9/6/2025 – In this interview with Dr. Chilton, he made many good points, using phrases and thoughts I collected and listed below.
- All we have to inform us about Jesus are reactions to Jesus over time.
- All history is a form of memory.
- Bear in mind, gospels are documents of faith to promote faith
- John says he writes so people will believe that shows his purpose is not to be factual but to be persuasive.
- “Streams of Tradition” lead to different gospels; e.g. streams of Peter, Mary Magdalene, James the brother, and others.
- Norman Perrin used to say that you cannot make a judgment about the historical Jesus until you’ve made judgments about the history of the traditions that speak about Jesus. Yet many scholars of Jesus behave as if that weren’t the case. And instead of tracing back from source to stream of tradition to Jesus, they attempt various shortcuts. One shortcut is simply to take one gospel or another as a standard. Another shortcut is to use what are called criteria of authenticity which in my judgment are not criteria because traditions don’t follow criteria and they don’t measure what is authentic because these traditions are as I said designed to promote faith, not to record with what we would consider to be historical accuracy.
- Josephus in his most famous reference known as the testimony in Falavanum, makes a rather fullsome statement about Jesus, which is so filled with material that I think it has legitimately been considered to have been filled out as a result of Christian scribes over the course of time. I am much, much more confident about an earlier reference that Josephus makes to James the brother of Jesus in which he refers to James being the brother of Jesus. That is, I think it’s clear that Josephus was aware of Jesus, but that the current text of what he says has been filled out. This has become widely accepted as a point of view for understanding that interesting paragraph in Josephus.
- One can see that Antipas attempts sometimes to behave as his brother Philip did. That is to attempt to advance by a very steady method of governance. At other times, we see him actually pushing himself forward and attempting to make this change so that he could be regarded as a king and not merely as a tetrarch. And if it’s necessary for him during those periods to act in a way that’s contrary to Judaism, he’s quite willing to do that. So, it’s important to find the times when he’s doing what he does that annoyed Jewish opinion generally, including that of John the Baptist. Attempting to use the gospels alone in this process is a very questionable proposition because the gospels do not tell us about imperial politics and the imperial politics of Rome were the dominant politics of this time. Nor do they tell us in detail about what the Herodian dynasty was doing. In fact, sometimes the gospels and the book of Acts confuse one member of the dynasty with another. You know, they will refer to Antipas as Herod, and to Herod Agripa, who was Herod the Great’s grandson, as Herod. These are simple mistakes. They’re referring to people as Herod in the same way the book of Exodus refers to someone as Pharaoh. You know, that’s a title. It’s not really a person.
- I developed an analysis of all the known Aramaic terms and their transliterations within the gospels and there’s no doubt whatever but that Mark is better represented than any other gospel. Why is that the case? Certainly not because Mark was written in Aramaic, there was a time during the middle of the 20th century where that sort of argument was frequently made. One of the purposes of my present work is to show gospels were written in Greek. However, they did absorb words and phrases and themes from Aramaic in the tradition prior to the gospels. And so the closer you are to that tradition, the more Aramaic you see represented in that particular gospel. And there is Mark showing by this linguistic index that it is indeed what we thought it was uh the earliest of the gospels and also we could say uh the closest in aggregate to the Aramaic speaking environment that originally produced the movement of Jesus. Having said that, there are also some Aramaic terms and syntax that appear in other gospels that are not in Mark. So it’s not a uniform finding, but on the whole, Mark is indeed closer to that oral environment that produced the message of Jesus in Aramaic, which then was transferred into Greek by the time the gospels emerged.
- There’s wide agreement that Rome was the place of composition of Mark, that Ephesus was the place of composition for John. Luke and Matthew, there’s more discussion, but I would say that locating Luke in Antioch and locating Matthew in Damascus would be the most plausible outcome. What is agreed in any case is that within an environment of the early Mediterranean world, where Christianity faced an environment which was at the least not friendly and sometimes we have to say hostile, the purpose of a Greek gospel is to solidify the memory of that particular community in a time and a place. And for that reason, they avail themselves of all the traditions that they consider to be authoritative, that they can possibly use, that also applies to their circumstance. That is the fact that it’s a gospel is written doesn’t mean that that is all that is known in that particular community. In fact, the end of John’s gospel refers to there being much more that might be said which hasn’t been said. That is a straightforward indication. It seems to me and it also means that the oral streams of tradition continued to circulate in the Mediterranean world. In some places, they could continue to circulate in Aramaic. In others, they had to make the jump into Greek in order to survive at all.
- 44:35 We’re talking about instruction in both Luke and Matthew which is presented as being given by Jesus a stream of tradition which is associated with their authority and therefore Peter is included within that but also that Peter is subservient within it and that and that’s why if you notice in the gospels where Peter’s position is highlighted by actually putting him on the scene he is more associated with narrative materials than he is with hocic or verbal instruction. And when do you think that double tradition starts coming together? starts coming together I would say at an early stage and by early I mean early I mean the 30s I mean taking at that Jesus’ death and uh Paul’s call where he understands himself to take on a prophetic uh commission on behalf of Christ that occurs and he is put back in the scene in Jerusalem consulting with both Peter and with James, brother of Jesus. This according to Paul’s letter to the Galatians. That meeting occurs in the year 35 and it appears to be when already Paul becomes aware with materials which in turn we can compare to some elements within the synoptic gospels. He is familiar with certain teachings of Jesus. He’s familiar with the story of Jesus’ baptism, which is represented in what he says about the meaning of baptism. He’s aware of traditions concerning the eucharist, and these are all indications that these streams of tradition were coming together at an early period. They weren’t yet being tied together formally, but people such as Paul and Barnabas and other individuals were the first vehicles for having these differing streams of tradition come together and begin to form much larger cycles of tradition. And the final result of that was also the formation of gospels.
- 48:23 – Jason asks about the virgin birth and differences in the birth narratives. Bruce’s response is interesting, pointing out the differences and how in Luke and Matthew Joseph is cited.
- 52:13 Jason: What do you make of Paul quoting the Eucharist in 1 Corinthians and its being strongly similar to Luke, is that evidence that he’s familiar with a proto-Luke tradition? Bruce — Well, I think what it’s evidence of is that the eucharistic tradition at its earliest stage was an oral tradition and that Paul is well familiar with it. He does I agree in some ways seem to be more aware of the Lucan form and he’s also very interested in the connection between the celebration of the Eucharist and Jesus’ death and I think this marks a development in the way in which the eukaristic tradition was developing bear in mind as well that also in his first letter to the Corinthians in chapter 15 Paul gives a list of those by whom the risen Jesus was seen and that list provides a very fullsome account of the oral tradition available to Paul at the time he was writing case of Corinthians around the year 56. So by that time, the oral tradition was very clearly well known and known at least by means of Paul to people in Corinth, because when he names these people Peter, James, the brother of Jesus, the more than 500 brethren, when he names these people, he apparently expects them to understand to whom he’s referring.
