge until they began
to gain
traction as historical documents, relevant to a newly-imagined genesis
of the
faith. (I regard Ignatius’ basic Gospel biography of Jesus, from
sometime
between 107 and 120, let's say, as “rumors” of an historical Jesus
based on a Mark or
Matthew beginning to make waves from somewhere beyond his own community
of Antioch, since
Ignatius makes no appeal to a written document in support of his Jesus
crucified under Pilate and fails to make mention of any teachings or
miracles
attributed to him.) A date of Mark around 90, with Matthew following
perhaps a
decade later, Luke a decade or so after that, and John not too much
beyond the Synoptic group, would fit all the details of the picture
which early
Christianity presents, including knowledge of the Gospel ‘events.’ Only
by the
year 180, as witnessed in the writings of Irenaeus, did all four
crystallize as
canonical, having passed through a certain amount of editing by the
Roman
Church and acquiring the names of their newly-imagined authors.
Ben is puzzled by the fact that Christians
did not quote
from these “Holy Gospels” soon after they were written, if the proposal
for their earlier composition
is correct. But one cannot quote from something which has not reached
one yet,
or is not regarded as something representing the words and deeds of an
historical person.
Doug writes:
I've
been a long-time reader of your website and have e-mailed you in the
past and
you've even posted a couple of my posts along with your responses on
your
Feedback page. I puzzle over your interpretation of "according to the
flesh" in Romans 1:3. You say it refers to "the realm of flesh"
in the upper heavenly spheres of Platonic cosmology. But the same
phrase
is used in Romans 9:3 where Paul clearly means that he is biologically
related
to his Jewish brethren. In Ephesians 6:5 and Colossians 3:22 the
authors
use the phrase to refer to the masters of slaves. In 2 Corinthians 1:17 and 10:2 the phrase refers to
the carnal, unspiritual
nature of man. Isn't the most logical reading of the phrase in Romans
1:3 that
Jesus was a real man who (Paul claims) was literally descended from
King David?
Also,
your reading of the passage in Hebrews 13:11-13 seems counter-intuitive
in the
same way. If Jesus being executed "outside the camp [I think Doug meant to say 'gate' here]"
was a
mythological derivation from the sacrifices offered by priests in the
days of Israel's
wandering in the
wilderness then why didn't the author just say Jesus was also executed
"outside the camp"? Instead, he writes "outside the gate."
You speculate that he suggests in verse 13 that Christians are
outsiders
in the same sense that Jesus was. I gather you mean that in the first
century
outcast Christians were "outside the gate" because in those days the
Jews lived in walled cities rather than camps. But if that is the case
then
why, in verse 13, does the author go right back to saying "outside the
camp"? It seems obvious to me that he speaks of Jesus killed "outside
the gate" because he was in fact a real man who was crucified right
outside the walls of Jerusalem.
Response to Doug:
Romans 1:3 and "kata sarka"Again / Outside the Gate
(Hebrews 13:11-13)
Romans 1:3, seconded by Galatians 4:4’s
“born
of woman,” is
the passage most often appealed to when challenging or questioning the
mythicist case and my own especially. On the latter passage, I have
increasingly over the years leaned toward regarding it as an
interpolation, and
my most recent Supplementary Article, “Born of
Woman?,” explains why and
discusses the matter in detail. However, I do not regard Romans 1:3 as
an
interpolation, but it is the passage whose explanation in the context
of my
case is most consistently misunderstood. I will make another effort to
try to
clarify.
First let me repeat two points I have
regularly made. If
biography, this would be the only such reference Paul ever makes about
an
historical Jesus (allowing that 1 Thessalonians 2:15-16 is an
interpolation—on
which many critical scholars agree—and 1 Timothy 6:13 is part of a 2nd
century document, not by Paul; in any case, the latter too may be an
interpolation—see
the Appendix to Article No. 3, Who Crucified
Jesus?). Since there is no identifiable reason why Paul should
refer to
Jesus’
historical descent from David in the context of Romans 1, this would be
an odd
singularity. However, it is not so odd if we draw on that context to
explain the reference and its source.
Romans 1:2 makes it clear that Paul is
speaking of the
source of his gospel about Jesus: namely, the “gospel of God...about
his
Son” as
found in the prophets. The descent of the Messiah from David is a
prominent
element of traditional Jewish prophecy, and Paul is stating that he has
derived
such information about Christ from those prophecies. Since it is in
scripture,
he is led to apply it to his spiritual Christ, even if it originally
applied to a human man. How he conceives of that
relationship between Christ and David is not clear to us, but such a
connection
is not impossible, given what we know about ancient mythical thinking
and the
relationship between heaven and earth and between spiritual and
material
counterparts in Platonic-style cosmology. We don’t know even if he had any clear understanding of it in his own mind,
or was
simply relying on scripture as pointing to some cryptic truth. The fact
that he
pairs this relationship to David with an obviously scriptural and
spiritual
‘event’ in verse 4 also persuades us that the former is a scriptural
and
spiritual conception as well, having no necessary connection to an
historical
tradition about an historical person.
What, then, of the “kata
sarka”? Here in particular there is usually a misunderstanding
of my
treatment of this phrase. I have never said, contrary to Doug, that it
represents “the upper heavenly spheres of
Platonic cosmology.” As we know, it is usually
translated as
“according to
the flesh,” but what does that mean?
The phrase is used in a variety of contexts, as Doug suggests, and the
natural reading is that it refers to flesh of the fleshly realm, that
is, the realm
that
humans are a part of. Sometimes the word “sarx”
can be a reference to actual humanity, as in Romans 9:3, or more
loosely to
aspects of being human, as in 2 Corinthians 5:16, where the phrase does
not
refer to Christ’s ‘flesh’
but to the “human standards”
by which people like
Paul have previously judged Christ.
This is not to say that the term sarx does not at times refer to Christ’s
own—spiritual—flesh
(more on this shortly). In regard to the
phrase “kata sarka” itself, in The Jesus Puzzle
(p.122) I allowed that it could in certain places, like other phrases
using sarx, signify Christ
taking on “the spiritual counterpart of flesh.”
(Scholars do acknowledge such a concept and use of the word: see The Jesus Puzzle,
p.103 and the latest edition of Bauer’s Lexicon.)
But I have since moved away from that option for “kata sarka”
itself (and I trust I am allowed to change or refine my position on
some things over eight years) to focus on the other interpretation I
offered. “According to the
flesh,” while woolly, primarily suggests the
meaning that would be conveyed
by the
translation “in relation to the flesh,” “in regard to the flesh,” “as
affecting
the flesh,” etc. One can see that here the word itself is not a
reference to
Christ’s own (spiritual) flesh, but rather to humanity, to the fleshly
material realm. It is
Christ’s relationship with that realm
which is at issue.
Thus we need to analyze Romans 1:3 from the
point of view of
a meaning not of ‘Christ in his own flesh was of David’s seed,’ but
rather ‘Christ
in relation to David and the realm of flesh was of his seed.’ The
difference
is significant because the concept no longer hangs on literal or
standard
meanings
of the word “flesh.” The word itself can be allowed to assume its usual
meaning, as a reference to humanity and the fleshly sphere. In
relation to humanity and its sphere
(“kata sarka”) Christ possesses or
has assumed a certain character having to do with David. The knowledge
of that
character has been derived from scripture. Believers like Paul in a
spiritual
Son of God discovered in scripture have applied, of
necessity,
characteristics to him which scripture has revealed, such as a
relationship to
David, and (possibly, if it is not an interpolation) the “birth” from a
woman in Galatians 4:4,
derived from Isaiah 7:14.
As I said, these concepts would not be
impossible in the
context of Platonic mythology, though again, we cannot know just how
Paul and
the early Christians understood them. The epistles
are full
of references to “mysteries” of God that have been revealed, including
the
mystery/secret of Christ, and we can point to a subsequent “mystery”
which Christianity
has accepted without understanding it, namely the Trinity. Given the
evolution
of the concept of Jesus, the Trinity doctrine became necessary in order
to make
room for Jesus in a monotheistic Godhead. It is no more outlandish to
think
that early Christians accepted the spiritual Christ’s relationship to
the human
David simply because it, too, was necessary: scripture said so, and
that scriptural designation
had to
be applied to their heavenly Son and Messiah.
In the matter of Romans 1:3, I have further
suggested
(taking a cue from C. K. Barrett, something which is regularly
misunderstood as well) that “kata sarka,” in its
meaning of ‘in relation to the flesh,’
could also envision that “flesh” in a locational
sense, as “in the sphere of the flesh,”
to use Barrett’s phrase and give it a more
pronounced locational meaning than he probably intended.
Since the
ancients had greater associations of location than we do in
distinguishing
between flesh and spirit and the inhabitants of both, the activities
performed
by spiritual beings which affected humanity—and particularly if they
involved
suffering and death—belonged to a specific lower area of the universe,
usually
located below the moon. Paul is not clear about the exact location of
Christ’s
crucifixion, but there are certain indicators (such as 1 Corinthians
2:8) that
he, and others, regarded the agency of that crucifixion as the demon
spirits.
They were denizens of that “sphere of flesh” below the moon, inhabiting
the
firmament or “air” up to the region of the moon and possessing their
own kind
of material corporeality, though not of human
flesh. (Again, see The Jesus Puzzle,
p.103.)
Thus, the thought behind Romans 1:3 could
include the idea
of Jesus’ redeeming activity when he had descended to the realm of
fleshly
corruptibility, which did not have to be all the way to earth itself.
It
was in this context that he was seen as possessing his
scripture-revealed
relationship to David. In traditional Jewish thought the Messiah, as
descendant
of David, would be the savior of Israel, and so, as Savior, Christ in
that role
which he assumed upon his descent into the realm of flesh may have been
conceived as being “of David’s seed,” as scripture indicated. There is
also a
wide spectrum of meaning, from literal to symbolic, in which that
relationship
to David could have been interpreted, and from the brief and cryptic
reference
in 1:3 we cannot tell where along such a spectrum early Christian
thought lay.
“Kata sarka” can be used in
metaphorical ways in other contexts, such as the common reference in
the
epistles to “walking kata sarka,”
i.e., living and behaving according to the ways of the flesh (e.g., 2
Cor.
10:2-3), or judging by worldly standards, or acting according to one’s
baser
nature. It can describe the human condition or a state of mind. It is
hardly a
stretch to assume the possibility of an equally symbolic intention in
Romans 1:3. The savior of Israel would be a “son
of David,” and just as “son
of God” was applied to many people in a
non-literal sense, Jesus as the seed of David may also have been meant
in a non-literal way, especially when scripture had to be accommodated.
In the excerpt below, I point out that gentiles are spoken of as “of
Abraham’s seed” in a sense
that is not meant to designate literal physical lineage.
In regard to the locational sense behind
this
verse, we can postulate the same in the first line of the
christological hymn of 1 Timothy 6:13,
which uses a variant of kata sarka:
“who was
revealed
in flesh [en sarki]…”
This need not be a reference to Jesus’ own
flesh, but to the
realm of flesh, of humanity: he was revealed to humans within their own
sphere.
The hymn goes on to say nothing about an earthly career and specifies
that he
was seen only “by angels” and “was proclaimed throughout the world,”
with no
mention of him proclaiming himself or anything else in his own voice.
(Compare
also 1 Peter 3:18.)
In the upcoming second edition of The Jesus Puzzle I will be providing a
new and lengthy study of the
use of the term “sarx” in the
epistles and how this can lead us to non-literal and non-human
interpretations
of certain characteristics given to Christ. For now, I will quote an
excerpt
from that planned Appendix here, where it focuses on Romans 1:3…
I
outlined earlier that several
usages of “sarx” do not describe
flesh per se, but relationships: between humans, and between humanity
and
divinity. Thus Paul says (Romans 9:3) that the Jews are his “kinsmen
according
to the flesh (kata sarka)”; Abraham
is “our forefather according to the flesh (kata
sarka).” Since the phrase should be entirely superfluous and
unnecessary,
we can only assume that Paul uses it because in his thinking the human
world
contains other relationships that are not
according to the flesh—such as the one between Abraham and the gentiles
who are
his “seed”: a mystical linkage based on faith and being “in Christ,”
not on any
necessary physical lineage. (See Romans 9:8, “the
children of the promise [i.e., Paul’s gentiles]
are regarded as [Abraham’s] seed,”
the latter word being the same as the one used in 1:3.)
We can also note that in Galatians 3:16, Paul
declares Christ to be Abraham’s “seed”
through a rather tortured exegesis of scripture dependent on the word “seed”
being in the singular. Since he can bring the gentiles into this “seed”
equation through their mystical link to Christ, it would seem that Paul
is designating Christ as “seed”
of Abraham in a similar mystical fashion, dependent on scripture. If he
had meant it literally, he need merely have proclaimed it through human
genealogical channels, as Matthew and Luke were to do. His strained use
of scripture would have been unnecessary.
If
humans can have a
relationship to humans mystically, as in the case of the gentiles being
of Abraham’s seed, then there should be even less
impediment to
seeing Christ, a spiritual entity, also having a relationship to a
human figure in
the same
way: mystically. We have just seen it in regard to Christ’s
relationship to Abraham. Christ being of David’s seed should be no less
feasible, no less non-literal. The concept is arrived at through
mystical thinking,
and is derived from scripture. Why does Paul in Romans 1:3 use
“kata sarka”? Because here Christ has a
relationship with the inferior world of humanity. It is ‘in relation to
a human
being.’ Note that in the next verse, we have its opposite counterpart:
a
relationship on the level of spirit. Christ relates to God as his Son “kata pneuma.” The “according to the
spirit” is cryptic here, because it adds the phrase “of holiness,” and
it has
been an unresolved question as to whether this is a reference to the
Holy
Spirit or to the spiritual venue of the event, the spiritual realm of
heaven.
These two verses may also be a pre-Pauline
liturgical unit, which by
its nature
(and the demands of poetic structure) imposed a “kata sarka
/ kata pneuma”
dichotomy upon the text, so that we cannot know the exact intention or
understanding behind the first phrase, or even if there was much of
either.
Also, as discussed in Chapter 8, the lead-in of verse 2 makes it clear
that Paul
is assigning the source of both these items to scripture, to the gospel
of God
about his Son as pre-announced in the prophets. We do not need to
assume that
Paul invented or repeated these words with any concrete comprehension
of what
it meant for a spiritual being to be “of David’s seed.”
That
Christ could be regarded as
“of David’s seed” in a way that was not a literal earthly lineage
should be
evident once an historical Jesus arrived on the scene. There is a
secondary
reading of Acts 2:30 which speaks of Christ as a “descendant” of David kata sarka who would gain the throne of Israel.
Since the author of Acts belonged to the line of thought that Jesus was
born of
a virgin, he was thus not being presented as a literal descendant of
David.
Ignatius does the same thing in his epistle to the Smyrneans: he
declares (1:1)
that Christ was “of the line of David according to the flesh (kata sarka),” yet in the same sentence
declares him born of a virgin (something derived from Isaiah 7:14, with its “young woman”
mistranslated in the
Septuagint as “virgin”). This should have ruled out any understanding
of Jesus
as a literal human descendant of David. Ancient and modern apologists
have
subsequently come up with the idea that Jesus was a descendant of David
through
Mary. But ancient royal lineage was not through the female. And when
Matthew
and Luke came to invent lineages for Jesus, they presented the line of
descent
not as through Mary but through Joseph, even if he was only Jesus’
nominal
father. But ‘adoption’ would have been an even weaker linkage, and just
as
unacceptable. And yet Irenaeus and Tertullian both state that Jesus’
descent
from David was through Mary, even in the absence of any such genealogy
and in
contradiction to Matthew and Luke’s genealogy. Thus Christians for two
millennia have been faced with an unresolvable conundrum. If those
ancient
Christians were able to accept and live with such an irrational
contradiction,
they would surely have been able to accept the equal conundrum of a
spiritual
Christ being of the “seed” of David. In both cases, they were kowtowing
to
scripture.
Throughout
this book, I have been
stressing the concept of scripture itself being the embodiment of the
‘event’
of Christ. He and his activities have been “revealed” through a new
reading of
scripture, and apparently solely from
scripture. From there one discovers information about him—even
including what
he “says.” Hebrews 10:5 assigns him a “body” for sacrifice because it
said so
in Psalm 40:6-8 (LXX), which the author quotes, understanding it as the
voice
of Christ speaking from scripture. (That’s the ‘speaker’ he refers to
in 1:2 as
the voice of God in these “last days.”) Even in 5:7, the writer has
Christ
performing things “in the days of his flesh” which are drawn from
scripture. 1
Peter 4:1 has him “suffering” (which had to be in “flesh,” not in
spirit)
because Isaiah 53 told him so, and that is the source he appeals to in 2:22-23. There is no oral tradition
or
historical memory in evidence. Through such revelation Christ has
“come” in the
present time, which is why so many of the references in the early
non-Gospel
record talk of Christ in the present tense. As Bishop Lightfoot
observed in
regard to 1 Clement over a century ago, they know him as a present
phenomenon
rather than as an historical man of the past, memories of whom guide
and enrich
the community. Thus, Christ is “of the seed of David” because it said
so—even
using those very words—in many messianic passages of scripture now
identified
with the spiritual Christ. And maybe that was simply that.
If
Christ can be seen as having a
mystical relationship with David and Abraham, he can be seen as having
a mystical
relationship with Israel
as a whole. If he can be seen as in some way of the seed of David kata sarka, he can have some connection
to Israel
kata sarka as well. Again, there was no
need for the early Christian cult to understand exactly what this
meant. The
general concept of spiritual-material parallels between heaven and
earth would
aid in accepting it in principle if not through comprehension. And
since the
thought of people like Paul already contained so much of a mystical
nature that
could hardly be rationally explained, such as the inclusion of humans
in the
spiritual “body” of Christ, why should anyone have balked at Romans 1:3?
As for Doug’s query about “outside the camp/gate” in Hebrews
13:11-13, he has apparently not yet read Part
3 of my recent study of the Epistle to
the Hebrews, in which I discuss these verses at some length. I will
reproduce a
key passage of it here:
The
“camp” is the camp of the Israelites at Sinai. First of all, a
change from this word would again be needed no matter what, because the
writer
could hardly specify that Jesus had suffered outside this “camp.” Jesus
did not
suffer and die at Sinai, or at any other “camp.” A parallel governed by
scripture would still have to specify some other location; it is the
“outside”
that is the essential part of the parallel. And what “gate” might the
author
have had in mind? Since the “outside” at Sinai is related to the
“inside” where
the animal was sacrificed, we may suppose that the “outside” in Jesus’
case was
similarly related to the “inside” where he offered his own sacrifice,
the
latter being the heavenly sanctuary, or simply heaven itself where the
sanctuary was located. If his thought was governed by the scriptural
precedent,
then in order to reflect a proper parallel with the sacrificed animal,
the
“outside” in Jesus’ case must refer to heaven. Outside Jerusalem would
have had nothing to do with it, since
Jesus’ offering of his blood did not take place inside
Jerusalem. And Jesus did indeed have to suffer and die
“outside”
heaven, since
he could not undergo such experiences within heaven itself. Thus, we
may
presume the strong possibility that in the writer’s mind the “gate”
refers to
the gate of heaven.
Why,
then, did the author revert to “camp” in verse 13? Well, he could
not maintain the reference to heaven, since he could hardly suggest
that the
readers join Christ outside heaven. Nor, on the other hand, could they
join him
outside the Sinai camp. But the writer has made certain parallels
between the
situation of the Israelites and that of his own community, and he
implies one
in verse 14, in that both they and the Israelites are, for now,
homeless,
seeking a new city.
The present community is outside the pale, not belonging to this world.
And so
was Jesus outside his own home when he underwent death. The thought of
“joining
Jesus outside” would reflect a paradigmatic relationship between Christ
and his
devotees, in which both share similar experiences of separation and
suffering.
Furthermore,
if “gate” had been the gate of Jerusalem, there
should have been no reason not to
continue that motif. Both writer and readers could readily have
envisioned
joining Jesus on Calvary “outside the gate of Jerusalem,” even
if only in spirit. There they could
be seen to suffer together. Verse 14 even speaks of a “city,” or rather
of two
cities, the worldly one they have left behind, the other the one to
come, the
heavenly Jerusalem. The former city would have fitted perfectly
with the earthly Jerusalem, outside of which the community could have joined Jesus. Yet
the
author does not continue the “gate” idea. This virtually rules out the
thought
that in the previous verse he has the gate of Jerusalem in
mind, and supports the idea that it is
the gate of heaven. And so he was forced to revert to “camp,”
even
though—as in
so many of his attempts—the parallel was imperfect. But at least the
Sinai
camp, being in the wilderness, far from home between the old Egypt
and the new Promised Land, would bear a
similarity to the situation the believers felt themselves in. And so
the motif
was pressed into service, an analogy that was, perhaps, “not meant to
be
pressed,” although envisioning themselves within their own ‘camp’ in
which they
temporarily set up abode (like the Israelites) while awaiting entry to
the Promised
Land, would not be a stretch. In getting inside the writer’s mind, of
course,
we can only speculate, but even speculation can be rooted in the text
and in
logical deduction.
Tim writes:
Why would you
avoid looking at Revelation 13:8 which says Jesus was crucified before
the world was made? Wouldn't that help your argument? To me, it goes
nicely with the idea of Paul, 1st Clement and Colossians all saying
that Jesus was the firstborn of the dead (how could he be if he is the
Jesus in the Gospels?), but being killed before the world began he
WOULD be the first to come back from the dead.
Response to Tim:
Revelation 13:8 -
When was Jesus slain?
Revelation 13:8 (literally):
And there will worship him all those
dwelling on the earth
whose name has not been written
in the scroll of life of the Lamb who was slain
from the foundation of the world.
Grammatically, the Greek is ambiguous. It
could be the ‘names’ written from the foundation of the world,
or the ‘slaying of the Lamb.’ Many translations make a note of the
ambiguity,
but most opt for the former meaning. Perhaps it is the more natural
reading in the context of Revelation as a whole, which speaks of the
predestined salvation of the elect, as recorded in the sealed scroll
(ch. 5-7). Such ideas usually include the principle that such
predestination has been decided by God since the beginning of time.
In English, an uninflected language, we can
sometimes have difficulty formulating sentences to make clear the
relationship between different elements in them. Greek, being
inflected, has less difficulty in maintaining the sense of those
relationships within a long and complex sentence, although in
Revelation
13:8, there is no inflection in the final phrase that can be
grammatically linked to one or the other of the possible antecedents.
But the
ambiguity lies as much in the English translation as in the Greek
original. The structure of Greek phrasing places “slain” after the
noun it modifies, “tou arniou tou esphagmenou” (lit., “the lamb
the having been slain”). But
if we translated the third line above as: “in the scroll of life of the slain Lamb” there would be less incentive for our
minds to link “from the foundation of the world” with the antecedent “slain.”
Interestingly, there is a classic ambiguity
present in a passage which is very pertinent to Tim’s query. He is suggesting the point that if
Jesus, according to one reading of Revelation 13:8,
was killed at the foundation of the world (in a mythical spiritual
context), this would cast light on what various writers have in mind by
saying that Jesus was “firstborn of the dead,” since he would be the first to die, and be
resurrected. He calls attention to Colossians 1:18. In the hymn about
the Son (1:15-20), 1:18 says:
...he is
the beginning, the firstborn [prōtotokos] from the dead...
1
Corinthians 15:20 has a similar thought:
But now
Christ has been raised from the dead, firstfruit [aparchē] of those who have fallen
asleep.
Tim is
right in suggesting that the concept of Jesus dying and rising at the
time of the foundation of the world would, in one way, fit well with
the mythicist case. If that mythical redeeming act took place outside
the boundaries of material space and time, it could have happened at
any ‘temporal’ point.
Traditional myths of the gods were generally
placed in a primordial time at the ‘beginning’ of
things, or sometimes
simply in a remote and undefined past. But with the arrival of
Platonism and the concept of divine activities being acted out in a
higher spiritual realm, temporality became in a sense timeless.
However, early Christian thought does seem to place Jesus’ salvific
acts at a point ‘subsequent’ to
certain historical events in Jewish
history, even if they do not or cannot locate them at a specific subsequent point in time,
or at some equivalent point to lower-world temporality. But we have to
keep in mind that ancient mythological concepts did not—and
certainly
do not for us—lend
themselves well to rational, scientific analysis,
and whatever intuitive grasp the ancients may have thought they had on
the subject is something we can no longer share. It is also possible
that they regarded Christ’s acts as ‘subsequent’ simply in
terms of the revelation and application of those acts. Christ
would be the “second Adam” because
the applied consequences of his acts postdate the consequences of the
acts of Adam. 1 Corinthians 15:22: “For as in
Adam all die, so in Christ all will be made alive.” This
in itself would not preclude the act of Christ from which that
consequence
proceeds as having occurred even before Adam’s
existence. It is not the “when” of
Christ’s
redeeming act which matters, it is the “now” of it, as
revealed and applied through apostles like Paul. This is something we
can
see throughout the epistles. The event of Christ’s death
and rising is
relegated to some undetermined past, never historically specified,
while the focus is placed on the present-time revelation of that act by
God and the benefits now available from it. My recent Article on “Born of Woman”? examines
that very feature of the Galatians 4 passage.
The
passage pertinent to Tim’s query,
and to my own examination of the
question of when Jesus was conceived to have performed his act of
redemption, is 2 Timothy 1:9-10, for it seems to present the concept
that Jesus performed that act “before
time began,” (pro chronōn aiōniōn, lit., “before
times eternal”). The
meaning of that Greek phrase is unclear; biblical commentators cannot
agree on just what the writer has in mind here. (See The Jesus Puzzle,
p.118-119.) But it seems to be speaking of a dimension that lies
outside or before the span of world history, the spiritual sphere of
God. The question is, what is it that took place there? Here is the
layout of the passage, and I’ll note
the grammatical ambiguity I
referred to earlier which is entailed in it, an ambiguity which in fact
has an effect on our interpretation of the issue being discussed.
8
...the gospel according to the power of God [theou, in the genitive case]
9 the one having saved [tou
sōsantos, in the genitive case, referring back to “God”]
us and called us to holiness,
not from any merit of ours but according to
his own purpose and grace,
which was given to us in Christ Jesus before
the beginning of time
[lit., before times eternal, pro
chronōn aiōniōn],
10 but now manifested [i.e., God’s grace]
by the revelation [epiphaneias]
of our Savior, Christ
Jesus [Xristou
Iēsou, in the genitive],
having abrogated [katargēsantos, in the genitive]
death
and brought life and immortality to light
through the gospel...
The
ambiguity resides in the “having
abrogated,” “katargēsantos” in the
genitive case. Does it refer back to the immediately preceding “Christ
Jesus” or does
it look all the way back to the end of verse 8 (it’s all one
big happy sentence
in the Greek), to “God”? As such
it would be in parallel to the whole of verse 9 and part of 10, which
is introduced by “the one
having saved us” which
refers back to God. The distance and intervening material is not
technically a problem for Greek because inflections help keep track of
things, and the ambiguity may arise simply by
the accident that the intervening thoughts end with a noun which also
happens to be in the genitive.
This
reading would fit well within the
context as a whole, for the writer is speaking about the actions of
God. Verse 9 speaks of God doing the “saving,” in
parallel with the similar thought in the latter part of verse 10, the “abrogating” of death,
etc. Moreover, that the writer is intending God as the performer of
this second
action is virtually required by the means cited for it: “through
the gospel,” which for
Paul and the pseudo-Pauls is always a product of God, a gospel received
from him
through