Here in Part 4 of my analysis of Tim Sledge’s book, Goodbye Jesus, I’m going to delve into a curious phenomenon I have noticed with many former Christians, particularly ex-Evangelicals/Fundamentalists, when it comes to them explaining why the left the faith. Now, as we’ve seen with Sledge’s life story, there were a variety of things that led to him eventually walking away from Christianity: church rivalries, feeling betrayed by other Christians, bad personal choices, etc. When it came right down to it, Sledge left Christianity because of a lot of pain, hurt, and disappointment that had happened, some his fault, some not his fault.
That is what led him to write the following: “The driving reason for my rejection of the Christian faith was simple: Christians are not people who have been supernaturally changed and the new birth doesn’t work” (364). Now, although I can understand that reasoning to a degree (if Christians have massively failed you or even betrayed you, that’s going to play a big role in leaving the faith), that reason, nevertheless, reflects a rather emotionally naïve, and dare I say unchristian, presupposition—namely that as soon as someone becomes a Christian, that person will automatically become a good, moral, upright person fairly quickly. If you view Christianity as some kind of “divine self-help” program that should produce instant results, you’re going to be disappointed. Clearly that is how Sledge viewed Christianity, and that explains his reason for leaving the faith.
Enter Bart Ehrman: The High Priest of Ex-Evangelical Rationalism
What becomes clear in the last 60+ pages of his book, though, is that Sledge clearly doesn’t feel that reason is really good enough to justify his leaving Christianity. And so, he decides he needs to buttress and legitimize his decision by making an appeal to the scholarly work of Bart Ehrman. Indeed, I’ve come across a number of ex-Evangelicals like Sledge who all have a certain fondness for Ehrman. They appeal to his authority as a “reasonable” New Testament scholar who isn’t encumbered by the chains of religious belief and appeals to Christian authority. It’s rather ironic, actually.
Ehrman used to be a fundamentalist himself, and even went to Wheaton College. Eventually, though, he left Christianity and became an agnostic because he couldn’t reconcile the idea of a loving God with the reality of suffering in the world. Now, that is a really hard issue to deal with. But, as with most ex-Evangelicals, whether it be Ehrman, Dan Barker, or Tim Sledge, that kind of reason (as with Sledge’s stated reason) evidently isn’t good enough to stand on its own. While (in my view) those reasons are completely understandable, it seems these ex-Evangelicals feel that they are just too dang subjective. That is why there is this incessant need to convince people that the real reason for leaving the faith was that they just started using logic, reason, and science and thus became intellectually convinced the Bible was unreliable. Ehrman has made a living doing this. He has written countless books, but they all basically make the same argument: You can’t be sure anything in the Bible is accurate, the New Testament contradicts itself, and the Jesus presented in the New Testament is a later church invention.
I’ve written an entire series on Ehrman’s book, How Jesus Became God, and I welcome you to read it, starting with Part 1 here. In this post, though, I want to discuss Sledge’s new view of Christianity and the Bible, which as he says, is highly influenced by Ehrman. I want to focus on just two points of Ehrman’s that Sledge appeals to: (A) Jesus’ identity as a failed apocalyptic prophet, and (B) The apparent contradictions in the Gospels.
A Failed Apocalyptic Prophet
According to Sledge, once he decided to walk away from the Christian faith, and thus felt liberated to use his own logic and reason, he found that Ehrman’s depiction of Jesus and the Bible simply made a whole lot more sense. Here are the main points in a nutshell:
- Jesus was a failed Jewish apocalyptic prophet who thought he would be the leader of a messianic kingdom here on earth, but he didn’t see himself as God.
- When he died, it was such a shock to his disciples that they were faced with a choice. Either admit failure and admit Jesus wasn’t the messiah, or “redefine the identity of Jesus in a way that allowed them to continue to believe in him” (367).
- When a couple of the disciples claimed he had appeared to them after his death, that is when the disciples came to believe that Jesus really was God, that he “went away to heaven” and would come back within their lifetime.
- Eventually, though, when Jesus didn’t return within their lifetime, the Christians of the late first century then “redefined” Christianity again to try to explain why that didn’t happen.
Now, there are so many holes in Ehrman’s view, it isn’t even funny. Even though I address them more my series on Ehrman’s book, I’ll just point out the biggest problem here. Throughout the first century, there were countless wanna-be messiahs in Judea who claimed that they were, in fact, God’s chosen one who would defeat Rome and establish God’s messianic kingdom. In every single case, Rome executed the would-be messiahs and crushed those movements. In every case, when that messianic leader was killed, his group of followers disbanded. Why? Because if the would-be messiah was killed, then he wasn’t the real messiah. There would be no reason for his followers to try to keep his “messianic movement” going.
For some reason, though, Jesus’ followers, when faced with the death of Jesus, kept the movement going, almost immediately, in fact. For Ehrman (and Sledge ) to claim that Jesus’ disciples, unlike every other messianic group at the time, somehow decided—in light of Jesus’ grisly death—to keep the movement going by not only “redefining” Jesus as God, but also “redefining” Jewish messianic expectations across the board, is just ridiculous. Sure, one can come back with, “But claiming that Jesus really did rise from the dead is even more ridiculous!”
For the sake of argument, I’ll agree—it certainly is more probable that a group would “redefine” their beliefs and keep their movement going than a man who had been brutally crucified and whose body was laying in a tomb for three days somehow resurrected. But that’s not really the point. The point is that according to the first century documents wehave, we have evidence that the disciples did, in fact, claim Jesus was resurrected. You can choose not to believe that claim that Jesus rose from the dead, but it is highly suspect (to me, at least) to then turn around and put forth a speculative theory—without any real evidence or proof—that tries to give an alternative explanation for the origin of that claim. That isn’t “being reasonable” or “rational” at all. It is buying into a theory literally based on nothing else that Ehrman’s imagination. It would be more honest to just say you don’t believe the resurrection claim and that you can’t account for the rise of Christianity, than it is to put forth a baseless argument and claim that that baseless argument is the “rational and logical” reason you rejected Christianity.
Gospel Contradictions
Another big issue for Ehrman to which Sledge readily agrees is that of apparent contradictions in the Gospels. This claim comes from the fact that although we have four gospels in the New Testament that cover much of the same material and events, the four gospels nevertheless aren’t exactly alike. In particular, the Gospel of John is dramatically different that Matthew, Mark, and Luke. Just one example would be that in Matthew, Mark, and Luke, Jesus never comes right out and claims divinity or says things like, “I and the Father are one,” whereas in John those sorts of claims are everywhere. According to Ehrman (and Sledge takes his cues from Ehrman), this is “evidence” of a kind of evolution of the theology of the Christians in the first century. Thus, Matthew, Mark and Luke were written earlier than John, and that “explains” why in those gospels the divinity of Jesus isn’t explicitly stated. By the time John was written, that early Christian faith had “evolved” to where Jesus was fully divine.
Sledge fully accepts this view and then articulates how it differs from his previous view when he was a Christian: “I would summarize my old view like this: The gospel story of Jesus is the completely true account of Jesus as God’s complete, perfect, once-and-for-all revelation of himself to all of humanity providing forgiveness, meaning, and eternal life to those who believe and receive him. Now, after an open, objective, and skeptical review of the evidence, I was arriving at a new conclusion, namely—the Gospels are historical fiction. Now my summary view went like this: The gospel story of Jesus was an evolving story of real-life people and events mixed with fabricated details about his birth and miracles plus made-up narratives of his claims to deity, his resurrection, and his ascension—details and narratives that tended to improve with each new version of the story” (377).
The problem with this speculative scenario of an “evolving” first century Christian faith, of course, is obvious to anyone who knows their basic history. The earliest New Testament documents that were written were the letters of Paul, and in those letters the divinity of Jesus is emphasized from the beginning. In I Thessalonians, probably the earliest of the letters, Paul refers to Jesus as God’s Son who was raised from the dead; and in Philippians 2:1-11 Paul recounts what was probably an earlier Christian hymn that praises Jesus of being in the very form of God and being equal with God, who then emptied himself to become a human being, and who even submitted to death, only to be raised from the dead and exalted.
This claim of a neatly evolving story that “improves” Jesus from being a mere man to being fully divine as time goes by is just ridiculous. To be clear, you can obviously say you don’t believe Jesus rose from the dead or is divine. But what you cannot say, if you really want to claim to be objective and faithful to the evidence that we have, is that the “real Jesus” was just a man who was a failed prophet, but that over time, that story was embellished little by little to where by the end of the first century he was thought to be divine. The cold, hard facts, as the documentary evidence clearly shows, are that from early on in the movement, shortly after Jesus was killed, his followers were making the claims from the very start: (A) Jesus physically rose from the dead and conquered death, (B) Jesus was a real human being, and (C) Jesus was at the same time equal to God Himself.
As for the differences in the gospels, I would suggest Richard Burridge’s book, Four Gospels, One Jesus. The fundamental problem with Sledge’s (and Ehrman’s) reading of the gospels is that they are assuming they are claiming to be some sort of “blow-by-blow newspaper accounts” of the life and ministry of Jesus. Burridge, though, argues that each gospel should be understood to be more like a different portrait of Jesus—and that means that each writer is like a painter who can exercise a certain amount of artistic and literary creativity in his depiction of Jesus to highlight certain aspects and themes he deems important.
Sledge’s misunderstanding of how to even read the gospels (which is shocking, really, given the fact he was a pastor for 40 years!) can be seen in this quote: “If the gospel story of Jesus was an evolving drama of historical fiction, it makes sense that the final Gospel—the one most evolved—would present the clearest view of the deity of Jesus and the clearest promise of belief leading to eternal life. On the other hand, if the gospel story of Jesus were divine truth, God’s complete, perfect, once-and-for-all revelation of himself—we could expect that God would make sure to have someone nearby who could write down these important events—as they occurred” (379).
Not only is that view provably wrong, it also betrays a shocking lack of literary competence. It shows that, for all his claims to now be rational and logical now that he’s no longer a Christian, Sledge still reads the Bible like a Fundamentalist.
Conclusion Thus Far
I am going to need one more post to finish my analysis of Sledge’s book. I want to end this post by making a connection to, all things, South Park. Sledge’s “transformation” from a Fundamentalist-Evangelical to, what I like to call, a Fundamentalist-Atheist (although, to be fair, he prefers to call himself a secular humanist), reminds me of the episode from South Park entitled, “Go, God, Go.” At the beginning of the episode, Mrs. Garrison is militantly against teaching evolution to her fourth-grade class, and so the school brings in Richard Dawkins to teach her science class. As expected, she is extremely hostile to Dawkins because she is convinced evolution is evil and godless. Dawkins, though, is intrigued by her and offers to take her out to dinner and eventually gets her interested in him. In the course of dinner, he laments that it is a shame that she is into “that whole God thing.” The conversation then continues:
Mrs. Garrison: “Well, I just think you can’t disprove God.”
Dawkins: “Well, what if I told you that there was a flying spaghetti monster? Would you believe it simply because it can’t be disproven?”
Mrs. Garrison: “…You’re right! It’s so simple! God is a spaghetti monster! Oh, thank you, Richard! My eyes are opened! Hey everyone, I’m an atheist! I totally get it now! Evolution explains everything! There’s no great mystery to life! It’s just evolution…and God’s a spaghetti monster!”
Then for the rest of the episode, Mrs. Garrison become just as obnoxious of an atheist as she was as a believer. I don’t want to sound mean, but that little scene depicts rather well many stories of ex-Evangelicals who never were well-rooted in their faith, and who then “converted” to atheism but maintained that same mindset of an ill-informed, obnoxious proselytizer. They substitute one “appeal to authority” for another, all the while convincing themselves that “now they totally get it,” and they feel compelled to shove their new “faith” down everyone’s throat.
Again, thank you for your diligent work!
Fundamentalism claims new victims every day. Some of them write books. Most victims quietly fade away or stay away in the first place. The appeal of fundamentalism is a false sense of clarity, certainty, and even superiority. Despite fervent devotion of its adherents and contrary to its claims, fundamentalism is a poor foundation for faith; it is mere sand that cannot withstand the storms of life or the light of reality.
The good news is that some who abandon fundamentalism discover anew the rock foundation of faith, which is the One Who is “the Way, the Truth, and the Life.” To set people free from the thrall of fundamentalism, we need to develop and share a genuine hunger for truth, especially when it hurts.
“In every single case, Rome executed the would-be messiahs and crushed those movements. In every case, when that messianic leader was killed, his group of followers disbanded. Why? Because if the would-be messiah was killed, then he wasn’t the real messiah. There would be no reason for his followers to try to keep his “messianic movement” going. For some reason, though, Jesus’ followers, when faced with the death of Jesus, kept the movement going, almost immediately, in fact.”
Possible explanation: Jesus was the only messiah-pretender with an unexplained empty grave!
The unexplained empty grave sparked a glimmer of hope that maybe their hopes and dreams of a re-established Jewish kingdom (in which they would rule as princes) were not false promises and foolish fantasies after all. Cognitive Dissonance ensued (the disciples began to reinterpret reality to reconcile with their hopes and dreams).
A group of disciples is fishing on the Sea of Galilee:
C: Why was Jesus’ tomb empty? It makes no sense. No one has claimed responsibility for moving or taking the body.
A: Maybe God raised Jesus from the dead!
B: Where’s the body then?
A: Maybe God took him to heaven like he did Elijah!
C: Then he wasn’t the messiah as he claimed. The messiah will stay on earth to establish the New Kingdom.
A: Well, maybe God did take him to heaven but Jesus is coming back at any moment to defeat the Romans as the messiah!
C: Hmm.
B: What about this: Maybe Jesus wasn’t just RAISED from the dead. Maybe he was RESURRECTED from the dead! Maybe Jesus was resurrected as “the first fruits” of the dead, the remaining righteous dead will be resurrected at any moment!
C: What??? That’s impossible. Everyone knows that in the Resurrection, ALL the righteous dead will be resurrected.
B: Yea, I know it sounds weird. Yes, the prophecies says ALL the righteous dead will be resurrected but it doesn’t say that this resurrection could not happen in stages. Maybe Jesus was resurrected a couple of weeks ago, and everyone else will be resurrected TOMORROW!
This idea catches on and is reinforced by a couple of the disciples having “visions” (vivid dreams, trances), false sightings, or illusions in which they “see” Jesus.
And that is the origin of the Resurrection Belief.
That is your utterly baseless and speculative fairy tale that has–literally–no textual or historical evidence.
Just because there is no evidence that this is what happened, does not mean that it could not have been what happened. That is what you apologists just can’t seem to understand. We skeptics do not need to PROVE that the Resurrection Belief is based on one particular natural explanation, but only that POSSIBLE natural explanations exist.
I challenge you to provide evidence why my explanation is not possible. You can’t. You can claim that it is not probable, but that is a matter of opinion, as to me, your supernatural explanation is much more improbable. So do it. Prove to me why my hypothetical explanation is impossible.
What a lame response. Read your 1st sentence again and remember that THAT is exactly what a fundie would say.
I’m merely pointing out that when it comes to evidence, your explanation literally has zero. Nothing from any 1st century account or text that would show that was ever claimed. At least with the claim of a resurrection, we know that is what was actually claimed shortly after Jesus was crucified.
No, the first claim was that someone had taken the body!
By the way, my hypothetical explanation above for the early Christian Resurrection Belief is simply a version of NT scholar Gerd Luedemann’s preferred explanation for the origin of the Christian supernatural resurrection tale. I suppose you are going to now call Gerd Luedemann a “fundamentalist”.
Well, he certainly is imaginative!
The first claim we have for the empty tomb of Jesus was that someone had taken/moved the body. Do you dispute that???
This is the basis of my POSSIBLE, hypothetical, naturalistic explanation for the Resurrection Belief: the tomb was empty for natural reasons (someone moved the body) and the resurrection belief developed due to cognitive disssonace.
Again, this is a POSSIBLE explanation. Yes, it is speculative. But speculation is what we humans do when presented with odd events for which sufficient evidence is not available to solve the cause of this odd event. Don’t believe me, ask any police detective.
Yes, speculative, with absolutely no historical or textual evidence to back it up.
Question, Joel: Have you ever lost your car keys? If so, how high on your list of plausible explanations for your missing keys was a supernatural cause?
That is a silly argument.
Exactly. No one considers a supernatural cause for their missing keys. There are too many natural explanations for missing keys. Your answer demonstrates that even if one believes in the supernatural, supernatural causes are low on most people’s list of probable explanations for odd events.
So why do you dismiss natural explanations for a first century empty grave and jump to a supernatural cause as the most probable?
So if it is silly to argue for a supernatural cause for missing keys, why is it not also silly to argue for a supernatural cause for one empty grave and for the development of a new interpretation of the Jewish teaching of resurrection?
“You can choose not to believe that claim that Jesus rose from the dead, but it is highly suspect (to me, at least) to then turn around and put forth a speculative theory—without any real evidence or proof—that tries to give an alternative explanation for the origin of that claim. That isn’t “being reasonable” or “rational” at all. It is buying into a theory literally based on nothing else that Ehrman’s imagination.”
Au contraire.
We have MASSIVE evidence that human beings often engage in cognitive dissonance whenever their hopes and dreams are suddenly crushed by reality. We also have massive evidence that when a new sect develops within an established religion, it does so by “tweaking” an established belief of the mother religion. When the tweaking is too much for the mother religion, the sect is cast out and becomes a separate, new religion. Early Christianity is no exception. Jewish Christians took the Jewish concept of Resurrection, tweaked it, and came up with a Resurrection in stages: Jesus first, the remaining righteous dead soon to follow. This small group of Jews did not see this as a break with the original Jewish resurrection teaching. Most Jews did.
Thousands of human beings have made bizarre, fantastical claims. Skeptics are not required to believe these claims just because no other explanation is readily available. The onus is on the claimant of the bizarre claim to provide proof, not on the skeptics to disprove their bizarre claims. Christians follow this principle regarding all other bizarre claims presented to them, but demand that skeptics give their bizarre religious claims a pass.
Let’s be consistent, Christians.
We have in the NT the textual claims of eyewitness accounts of the resurrection of Jesus. When Paul says what he says in I Corinthians 15, he is telling the Corinthians that people had seen Jesus alive and would testify to it.
Other than Paul, you have ZERO undisputed eyewitness accounts of anyone seeing a walking, talking resurrected body. Most scholars doubt the eyewitness/associate of eyewitness authorship of the Gospels. So we have no idea as to the origin of the Appearance Stories. They could be complete fabrications for all we know. NT Wright, Richard Bauckham, and Raymond Brown, all conservative or moderate CHRISTIAN scholars, allege that the authors of the Gospels embellished their stories to some extent. I’ve read their books in which they confirm this. And as for Paul, Paul never tells us in his own epistles, what it was that he saw. He simply claims to have seen “the Christ”. That is it.
For all we know…Paul saw a bright light and believed it to be Jesus.
As for the Early Creed, from whom did Paul “receive” this list of eyewitnesses? Please name them. You can’t. You assume Paul received this from Peter and James during his trip to Jerusalem. This is an ASSUMPTION. You have zero evidence upon which to make this claim.
Hyper-skepticism bordering on the irrational.
Complete mischaracterizing of Wright, Bauckham, and Brown.
The evidence is that as early as the mid 50s, Paul is telling, in writing, about the eyewitnesses, and in the 60s-70s, we have Gospel accounts that recount events from the late 20s-early 30s and tell of witnesses.
You are discounting those early claims and then are makin up your own “explanation” from the vantage point of 2000 years later. Really?
You’d be better of just saying, “Nah, I don’t believe that,” and then moving on with your life.
Do you deny that the majority of scholars reject the eyewitness/associate of eyewitness authorship of the Gospels?
Based on this FACT, your claim that “we have Gospel accounts that recount events in the late 20s to 30’s and tell of witnesses” is speculative and incorrect. Yes, the Gospels contain stories that ALLEGEDLY recount events in the 20’s – 30’s, but whether these accounts are historical or theological fiction is the big question.
To assume that an ancient tale must be an historical fact, just because there are no other explanations for the origin of this tale, is silly and irrational.
Yes I do question your mischaracterization. Prominent NT scholars like Wright, or Bauckham, or Brown do NOT claim what you are making it out they claim. They all agree that the gospels were written between 60s-90s AD and were not written out of whole cloth, but rather based on and taken from early accounts that go back to the 30s. So, Luke obviously was not an eyewitness to the resurrection, but he relates what the eyewitnesses claimed. This is not new. Christian Fathers and theologians have known this for 2000 years.
“They all agree that the gospels were written between 60s-90s AD and were not written out of whole cloth, but rather based on and taken from early accounts that go back to the 30s. So, Luke obviously was not an eyewitness to the resurrection, but he relates what the eyewitnesses claimed.”
–Yes, the majority of scholars believe that the four Gospels and Acts were written sometime between circa 65 CE and circa 100 CE.
–Yes, the majority of scholars do not believe that the entire Jesus Story was written out of whole cloth.
–Yes, the majority of scholars believe that the resurrection of Jesus belief originated very early.
–No, the majority of scholars do NOT believe that ALL the stories in the Gospels originate from the 30’s. Most scholars believe that the Gospels contain significant theological and literary embellishments, making it difficult to tease out any historical facts within those stories.
–No, the majority of scholars may believe that “Luke” (an anonymous, non-eyewitness) BELIEVED that he was relating eyewitness information, but the majority of scholars do NOT believe that Luke obtained his information directly from eyewitnesses.
I love it when someone without academic credentials repeatedly tells someone with academic credentials that he is wrong. lol
You constantly make VERY dubious appeals to authority, and the authorities to whom you appeal, you mischaracterize significantly.
“I don’t know who the Gospel writers were and nor does anyone else.”
—NT Wright, New Testament scholar
Yes, his point is that none of the Gospels themselves make any authorial claims, and if all you are going off of is that, they are anonymous. At the same time, early Church tradition by the end of the first/early second century attributes the each Gospel to Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. I guarantee you that his take on the historical reliability of the gospels is vastly different than yours.
Raymond Brown: No gospel identifies its author. The common designations placed before the Gospels, e.g., “The Gospel according to Matthew” stem from the late 2d cent. and represent an educated estimate of the authorship by church scholars of that period who were putting together traditions and guesses pertinent to attribution. To this a caution must be added: The ancient concept of authorship was often less rigorous than our own, at times amounting to identifying only the authority behind a work (however distant) rather than the writer. …Among the four, John manifests the most detailed knowledge of Palestine.
Jesus did not write an account of his passion; nor did anyone who had been present write an eyewitness account. Available to us are four different accounts written some thirty to seventy years later in the Gospels of Mark, Matthew, Luke, and John, all of which were dependent on tradition that had come down from an intervening generation or generations. That intervening preGospel tradition was not preserved even if at times we may be able to detect the broad lines of its content. When we seek to reconstruct it or, even more adventurously, the actual situation of Jesus himself, we are speculating. On the other hand, when we work on the level of the evangelists, we are on much more solid ground, for their accounts need not be reconstructed.
Source: The Death of the Messiah, pp. 4-5
Raymond Brown: I have already said that I do not think of the evangelists themselves as eyewitnesses of the passion; nor do I think that eyewitness memories of Jesus came down to the evangelists without considerable reshaping and development.
Source: The Death of the Messiah, p. 14
None of that is a big deal. Scholars know this. Note, Brown is not saying the eyewitness memories were made up. He says they were actual eyewitness memories and that the writers of the gospels shaped and developed them in the writing of their respective gospels. This is not news. This is basic NT studies, and you’re trying to make these comments mean what they do not mean.
Conservative Christian NT scholar, Richard Bauckham:
“The argument of this book [Jesus and the Eyewitnesses]–that the texts of our Gospels are close to the eyewitness reports of the words and deeds of Jesus–runs counter to almost all recent scholarship. As we have indicated from time to time, the prevalent view is that a long period of oral transmission in the churches intervened between whatever the eyewitnesses said and the Jesus traditions as they reached the Evangelists [the authors of the Gospels]. No doubt the eyewitnesses started the process of oral tradition, but it passed through many retellings, reformulations, and expansions before the Evangelists themselves did their own editorial work on it.” p. 240
Gary: Bauckham disagrees with the majority, but he does acknowledge that the prevalent view (majority opinion) among scholars is that our current Bibles contain “reformulations and expansions” of the original Jesus story. BTW: Bauckham, who does not believe that the Apostle Matthew authored the Gospel of Matthew nor that the Apostle John authored the Gospel of John, believes that the non-eyewitness author/authors of the Gospel of Matthew invented the calling of the disciple Matthew “out of whole cloth” (fiction). (“Jesus and the Eyewitnesses”)
Again, you fail to really understand the nature of scholarship. Bauckham makes a very convincing argument that the gospels contain eyewitness testimony.
That does not mean the gospel writers didn’t reshape those accounts into the narratives within their gospels. NO ONE believes the gospels are newspaper-reporting-type accounts. You are battling a strawman.
Your statement: “Most scholars doubt the eyewitness/associate of eyewitness authorship of the Gospels.”
Please prove that this is true.
“The problem with this speculative scenario of an “evolving” first century Christian faith, of course, is obvious to anyone who knows their basic history. The earliest New Testament documents that were written were the letters of Paul, and in those letters the divinity of Jesus is emphasized from the beginning. In I Thessalonians, probably the earliest of the letters, Paul refers to Jesus as God’s Son who was raised from the dead; and in Philippians 2:1-11 Paul recounts what was probably an earlier Christian hymn that praises Jesus of being in the very form of God and being equal with God, who then emptied himself to become a human being, and who even submitted to death, only to be raised from the dead and exalted.”
Yes, most scholars believe that Paul believed that Jesus was divine, and possibly even God. But that doesn’t mean that this is what Peter, James, and Andrew believed! It is entirely possible that the earliest disciples of Jesus saw him as the Messiah, but there is no clear, unambiguous indication in the Synoptics that in their wildest dreams, the disciples ever worshipped Jesus as Yahweh the Creator. Conservative Christians will present evidence (there isn’t much) from the Synoptics that indicate that Jesus believed he was God, but he never, ever comes right out and claims to be Yahweh, nor do his disciples ever explicitly worship him as Yahweh. We only see this elevated christology in the last Gospel written, John.
Bottom line: It is a disputed issue. It is not a slam dunk case for the Trinitarian Christian position. And this is the problem with much of the alleged evidence for Christianity. It is all contested. There just isn’t any STRONG, indisputable evidence. It truly is a house of cards.
It is only disputed in the eyes of hyper-skeptics. No, neither Peter or Paul had a fully articulated doctrine of the Trinity spelled out in AD 50, but the evidence is clear: they declared that Jesus of Nazareth, a real human being, was in some way equal with God…the Son of God.
Peter??? Please provide an undisputed statement of any kind by Jesus’ chief disciple, Simon Peter. You can’t. Most scholars do not believe that Simon Peter wrote ANY books of the New Testament. The truth is, we have no idea what Peter, James, Andrew, or any other of the Twelve said other than what the non-eyewitness authors of the Gospels claim they said.
The official doctrine of the Trinity wasnt formulated until 300 years later. You really want to dispute that? Neither Peter nor Paul had a fully developed doctrine of the Trinity. This isnt even controversial.
Living in such Hyper-skepticism is tantamount to being checked out from reality.
So you admit that the earliest followers of Jesus most probably did not view him as Yahweh, the Creator. We are agreed.
It is an oversimplistic way to say it. The earliest followers of Jesus, pre-crucifixion, thought he was a prophet and the Messiah–they weren’t thinking he was YHWH. For that matter, not even later Christian theology claims that Jesus was YHWH.
In any case, post-resurrection, they soon proclaimed that Jesus, the Messiah, was also in some way, equal to the God of Israel, the Father. They didn’t spell it out in a doctrinal format, but any basic reading of the NT shows they clearly saw he was a real human being, but also (in some way) the fullness of God in the flesh.
No, there is no clear indication in the Synoptics that Jesus’ disciples viewed him as God the Creator or even as an equal to God the Creator. From the Synoptics, they saw Jesus as the messiah, the future king of Israel, a son of God, a title held by all Jewish kings. They may have even believed he had divine powers, similar to angels, but no where in the Synoptics do any of the disciples WORSHIP Jesus. You need the Gospel of John to find that high christology.
Jesus was a devout Jew. He taught that the Law should be followed and preserved. The (unknown) author of the Book of Acts suggests that the Jewish followers of Jesus, in Jerusalem, continued to worship Yahweh as God, offering sacrifices in the Temple for 30-40 years after Jesus death! We have no undisputed record of any of Jesus’ original disciples calling Jesus “God”, worshipping him as God, or doing away with Torah Law. For all we know, Christianity as we know it was invented by Paul! Jesus died a devout, orthodox Jew, mistakenly believing that he was the messenger of God (the messiah). His defeat by the Romans proved once and for all that he was not.
You are clearly unable to understand basic argumentation and are just biblically illiterate. “Nuanced thinking” is not your strong suit. lol
If you don’t believe me, here is what Jewish rabbis and scholars say: Jesus and his disciples were devout Jews. Believing you are the messiah is not a crime in Judaism. Jesus did not start a new religion, Paul did.
Of course claiming to be the messiah wasn’t a crime. But going into Jerusalem for Passover, letting everyone know that your beef wasn’t with Rome, that Jews should pay their taxes, that the real problem was the corrupt Temple establishment, that the Temple and city would be destroyed because the Sanhedrin were the problem…and then, after they arrest you at night and, when they ask if you are the messiah, you quote Daniel 7:13-14, and make it pretty clear that you think the high priest is the equivalent of Antiochus Epiphanes….that corrupt Temple establishment is going to do everything they can to get you executed.
And that is what the gospels tell us they did.
And no, Paul did not start a new religion.
“Other than those 1st century documents that date within a generation of Jesus, we don’t know anything about anyone! And we just cant believe anything in those 2st century documents because….ya know…just… nu-uh!” 😅😅😅
You are incredibly naive if you believe as historical fact every ancient tale written in ancient texts.
I don’t believe EVERY ancient tale in ancient texts is historical fact.
“On the other hand, if the gospel story of Jesus were divine truth, God’s complete, perfect, once-and-for-all revelation of himself—we could expect that God would make sure to have someone nearby who could write down these important events—as they occurred” (379). Not only is that view provably wrong, it also betrays a shocking lack of literary competence. It shows that, for all his claims to now be rational and logical now that he’s no longer a Christian, Sledge still reads the Bible like a Fundamentalist.”
The majority of NT scholars do NOT believe that the Gospels were written by eyewitnesses or even by associates of eyewitnesses. Period. So I wouldn’t be too critical of Sledge. That being the case, there is no WAY anyone can claim that the detailed stories of Jesus walking on water, raising the dead, healing the blind, or appearing in a walking, talking, broiled fish eating body are accurate historical accounts or theological embellishments. I know conservative/moderate Christians like yourself will not accept this and will present countering evidence, but once again: This issue is DISPUTED. Disputed evidence is NOT strong evidence!
You should really read Father Raymond Brown’s scholarly masterpiece: “The Death of the Messiah”. I think it will change your mind. (I might even send you the first volume!)
Nothing you said here has anything to do with the point I was making in what you quoted me saying.
“They substitute one “appeal to authority” for another, all the while convincing themselves that “now they totally get it,” and they feel compelled to shove their new “faith” down everyone’s throat.”
I admit that I have been guilty of attempting to shove my new atheist beliefs down the throats of Christians. I shouldn’t do that, but…I love to debate (argue). 🙂 I believe that the best way to engage someone you disagree with is to use the Socratic Method (Street Epistemology). I have tried this technique a couple of times, but it takes A LOT of patience. I find that people get annoyed after awhile with the repeated, open-ended questions. Have you ever tried it, Joel?
All apologists, atheist and Christian, could be nicer, that is for sure. There is usually a lot of snark when the two converse.
Have I ever tried it? Hahahaha…
I’ve patiently conversed with you for a few years now! 😜
Let’s summarize our conversation, Joel:
Gary: There is insufficient evidence for any rational person (not indoctrinated by Christianity as a child) to believe the supernatural claims at the core of orthodox Christianity.
Joel: You are obviously too stupid to understand the sophisticated nuances of MY superstition.
Gary: I’m done. You are hopeless, Joel. I only hope that some of your young students are reading this post and can see through your bs. Peace and happiness, my Christian friend.
Thank you, Gary, for contributing your wisdom to this thread. Such revealing insights.
Christian theologian (responding to a proposed, hypothetical, natural explanation for the empty tomb of Jesus and the development of the Resurrection Belief): “That is an utterly baseless and speculative fairy tale that has–literally–no textual or historical evidence.”
Gary: Do hypothetical explanations for unexplained odd events require evidence? Or, is it only necessary that the hypothetical explanation not contradict whatever evidence that may exist related to the odd event? I will bet that most police detectives and private investigators would say only the latter is true. These professionals routinely compile lists of possible (hypothetical) explanations for a crime or other odd event, and then search for evidence to rule in or out each possible explanation, starting with the most probable explanation in the professional opinion of the expert.
But what if no additional evidence is found? Does that mean that a natural explanation for this odd event has been ruled out? Of course not. And what if the only explanation in circulation for the odd event in question is a supernatural explanation? Are police detectives and private investigators obligated to accept the supernatural explanation for an odd event simply because it is the only explanation that exists?
Of course not.
But this is exactly what Christian apologists like our theologian quoted above seem to think about the early Christian resurrection belief! They seem to think that just because no evidence has been discovered for another explanation, then we skeptics must accept their supernatural explanation. This is just silly.
Ask them this question: Have you ever lost your keys (or some other important item) and never found them? We all have. Let’s say you hire a private detective to find your missing keys and she finds zero evidence of what happened to your keys. No finger prints. No clues whatsoever. Does the lack of evidence rule out a natural cause for your missing keys? No.
And what if your next door neighbor is a psychic whose tarot cards tell him that your keys were stolen by demons! If that is the only explanation in circulation for your missing keys, are you forced to believe his supernatural explanation?
Of course not.
A natural explanation is still possible and plausible for your missing keys, even though there is no evidence for a natural explanation and even though a supernatural explanation exists. Ditto with the Resurrection Belief! Just because there is zero evidence for a natural explanation for Jesus’ empty tomb or for the development of a novel twist to the Jewish resurrection belief, this in no way precludes that a natural explanation is the correct explanation!
Multiple possible natural explanations for the early Christian resurrection belief exist. The fact that there is no evidence for these possible explanations no more precludes a natural explanation for this odd event than a lack of evidence for your missing keys precludes a natural explanation for that odd event.
Stop believing in ancient supernatural superstitions, my Christian friends. Embrace science, reason, and rational thinking!
Gary, you might want to read the synoptic gospels more closely, as they do, in fact, present a Jesus who claims to do and be what the OT says only YHWH can do/be, such as receive worship, forgive sins, be the Good Shepherd, Living Water, Bread of Heaven, etc.
If you read the synoptics carefully you’ll notice lots of passages which describe Jesus doing or saying or claiming to be what Torah says only YHWH is or can do/be.
For example, the synoptics do, in fact, present a Jesus who is worshiped, as in Matthew 2:1-2, 7:
“Now when Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judaea in the days of Herod the king, behold, there came wise men from the east to Jerusalem,
Saying, Where is he that is born King of the Jews? for we have seen his star in the east, and are come to worship him. . . .
“And when they were come into the house, they saw the young child with Mary his mother, and fell down, and worshipped him . . .”
In Mathew 8:2, a leper worships Jesus:
“And, behold, there came a leper and worshipped him, saying, Lord, if thou wilt, thou canst make me clean.”
And in Mark 5:6 a possessed man worships Jesus:
“But when he saw Jesus afar off, he ran and worshipped him.”
Finally, in Luke 24:52 the disciples worship the resurrected Jesus:
“And they worshipped him, and returned to Jerusalem with great joy.”
In Matthew 9:2 Jesus forgives the sins of the paralytic man:
” . . . and Jesus seeing their faith said unto the sick of the palsy; Son, be of good cheer; thy sins be forgiven thee.”
In Luke’s account of this episode, the Pharisees confirm that ONLY YHWH can forgive sins:
“And the scribes and the Pharisees began to reason, saying, Who is this which speaketh blasphemies? Who can forgive sins, but God alone?”
Again in Luke 7:47 Jesus forgives the sins of a woman who washes his feet with her tears:
“And he said unto her, Thy sins are forgiven.”
At the end of the Sermon on the Mount, in Matthew 7:29, it reads:
“For he taught them as one having authority, and not as the scribes.” In other words, the scribes and later rabbis taught “in the name of rabbi so-and-so” but Jesus undercuts all of that and instead says “You have heard it said [by the scribes and teachers of the Law] . . . but *I* say.”
In other words, Jesus claimed to be able to interpret Torah with an authority beyond that of any mere mortal scribe or later rabbi.
And in Matthew 18:11 and numerous other passages Jesus claims to be a savior, something the OT says only YHWH can be.
It’s true that John’s Jesus is slightly more direct and less circumspect about his true nature/identity, but even John’s Jesus doesn’t walk around carrying a big sign in Hebrew which says “I’m YHWH.” But then, he didn’t have to, because, as they say, actions speak louder than words. Jesus’ actions clued people in to who/what he thought he was. No Jewish scribe faking a religion would invent a messiah who claimed to forgive sins or accept worship.
No messianic Jew in 30 AD expected a messiah who would be YHWH incarnate–though there are hints in Daniel 7:13 with the “Son of Man” figure to whom Gods gives all authority and is worshiped by the nations. Jesus claims to be this figure at his trial.
Further, no 1st century messianic Jews expected a messiah who would be executed and then resurrected three days later. No, the synoptics present typical first century Jewish men who expected a typical fist-century Jewish messiah who would rebuild or cleanse the Temple, make war on the Romans then reign from Jerusalem as the new Davidic priest-king. The gospels present the disciples as confused when Jesus didn’t gather an army to make war on Rome and could fathom the idea of his impending crucifixion.
First century AD Messianic Jews making up a Messiah would come up with a guy like Judas the Galilean or Simon Bar Kochba, not Jesus of Nazareth.
Then the gospels take the standard Jewish views of resurrection and tweak them, for example moving the idea of bodily resurrection from a peripheral place to front-and-center.
And as for the resurrection, no, skeptics don’t have to believe just because there’s no better, valid, believable counter-explanation (they all take more blind faith than believing in the resurrection). But what you guys CAN’T DO is make fun of believers when we point this out (and everything else I’ve pointed out above).
As for “science, reason and rational thinking,” these are only popular today because of the Christian Church during the Medieval period, or have you forgotten that the Medieval Roman Catholic Church founded the first universities in Western Europe?
Oxford physicist and Professor of the History of Science James Hannam writes that:
“The Church made math and science a compulsory part of the syllabus at medieval universities for anyone who wanted to study theology. That meant loads of students got grounding in these subjects, and professors could hold down jobs teaching it.” Thus by 1200 he says, almost half of the highest offices in the church were held by degreed masters.
Pax.
Lee.
One problem I have with Ehrman is that he doesn’t really engage mainstream academic scholars who disagree with him, such as Richard Bauckham, Martin Hengel and Larry Hurtado, who have, over the past twenty or so years, very convincingly demonstrated that a high Christology was a very early development of the church rather a much later one.
Then in his book *How Jesus Became God* he doesn’t even mention the Shema, let alone how Paul redefines it around Jesus.
In my experience, skeptics like Sledge only read books by critics such as Ehrman, yet never seem to read the books by mainstream academic scholars like Bauckham, Hurtado, Wright, et. al.
That doesn’t sound like someone who really wants honest answers, but rather someone who wants their doubts confirmed.
Pax.
Lee.