In Lesson 4 of Bart Ehrman’s course The Genius of Acts of the Apostles, he says: Historically, it is absolutely the case that the Christian movement began as a kind of Judaism. Jesus himself was Jewish. His followers were Jewish. They kept the Jewish law. They adhered to Jewish customs. Nobody said anything about not being Jewish. It was Jewish, and I think probably, Jesus in his lifetime had no vision of something beyond Judaism. He was understanding the God of the Jews in light of his interpretation of the Jewish scriptures.
This Web Guy’s thought: I agree with Bart that probably Jesus in his lifetime had no vision of something beyond Judaism. If he did, then he would have said so, and the Gentile followers would have eagerly retold such stories, and later those stories would have been included in the Gospels.
“A Jesus Before Paul?” by Robyn Faith Walsh ***
A Response to “Comparing Methods in Christian Origins“ podcast with Willi Braun and Andie Alexander.
Note: Scroll down to extracts from an interview where Bruan discusses JZ Smith as his mentor.
Following are extracts from her excellent paper.
I would like to use the occasion of Braun’s interview as an opportunity to engage in a thought experiment. Is an “extraordinary emphasis on Paul” justifiable if we recognize that his letters were likely used by the gospel writers? And is it possible to do this without resorting to the fanciful notion of a diverse, pluralistic, and widespread network of cohesive early Christian groups?
The ahistorical nature of our traditional social models is evident in scholarly discussion about Paul’s quoting of Jesus. While there are several examples, allow me to focus on what is traditionally called the Last Supper. In 1 Cor 11:23-25, Paul details the events “on the night [Jesus] was betrayed,” including his words as he broke bread and offered wine as a “new covenant.” This same description of events—and nearly the same wording—also appears in Mark 14:22-25, Matthew 26:26-29, and Luke 22:15-20. One common argument against the idea that the gospel writers could have been using Paul to inform this passage is that, when quoting Jesus, Paul frequently discloses that he has received these sayings “from the Lord” directly. In other words, Paul indicates that he is receiving these commands through some form of divination. He does not attribute these sayings to any other authority in a position to have spoken directly to Jesus or to have been present at the events described (e.g., James or Peter). In short, scholarship has tended to gloss over the significance of Paul’s claims that he is, evidently, receiving privileged intel from the risen Christ. Indeed, Paul is clear that his knowledge of this event and Jesus’ words is supernatural: “For I received from the Lord (γὰρ παρέλαβον ἀπὸ τοῦ κυρίου)…” (1 Cor 11:23). Here Paul utilizes language found elsewhere in his letters (e.g., Galatians 1:12) to indicate his knowledge is via “revelation” (xἀποκαλύψεως) and “neither from another human being, nor was I taught (οὐδὲ γὰρ ἐγὼ παρὰ ἀνθρώπου παρέλαβον αὐτό, οὔτε ἐδιδάχθην).”
See Christianity Before Paul by Tabor here.
Tabor said here in a great paper about the resurrection stories – Matthew’s embellishments are many but most particularly he finds Mark’s beginning and ending wholly unsatisfactory. How could one possibly write a gospel of Jesus Christ with no birth story of Jesus and no appearances of Jesus to the disciples after the resurrection? And yet that is precisely what we have in Mark. What this means is that for several decades, when there were no other gospels but Mark in circulation, Christians were relating the Jesus story without the two elements that later came to be considered foundational for the Christian faith—Jesus’ virgin birth and his Easter morning appearances!
[This Web Guy’s thoughts – Tabor’s point that without the birth and resurrection narratives in Mark, during the first decades after the crucifixion those stories were not known nor necessary (my words). Paul’s supernatural claims of seeing a bright light and being told truths that differed from the disciples is what they knew. But, Paul would have heard stories from those he persecuted as Saul as well as those he talked with after his blinding light experience. His talking with Peter and briefly with James 3 years later could have been where he learned that what James and Peter saw was a blinding light that talked. We do not know the sequence but we do know how those years ended. That would be counter to Tabor’s view.]
Comparing Methods in Christian Origins
Citation for extracts below – Braun, Willi and Andie Alexander. 2021. “Comparing Methods in Christian Origins”, The Religious Studies Project. Podcast Transcript. 19 April 2021. Transcribed by Andie Alexander. Version 1.0, 19 April 2021. Available at: https://www.religiousstudiesproject.com/podcast/comparing-methods-in-christian-origins/
What happens when scholars take seriously the human-focused study of religious practices? In this episode, Willi Braun joins Andie Alexander to discuss the importance of critical approaches in the study of religion.
AA 27:39 – Mhmm. I am also very interested in this Smithian approach in my own work. I wonder if you could talk a little about J.Z. Smith’s preference for using data as e.g.s to illustrate larger concerns?
WB 27:55 – Let’s begin with Drudgery Divine, which is, I think, probably his most important book. Although there are none of them that aren’t important. Certainly, I consider it among the most important books he published, and certainly the most important illustration of what he meant by comparison…
AA 28:13 – Absolutely.
WB 28:14 – In this book, he takes on about four centuries of scholarship on the comparison of early Christianity with other Greco-Roman religions and does it with his typical precision and depth and so on. So, it’s sometimes hard to follow, but that’s what he does. But that wasn’t really his underlying purpose. Mere description of the history of comparison wasn’t his agendum at all; rather, he used the analysis, the description of this history, to show that biblical scholarship is based on a deeply biased apologetic between Protestants and Catholics. So, it was an important example a comparison—you compare two things in order to gain knowledge of clarity of a third. And this third is precisely how this biased historiography—Catholic and Protestant—has created a very interesting picture of early Christianity that ought to be critiqued. And that’s what he did. In fact, his criticisms of the scholarship on early Christianity is the most devastating one that we have. Among the many conclusions Smith draws is that the historically customary modes of comparison of early Christianities with the religions of late antiquity were conducted in bad faith, so to speak, in that they draw all kinds of protective strategies to insulate Christianity from other religions—from paganism on the one hand and Judaism, especially Jewish contemporaries, on the other end. And Protestant scholarship—for me this was a tremendous insight—placed an extraordinary emphasis on Paul. In the Protestant myths of Christian origins, it is Paul who stands at the centre and is the holder, the keeper of the myth of an imagined, pristine, pure Christianity. Paul holds it. Paul protects it. And it was later subjected to various corruptions by other Christians. So, he exposed all sorts of things: the bias of early Christian historiography, the apologetic and theological agenda that drove and continues to drive New Testament scholarship, the irresponsible use of backgrounds. I’ve said this several times, but I absolutely detest the word “background” in highlighting the uniqueness of early Christianity. You know, I’m a bit, as you know, a bit of a bird photographer, and…
AA 31:01 – Yes, a very good one.
WB 31:03 – Oh, well, thank you. And the perfect bird picture is when you isolate the bird on a branch and there is separation from the bird and the background, which might be a forest or a field, so that when you take the picture, the bird is in perfect, sharp focus and the background is entirely blurred, like creamed honey. That’s sort of the bird photographer’s ambition. And I sometimes see backgrounds in those terms. You know, here we have Christianity standing in all its glory and precision and detail and largeness against a very blurry background. It seems to want to show that Christianity is unique. And the only thing of importance going on in that time. This I’ve learned from Smith, and I think he has influenced me, although I’m not nearly as an accomplished a comparatist as he is, but I do try to step out of the apologetic and theological mode, stance in my own scholarship.
AA 32:07 – Could you give us an example from your book that draws on this Smithian approach to comparison?
WB 32:14 – Yeah, Smith has definitely influenced me. I consider him a friend, who unfortunately is no longer with us, and an important mentor. One example, there’s one essay in the book that has to do with the formation of an early Christian group. And it really is an essay about a document, which is referred to as the Sayings Gospel Q. Q is a hypothetical document because nobody’s ever seen it or held it, but it is a product of literary excavation from Mark and from Matthew and Luke, who have all kinds of material that they share verbatim. Anyway, we don’t have to go into that complex history and the Q hypothesis and all that. But let’s just assume it exists as a Sayings Gospel. It’s a gospel that has no biographical information. It’s just a collection of the sayings of Jesus. And in this article, I tried to show that the authors or the producers of Q saw themselves analogously, to a school, a school of philosophy or early Rabbinic schools, and so on. And that is, to make this very short, that in the end, the end of the day, what this document shows is that the producers of it weren’t so much interested in the subject, in the sayings of Jesus themselves, but were using the sayings as a way of forming a group. In the end, the group superseded the sayings in value and importance. And there are a couple of texts, which seem to say almost explicitly, times may be tough, but stick with us folks. This is trying to build loyalty, community affinity, and things like that. So that’s about the formation of a group, not so much an ideological document that they believed in as literally true. That’s way too simplistic, but that would be one example where I use comparison in order to show what the argumentative strategy is in a particular document.
