Gold Q&A - December 2023

[00:00:00] You. [00:00:01] I'd like to welcome you to this December 2023 edition of the Gold Q and A. Once again, I received a lot of really interesting questions. [00:00:15] For future reference, I tend to answer the questions that are not very long. Sometimes, if they're extremely long, I simply can't get to them. Short ones are, as a rule, better, and I've got a lot of good ones, short ones, longer ones, and I won't be able to get through all of. So, right. Here's the first question. [00:00:42] There are many differences between Luke and Matthew's birth narratives, but one that struck me is that in Matthew, Joseph has the dream, while in Luke, it is Mary. Is there any significance to this? [00:00:57] Well, okay, so this is a good seasonal question. The birth narratives are found in Matthew, chapters one and two, and Luke, chapters one and two. These are the only places in the New Testament that we have an account of Jesus birth. These accounts are very different from one another in many ways. [00:01:19] As some of you know, I often have an assignment for my undergraduate students where I have them look at these two birth narratives comparatively, where I have them read Matthew chapter one and two, and make a list of everything that happens in Matthew one and two involving Jesus birth, and then Luke. Have them list everything that happens in Luke one and two, everything involving Jesus'birth. And then I have them compare their lists to see what's similar and what's different, and to see if any of the differences are actual discrepancies or contradictions. [00:01:57] Students are surprised when they do this exercise because they realize pretty quickly when they compare their lists that Matthew and Luke actually don't have any of the same stories. [00:02:09] There are a number of things in common among the stories. [00:02:13] I wouldn't say many things. There are some things in common, and they tend to be the most important things. For example, that the parents of Jesus are called Joseph and Mary, and that Jesus was born in Bethlehem, but he grew up in Nazareth, and there's some kind of angelic involvement in his birth. And this question is about the angelic involvement in Matthew. [00:02:39] Mary is a virgin, and she conceives a child. And Joseph sees that she's pregnant and thinks, of course, that somebody has made her pregnant and decides to divorce her. At this point, they are betrothed. They are not officially married, but in the jewish tradition, a betrothal was kind of like an engagement today, but it was a more serious affair that involved an actual ceremony. And the idea was that these two people are committed to each other with a marriage date set, and they're not allowed to consummate the marriage. But it is a kind of a proto marriage and Mary has gotten pregnant. And so Joseph thinks that she's broken her vow. But in a dream, Joseph learns that in fact she is conceived by the Holy Spirit. [00:03:37] When you go to Luke, Luke also has Mary as a virgin becoming pregnant. But in this case, she is actually told in advance that it's going to happen. An angel comes to her before she conceives. The angel Gabriel comes in chapter one of Luke and announces to Mary that she's going to conceive a son. She's startled by this because she's never had sex and she's not planning on having sex, and she can't understand how she's going to get pregnant. And the angel tells her that the Holy Spirit will come upon her and she will conceive a son. [00:04:16] In this case, it's not a dream. It's not while she's asleep, it's while she's awake. [00:04:23] But the angel comes to her rather than to Joseph in Matthew. And so the question know, is there any significance of this? That in one it's Joseph, in the other it's Mary. When you read these two accounts, in fact, Matthew's account, the principal figure outside of Jesus, even though Mary is the one who gives birth, Matthew has Joseph as the prominent figure. Joseph learns that Mary is conceived by the Holy Spirit. Joseph is told to take the family and flee down to Egypt in a dream. The active person in the account is Joseph. In Luke's account, the active person is Mary. She has the annunciation, she has the birth. And even before that we have an account of Mary and her relative Elizabeth meeting each other, Elizabeth, the mother of John the Baptist, according to Luke. And so it's more about Mary. [00:05:23] This difference has led some people to suggest that it's the reason for the different genealogies between Matthew and Luke. Matthew's genealogy traces Jesus'line back to King David and through David to Abraham, the father of the Jews. [00:05:42] Luke's genealogy traces Jesus back even further, beyond Abraham. It goes all the way back to Adam, the first human, and from Adam to God. And so Luke's genealogy is longer. [00:05:58] But one of the many striking things, the differences between Matthew's genealogy and Luke's is that the bloodline from David down to Joseph is different, depending on which genealogy you read. In one of the genealogies, Joseph descends from Solomon, the son of David. Solomon and the other, Joseph, descends patrilinearly, father to son descends from Nathan, a different son of David. And so what some people have said is, well, Matthew's focused on Joseph. And so in Matthew's account, it's giving Joseph's genealogy. Luke is focused on Mary, and so Luke is giving Mary's genealogy. That's why the two are different. And that would make sense if, in fact, it were true. [00:06:51] But when you actually read Luke's genealogy, it is explicitly not a genealogy of Mary, it's a genealogy of Joseph. [00:07:00] And so they simply have different genealogies. They're at ods with each other in their genealogies. For some reason, Matthew wants to emphasize Joseph and Luke wants to emphasize Mary. [00:07:14] And I don't know that there's any bigger significance to it other than that each of them wants to focus on one of the parent figures or the other. [00:07:25] Okay, next question. [00:07:27] This person, this is not a Christmas question, but it is another question about Matthew. This person asks or says, I've long been confused by what appears to be an inconsistency in the gospel of Matthew. In Matthew, chapter ten, verses five to six, Jesus tells the disciples, the twelve go nowhere among the Gentiles and enter no city of the Samaritans, but go rather to the lost sheep of the house of Israel. [00:07:58] Okay, so Jesus is sending out his disciples, and he's telling them, don't go to anybody except for Jews. No Gentiles, no Samaritans. But this person points out at the end of the Gospel, in chapter 28, verses 19 through 20, Jesus tells the disciples to go, therefore, and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to obey everything that I have commanded you. [00:08:30] And so this person is asking, isn't this inconsistent? In one he says, don't go to the Gentiles. And in the other he says, go to the Gentiles. [00:08:40] And yes, this is sometimes pointed out as a discrepancy, but I think in this case, it's fairly easily resolved. [00:08:49] Matthew is trying to emphasize that Jesus, during his ministry, went to the jewish people, and his ministry was to Jews as the jewish messiah sent from the jewish God, fulfilling jewish scripture. His mission is to Jews. But the way Matthew portrays Jesus'life, and then his arrest, trial, and crucifixion, the jewish people at large reject him. [00:09:23] At his trial, Pilate declares that Jesus has done nothing to deserve a death penalty. [00:09:30] And the entire people, the jewish people gathered in Jerusalem, the entire people cry out, his blood be upon us and our children. [00:09:42] This is only in Matthew. [00:09:44] In Matthew, the people of Israel reject Jesus. And so he dies, he's crucified, but then he's raised from the dead. And when he's raised from the dead, then he tells his disciples, go make disciples of all the nations or of all the Gentiles, baptizing them and teaching them. In other words, Matthew's understanding that Jesus is rejected by Jews. And so after his death, the message principally goes to gentiles. So it's not an inconsistency, I don't think, in Matthew, it's actually part of the story. [00:10:20] And of course, when he says, make disciples of all nations, Israel would be one of the nations. But now the message isn't restricted to Israel. Now the message is available to everyone. This is a message you find out elsewhere in the New Testament, for example, in the writings of Paul, when Paul says that Christ came first to the Jews and the gospel went first to the Jews, and then the gospel went to the Gentiles. And so that's being portrayed here in a narrative way in Matthew's gospel. [00:10:51] Okay, well, for some reason, we're sticking with Matthew here, because the very next question is you have said that the Matthew that Papius refers to could not be the version we've inherited. [00:11:08] Why do we think so? I'll explain what that means in a second. The question goes on. Why do we think our version could not have been a translation from something that Matthew would have written in Hebrew? Is it the specific language used that no one could translate in the matter? Is there a good illustrative example? Okay, so I've got to explain the question, because some of you, this is a question that we nerdy New Testament types are familiar with, but most people aren't. [00:11:36] The New Testament gospels, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John do not call themselves Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. If you read Matthew's gospel, just start with chapter one, verse one, start with the first word, and read through all of Matthew's gospel to the last word. [00:11:53] You will find that the author never calls himself Matthew. [00:11:59] Now, there's a title for this gospel in our English Bibles, the Gospel according to St. Matthew or the Gospel according to Matthew. [00:12:09] That title is not what the author put on the book. [00:12:13] A later editor who's copying the book, or ascribe copying the book, is telling you that this is Matthew's gospel, and the next gospel he'll call the gospel according to Mark and the next one according to Luke, the next one according to John. [00:12:27] If you've got several gospels and they're all anonymous, then one way to keep straight which is which is to assign them to different authors and to put that as the title so that you know this one's according to Matthew. [00:12:44] I personally do not think that the Gospel of Matthew that we call Matthew was written by one of Jesus'disciples named Matthew. [00:12:54] The disciple Matthew is mentioned in Matthew's gospel. In the Gospel of Matthew, Matthew the person Matthew is mentioned. And you can read it for yourself. It's in chapter nine. Read the calling of Matthew in chapter nine of Matthew's gospel. Read it. Just read the few verses where Jesus calls the tax collector named Matthew and ask yourself, is the author who's writing this talking about himself? [00:13:22] Is he talking about how he was called to be a disciple? Just read the passage and decide for yourself. I think pretty clearly the answer is no. This author doesn't talk about Matthew any differently from how he talks about Peter or John or anyone else. It's one of the people he's talking about, but there's no indication he's talking about himself. [00:13:46] In early Christianity, after this book had been put in circulation, people started referring to it as Matthew's gospel. [00:13:57] The first time we have any gospel referred to as the Gospel of Matthew is in the writing of a church father named Papius. That's what this question is about. [00:14:09] Papius was writing, we don't know exactly when, around the year 120 or 130. Some have dated him as late as 140. [00:14:20] We don't have his writing. We wish we did. It was a five volume work that was called an exposition of the sayings of the Lord. [00:14:34] We don't know exactly what it was. [00:14:37] People have different views about what this book might have been. One common view is that this is a kind of a commentary on the things that Jesus said. [00:14:50] So it's an exposition of the sayings of the Lord. [00:14:56] Well, the reason we don't have it any longer is because people stopped copying it. We don't know how many copies were in circulation. We have some reason to suspect why it wasn't copied through the middle ages. Early on, Papius was spurned by church fathers for being a not altogether intelligent author. [00:15:22] That's almost exactly what the church father Eusebius says about Papius. Eusebius, the father of church history, says that Papias was a unintelligent fellow, and they especially didn't like some of his views. And so that's probably why his works aren't copied. We do, though, occasionally have quotations of something Papias said. In this long work, we don't have the book itself. This five volume book, but we do have a few quotations, including in Eusebius and in a few other authors. [00:15:58] One of the statements that is quoted about Papius is that Matthew wrote a gospel, and Papias says two things. He says that the Gospel of Matthew was a collection of the sayings of the Lord and that it was written in Hebrew. [00:16:20] Most people have assumed that Papius is referring to our book that we now call Matthew because he talks about a gospel called Matthew, and we have a gospel called Matthew, therefore, he's talking about our Matthew. [00:16:35] The problem is we don't know which Gospel Papius is referring to because he doesn't tell us which gospel he's referring mean, other than it's something called Matthew and he doesn't quote it in anything that survives. If we had a quotation or two of Papius of this book that he's calling Matthew, we could compare it to our Matthew and see if those quotations are in our Matthew to see if he's talking about the same book we have. [00:17:08] The problem is that we have various gospels that are assigned to the same person. [00:17:16] For example, we have a gospel of Peter, but it's not clear that it's the gospel of Peter that was known in the ancient world. Probably was, but we have a number of writings. Probably, we guess, but we have a lot of writings by Peter. Most of them were not written by Peter. In fact, none of them was written by Peter. But we have other books that could well have been part of the Gospel of Peter. Well, what about Matthew? Are there several gospels that go under the name Matthew? [00:17:47] Here's the problem. [00:17:49] The two things that Papius says about his Matthew are not true of our Matthew. [00:17:58] First, he says that it's a collection of sayings of Jesus. Well, of course Matthew has sayings of Jesus in it. So does Mark, so does Luke, so does John. But none of them is a collection of sayings of Jesus. It's not just sayings of Jesus. They are full narrative gospels that have sayings in them. Unlike, for example, the Gospel of Thomas. [00:18:21] The Gospel of Thomas is a list of sayings of Jesus, 114 sayings of Jesus that would fit with what Papist was talking about, although probably not the one he's talking about, but it would fit. Or q the Q gospel, which is a gospel that scholars have hypothesized, lie behind Matthew and Luke. [00:18:41] Matthew and Luke both use the Gospel of Mark for many of their stories. [00:18:47] But many of their sayings come from some other source, because Matthew and Luke have a number of sayings in common that are not found in Mark. And so the leading hypothesis for a long time has been that Matthew and Luke had access to some other text that was a collection of sayings of Jesus that we call Q from the german word cavella, meaning source. It's the sayings source available to Matthew and Luke. [00:19:15] Papius describes his Matthew as that kind of thing, a collection of sayings. But our Matthew that we have is not a collection of sayings. It's a narrative gospel with sayings in it. So that's not right. The other thing is, Papia says that this Matthew was originally written in Hebrew, or that it was written in Hebrew, and our Matthew was not originally written in Hebrew. [00:19:39] There are lots of reasons for knowing that. It's not a particularly debated point anymore. You'll find some people sometimes claiming that it was written in Hebrew. It almost certainly was not written in Hebrew. Here's one good piece of evidence. I said that Matthew and Luke agree with one another, agree with Mark in many places. Matthew and Luke agree with Mark in many places. Their agreements are word for word. [00:20:08] Mark is a greek gospel. Matthew has extended passages, a verse, two verses, three verses, word for word, the same as the greek version of Mark. [00:20:20] That means he must be copying it. [00:20:23] Not that he's a translation from some other Hebrew. He's copying Mark in Greek. That means he's writing in Greek. [00:20:30] And so Matthew's gospel that we have is a greek gospel. That is a narrative gospel. Papy is referring to a hebrew gospel. That's a list of sayings. It doesn't look like it's the same book. I don't think it's the same book. So the question is, is it possible that it could have been a translation? I don't think it can be a translation from Hebrew because the author of Matthew was writing in. [00:20:58] So I personally don't think that Papius is referring to our Matthew. I think in some other book, Papias also refers to Mark. By the way, Papius is the earliest source we have that says that Mark was a secretary of Peter and wrote down the things that Peter said. And I don't know if he's talking about our mark either. He's not talking about our Matthew. Why should we think he's talking about our mark? There's nothing in Mark that would make you think that this is written by somebody who's just copying down the things that you know. You'll find lots of places where Peter shows up in Mark. He's not portrayed in a good light in Mark. But there's nothing about the portrayal of Mark that would make you think this is Peter's version of the story. [00:21:47] All right, moving on. [00:21:50] During the conference that you did the New Testament in new insights into the New Testament, this is the background of this. This is a conference that I put on this last September, where I had nine other speakers and myself all talking about scholarship on the gospels. So these were talks on lectures for laypeople, for non scholars about scholarship, various aspects of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. [00:22:22] And so we called it new insights into the New Testament. [00:22:26] It wasn't connected with the blog. It's connected with my website. So if you're interested in watching it, it's at barterman.com, my website. [00:22:38] You can find a place to register, and we have a recording of it that you could purchase. So this person is saying during that conference, the new insights into the New Testament. This past year, some of the presenters mentioned that there's a theory that the book of acts was written as late as the common era. [00:22:58] I'm curious then, about the assumptions under this theory about the timing and authorship of Luke. [00:23:05] Is it still assumed to be written by the same author and still assumed to be written in the 80s? Okay, another really good question, and I need to provide more background to it. [00:23:21] Luke and acts from the very beginning have been understood to be two volumes written by the same author. [00:23:31] The Gospel of Luke is like Matthew, Mark, and John. It's an account of the life of Jesus, begins with Jesus'birth has an account of his baptism, his ministry, his miracles, his death, his teachings, his death and his resurrection. It's a gospel. [00:23:47] The book of Acts is about what happens after Jesus death among the disciples. After Jesus death and resurrection, his disciples begin spreading the gospel of the salvation that he's brought. And the Book of Acts continues for about 30 years of the spread of Christianity. So it's a narrative of the spread of the church after Jesus death and resurrection. If you read the first four verses of Luke and the first couple verses of Acts, it's clear that the author is claiming to be the same person. He begins with the Gospel of Luke by saying that he's going to write an account of the things that have been accomplished among us, having followed them closely, these based on traditions that have been handed down to the author by various people telling the stories, and he dedicates it to a person named Theophilus. [00:24:43] In the second volume, the Book of Acts, the author resumes and he says, well, in the first book I talked about the things that Jesus said and did up to his resurrection. And now, O Theophilus, I'm going to continue the is. The author is claiming to be the same person. And when you read Luke and acts, they're written in the same writing style, they have the same themes, the same theological points of view, the same ideas. [00:25:15] They are almost always taken to be two volumes written by the same author. That's the background during this conference, the new insights into the New Testament conference. Several people were reading papers on the Gospel of Luke, and it came up, this idea of the book of acts, because over the last maybe 30 years or so, there have been scholars who are dating acts much later than is traditional Luke and acts among scholars for over 100 years. Luke and acts are usually dated to the common era, like 85, 80, 85, somewhere in there. [00:25:58] For a variety of reasons, that's been the typical date. But about 30 years ago, some scholars started saying, no, actually, acts was written much later. [00:26:08] And I don't know that it's a majority of scholars, but there are a lot of scholars today who are willing to say, who are eager to say, who are committed to say that the book of acts was written sometime in the 120s. [00:26:21] That would be significant. [00:26:23] The account of acts goes up to right around the mid sixty s, to about the year 63 or 64 of the common era. And if it wasn't written till the, that'd be 60 years later, as opposed to the mid 80s, which would be 20 years later, which still isn't what you'd prefer. You'd prefer something written at the time, but 20 years later is better than 60 years later. And the reason, I'll say the reason that some scholars are arguing this is because they think that this author, when writing the Book of Acts, has been influenced by the writings of Josephus. [00:26:59] Josephus wrote a multivolume book on the jewish wars, the uprising of Jews against the Romans from 67 to 70 CE, 70s, when the temple was destroyed. And Josephus then in the CE, published another book, which is a 20 volume book on the history of the Jews. The history of the Jews. So it's called jewish antiquities, going from Adam and Eve up to his own day in the early 90s. [00:27:35] Some scholars are convinced that Luke had access to Josephus, and that would mean he'd have to be written after the mid ninety s. And there are a variety of reasons that people end up saying it's in the right. So all of that's background. The question is, if somebody thinks that that's true, that acts was written in the 120s. What does that do to your understanding of the Gospel of Luke? [00:27:59] Is it written by the same author, and is it thought to be written in the 80s as opposed to the 120s? [00:28:06] So I don't know that there's an actual consensus view on any of this. [00:28:12] There are several ways you could explain it. You could say that Luke. The Gospel of Luke was written in the. That another author, later, 40 years later, decided to continue the story by copying the style and the themes and the theological views of the Gospel of Luke and to make it look like it's the same author. You could say that. [00:28:39] You could say that Luke wrote the Gospel of Luke in the. [00:28:45] Maybe, you know, when he's young, a young author, and then when he's an old author, he wrote the book of acts. You could say that. [00:28:55] You could say. So that'd be a second option. A third option is you could say that Luke was also written in the. That Luke and axe is written by the same author, but that it's in the 120s rather than in the 80s. Those would be three of the options. I suppose different scholars take different views of that. [00:29:18] My view is that I'm personally not convinced that acts was written in the. Have no kind of personal investment in this question. [00:29:31] I'm not convinced that the similarities to Josephus require that Luke used Josephus as a source. [00:29:40] And so I myself am quite happy to leave the book of acts in the 80s. But if somebody could prove to me that it was the 120s, that'd be interesting. And as I said, many experts do think that now, if I thought it was written in the 120s, my guess is that I would say that the author wrote both books in the. That we were simply wrong to assign them to. The difficulty with that is that what is now our gospel of Luke seems to be quoted by church writers prior to the. Appears to be quoted and known earlier than that. And so you'd have to work through those difficulties. All right, well, in any event, that's the question. That's my answer. [00:30:32] Okay. Moving on. Different kind of question. [00:30:36] James Tabor. This person says, james Tabor is a New Testament scholar who sometimes writes guest posts for the blog, has his own blog, and is a well known New Testament scholar. James Tabor and others proposed that Jesus anticipated that he would suffer and likely be executed, not least because it happened to his mentor, John the Baptist. [00:31:00] Do you think Jesus instructed the disciples about what might happen during the Passover feast and that the earliest theology about his death and resurrection came from Jesus himself? [00:31:14] Okay, well, there are lots of issues here. [00:31:18] James Tabor and I see eye to eye on a lot of things, and we very much support each other's work in many ways. He was one of the presenters that I invited to the New Testament, the new insights into the New Testament conference. [00:31:35] But we do disagree on some things. [00:31:40] I don't know whether Jesus predicted his death. [00:31:44] My view is that he didn't predict it long in advance. [00:31:48] My view is that Jesus did not go to Jerusalem during the Passover feast in order to get crucified. [00:31:55] And my view is that he didn't know he was going to get crucified. [00:32:00] As I read Jesus'teachings, Jesus expected that God was soon going to bring his kingdom to earth and that he, Jesus, would be the king of this kingdom. [00:32:12] He was not expecting to be arrested, tried and crucified, in my judgment. [00:32:20] Now, it's true that in the gospels Jesus predicts precisely that in the Gospel of Mark, on three occasions Jesus, that does happen. Starting in chapter eight of Mark's gospel. [00:32:54] There's one in chapter eight, one in chapter nine, one in chapter ten, where Jesus anticipates what's going to happen. He tells his disciples, I'm going to go to Jerusalem, I'll be rejected, I'll be executed, and I'll then be raised from the dead. So it's absolutely true that he predicts his demise in Mark and in all the other gospels. [00:33:17] My view is that those predictions are not historical. [00:33:20] I don't think Jesus really predicted it. [00:33:23] I think what happened is that his disciples expected also for the kingdom to come, for Jesus to be made the king and for themselves to be rulers of that kingdom. [00:33:37] Jesus himself, the historical Jesus, the man himself, I think, actually did tell his disciples that when he was sitting on the throne, you twelve will be seated on twelve thrones ruling the tribes of Israel. [00:33:52] I think jesus taught them that I have reasons for thinking so, and I think that they believed it. [00:33:59] So they weren't expecting a crucifixion either. They were expecting a kingdom of God. [00:34:04] My sense is that what happened was that Jesus was arrested, tried and crucified. [00:34:10] And the disciples then soon after that came to think he'd been raised from the dead. [00:34:18] If he got raised from the dead, that showed the disciples that he really is the chosen one of God. [00:34:26] But if he's the chosen one of God, he must have known what was going to happen to him. It must not have been a surprise. [00:34:34] And so they came up with the idea that Jesus anticipated his death and resurrection and in fact predicted his death and resurrection. [00:34:44] That's why you get the passion predictions in the gospels. And it's why jesus is not taken by surprise when in fact he is crucified. [00:34:55] This questioner is saying James Tabor and others think that Jesus knew he was going to be executed. And one reason is because John the Baptist got executed. [00:35:05] I don't find that argument overly persuasive. [00:35:09] Because John the Baptist got executed for offending the king Herod. [00:35:18] Because he thought that King Herod had committed an immoral act. And so he preached against King Herod and King Herod then had him executed. [00:35:27] That's not relevant for why jesus got executed. Jesus didn't start attacking some monarch for his immorality. [00:35:37] And so I don't think that Jesus predicted his death in that sense. What I do think is possible is that Jesus may have gone to the passover, he preached to the crowds, he cleansed the temple, he caused a ruckus in the temple. He had enemies among the jewish leaders. He may well have known that he was going to be in trouble. And he may well have said this may not end well. And to that extent he may have thought that he would die soon. But I don't think this is something he predicted well in advance. I'm thinking maybe the night before he realized this may not end well. [00:36:17] I certainly don't think that the theology about Jesus'death and resurrection came from Jesus. I don't know if James Tabor actually says that. He may say that, but I don't think so. The theology of Jesus'death and resurrection appeared after Jesus had died. When his disciples believed he'd gotten raised from the dead. [00:36:38] Since he got raised from the dead, they identified him as the one who is special before God, the chosen one of God, to be raised from the dead, never to die again. [00:36:48] It's not that this was a near death experience as happened with other people in the Bible who were raised from the dead. When Jesus raises Jairus's daughter in the gospel of Mark, or when he raises Lazarus in the gospel of John, or when Elijah or Elisha raised people from the dead. These people do not go up to heaven to live forever. They live a while longer on earth and they die again. Jesus was raised never to die again in the christian tradition, once the followers of Jesus came to think of that, then they knew that he was the special one of God. And his death could not then have been an accident or a miscarriage of justice or a surprise for Jesus. They came up with the idea that it had been planned from the very beginning. That's why Jesus was here in the first place. [00:37:43] And so the theology of the death and resurrection appear. [00:37:47] Okay, next question. [00:37:50] Mark Goodegger suggests that the Gospel of Peter mistranslates a nomina sacra, so nomen sacrum, and that it is the crucified one that is Jesus coming out of the tomb, not a walking, talking cross. [00:38:06] That makes more sense to me. Your thoughts? Yes. Well, I suppose a human coming out of the tomb that can walk and talk probably makes better sense than a cross that can walk and talk. Although I got to say, both of them are miracles. Neither one of them can happen. [00:38:28] Okay. Right. So that's the deal. So I had forgotten that Mark Goodacre was saying this. Mark's another friend of mine who also spoke at the new insights into the New Testament conference. And I don't know exactly how Mark Goodacre works it out, and I'm trying to imagine how he does it, because the way the scene works is the gospel of Peter, of course, is not in the New Testament. It's an alternative version of Jesus'trial, death, and resurrection that is striking in many ways, one of which is that the gospel of Peter narrates an actual resurrection. [00:39:07] Jesus'resurrection is never narrated in the New Testament. [00:39:12] You think what? Of course it is. There's a resurrection in the New Testament? Well, yeah, there's a resurrection in the New Testament, but the way it works is Jesus gets buried, and on the third day, the women come to the tomb and find it empty. He's been raised from the dead. [00:39:31] You don't have a narrative of him being raised. Like, there's no account of him, like, waking up and the stone rolling away and him walking out of the tomb and going somewhere else. There's no narrative of the resurrection event in the New Testament. But the gospel, Peter gives a narrative of the resurrection event, and it's fantastic. And the details of it are what make me unclear about how Mark Goodaker says what this person says. He says. So the way it happens is this is just in the gospel of Peter, not in the New Testament. [00:40:08] The Romans are afraid that somebody is going to come and steal Jesus'body out of the tomb. And so Pilate posts a guard at the tomb. That part's in the Gospel of Matthew. What happens next is not according to the Gospel of Peter. While the guard is watching the tomb to make sure nobody breaks into it, two figures descend from heaven, angelic like beings descend from heaven, and as they come down, the stone starts rolling away of its own accord from the tomb. And then they go in to the tomb. [00:40:45] And as the soldiers are petrified out of fright, seeing this, they're looking still. And three beings come out of the tomb. [00:40:55] Two of them are so tall that their head reaches up to the sky. [00:41:00] A third one they're supporting is even taller. He's so tall, his head reaches up above the sky. [00:41:10] His head reaches up above the sky. [00:41:14] So they're supporting him. And the three come out. Now two men have just entered the tomb. There's one man in the tomb, jesus. And the three come out. [00:41:24] Behind them comes out, another being, another figure, the cross. [00:41:32] The cross comes out and the cross comes out somehow walking, I guess, floating, I don't know, comes out. And a voice comes from heaven and says, and asks, have you preached to those who are asleep? [00:41:53] And the cross replies, yes. [00:41:59] Yeah. Okay. Yeah. That is amazing. And it would make more sense if that was Jesus talking, having come out of the tomb. [00:42:07] The problem is that wouldn't make sense because three people have just come out of the tomb and one of them appears almost certainly to be Jesus, the tallest one. Now, why are the angels so tall when they come out of the tomb? Because they're supernatural beings. They're superhumans. Divine beings in the ancient world are understood to be really tall. They're big. They're bigger than us. [00:42:30] And Jesus is taller than the angels because he's more divine. He's the son of God. And so they're assisting him out of the tomb. [00:42:40] So I don't know how the cross could be Jesus if Jesus is right in front of the cross. The cross, I think, is almost certainly a symbol, a symbol of the significance of Jesus'death. When the voice asks, have you preached to those who are asleep? The cross replies yes, when it says to those who are asleep. As you may know, in the Bible, sleep is often used to refer to death. [00:43:09] Today we have euphemisms for death. So and so passed away. So and so fell asleep. Or we have different euphemisms for this. [00:43:23] Right? In the ancient world, one of the euphemisms was so and so is sleeping. When the voice says, have you preached to those who are asleep, it means, have you preached to those who have died? [00:43:35] And the cross says, yes. That means that the message of the cross has gone to those who were in Hades before Jesus'death. If Jesus'death is what brings salvation, okay, you gotta believe in Jesus'death. But if you died before he did, how can you believe in his death? Are you damned forever? No. The message of salvation is taken to those who previously had died, this is the beginning of the idea of what came to be called the harrowing of hell, when Christ, between his death and his resurrection, went down to Hades and preached the message of the salvation he had just brought so that those in Hades who would believe would also be saved. So I don't see how it could be a nomen sacrament, a sacred name for the crucified one. [00:44:27] There is a nomen sacrament, a sacred name for Christ. And it's Christ. It's not Staurus, not cross. And so I'll have to ask Mark what he means by this, but on the surface, I don't think it makes sense. Okay, next question. Could you please spend a few minutes, if not more, on the heresy called sibelianism? I can't find much about the heresy, and the Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church has just a paragraph on it. So this person wants to know, what is sibelianism? [00:44:59] Now, the person references an extremely valuable reference tool, the Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church. My mentor in graduate school, New Testament scholar, but also scholar of early Christianity, Bruce Metzger, used to say that if he could have only one book on his desk, only one reference book, he's allowed one reference book, it would be the Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church. [00:45:26] I too, extremely, highly recommend it. It's worth buying. Get a used copy. It's worth getting. It has article on just about everything about the history of Christianity up to the modern period, including most of the ancient stuff, short articles, usually, this person points out it doesn't tell you much about sibelianism. Can you tell me something about that heresy? Yes, I can. Sibelianism doesn't have much coverage in the Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church because it's named after a person named Sibelius, about whom we know almost nothing. [00:46:01] So that's why Sibelius is reputed to have been a christian thinker in the early third century, possibly late second century, who held to a view that scholars today often call modalism, but in the early church was called patripassianism. [00:46:31] Sibelius is an unknown figure otherwise, but he allegedly was excommunicated for holding this view. [00:46:44] So the view is called modalism or patripassianism. [00:46:51] This is a view that tries to solve the problem of how the Father, the Son and the spirit all relate to each other. [00:46:59] Christians, by the end of the third century, all thought that, of course, God the Father is God and Christ is God and the spirit is God. But how do you have three of them? If there's only one God. [00:47:14] Eventually, what emerges later is a doctrine of the Trinity which says that there are three persons, father, son, spirit, but they're not hierarchical. We tend to think of them as hierarchical because we always put father, son and spirit. But in fact, the way the Trinity ends up working out is you could put anyone at the top. Spirit, son, father, son, spirit, Father. You could do it, because in the doctrine of the Trinity that emerge, there are three persons that are distinct from each other. They are not the same person. There are three persons. They are all equally God. [00:47:56] One is not more powerful than the other. They're all equally God. They are all equally powerful, equally glorious, equally worthy of worship, equally knowledgeable. They're like equal in every sense. They're actually made of the same substance. [00:48:13] But there are three of them. Three of them, but there's only one God. That's the doctrine of the Trinity that emerged. Sibelianism or patripassianism or modalism. Those are three terms for the same thing, which is a different view, that God declared a heresy. [00:48:33] The interesting thing is that it's a heresy that today many people think sounds more sensible than the doctrine of the Trinity. [00:48:43] And many people hold that view that it's more sensible without even knowing that it's a view that got rejected as a heresy. The view is this. [00:48:53] I'll start by calling it modalism. [00:48:56] It was sometimes called modalism because what it says is there's only one God, and God is manifest in three different modes of existence. [00:49:07] The same God can be father, can be son, and can be spirit, the logic is that. Well, the logic by analogy is that I myself, I'm one person, but I'm a father to one person, I'm a son to another person, and I'm a brother to another person. [00:49:28] I am father, son and brother all at the same time, but there's only one of me. [00:49:33] And so when God, the almighty God, the father God, who created the world and became incarnate, God, the son God, who is now with us in being active among us now, is God, the spirit, it's all the same God, but it's in three modes of existence. [00:49:55] And so it's modalism. They're not three separate beings. There's one being God. There's only one God. You can only have one God if you're a monotheist. So the God manifests himself in different aspects of his being, father, son and spirit. So it's called modalism. It was called patropachianism. That's a term that was made up by a church Father Tertullian, a latin writing church father, one of the wittiest and most intelligent authors of the late second, early third century of Christianity, who had a rapier like wit and did not suffer fools gladly. [00:50:32] He didn't mind attacking people and saying very nasty things about them and making jokes about them and ridiculing them. And he ridiculed the modalists, and he called them patropassionists. Patropassionism comes from a term he made up. The term. [00:50:47] The latin word for father is pater, and the word for suffering, passion, so passio. So these are people who think that the father was crucified. [00:51:01] God the father suffered. God the father was crucified. So Patrick Father suffering. And he thought that was a clever label to put on them and mocked it, saying, of course, God the father didn't suffer, God the Son did. And if you say the son is the father, then you're saying the father got crucified. Are you nuts? [00:51:22] And so he had extended arguments against this view. [00:51:26] Sometimes this view came to be called sibelianism, because Sibelius was this otherwise virtually unknown figure who was thought to have been excommunicated from the church of Rome for holding this view. [00:51:39] And so sometimes people called it sibelianism. [00:51:44] Okay. And is declared a heresy. And the doctrine, the Trinity then later emerged. [00:51:51] Okay, next question. [00:51:54] In Philippians, Paul cites an early belief in the divine nature of Christ and incarnation of a pre existing divine being, not God. Yet the synoptics portray Jesus as becoming the son of God, either at his baptism in mark or conception. Matthew and Luke, what are your thoughts on why there's no incarnation Christology in the synoptics. [00:52:20] So this is a topic I deal with at some length in my book on how Jesus became God. [00:52:31] What I do in the book is I make a rough differentiation between an understanding of Christ that I call an exaltation Christology and another kind of understanding of Christ that is called an incarnation. Christology, exaltation, incarnation and the way it works is an exaltation Christology, in rough terms, thinks that Christ was a human being who got exalted to a divine level, that God somehow chose Jesus the man Jesus, who was a man. He wasn't God. He was a man. God made him divine. Maybe at his baptism, maybe at his resurrection, at some point, God exalted the man Jesus to the level of divinity and at some point actually made him equal with himself. Exaltation. The other view is that Christ does not start out as a man, but starts out as a God. He's a divine being who becomes a human being for the salvation of the world. He is incarnated. He comes in the flesh. This is a view you find in the gospel of John, clearly in John, but also Paul has this view as expressed most clearly in Philippians, chapter two, verses six through eleven. [00:53:54] This author, this questioner is saying, look, in Philippians, Paul has this incarnation view, but the synoptics which were written earlier don't have it. And the questioners citing this is kind of a puzzle. And the reason it's a puzzle is because scholars typically think that exaltation christologies were the original form of christological belief. That the disciples, when they came to believe Jesus was raised from the dead, thought that he'd been made a divine being, or that when he was baptized, God adopted him to be his son, which allowed him then to begin doing miracles and delivering his great teachings, that he's exalted and is often thought that this was the earliest understanding of Jesus of Christ, but that later people said, well, he wasn't just know made a God, he had always been God and he was incarnated. So John, our last gospel, has the incarnation Christology. Our earlier gospels have exaltation christologies, but Paul's writing earlier than the synoptics. Why does Paul writing earlier than the synoptics have a later Christology? See what I mean? That's a good question. [00:55:09] What I argue in the book is that there's a very common mistake that scholars make often, and lay people do too. And they make the mistake until you kind of point it out. See what the mistake is. The mistake is thinking that Christology developed in a particular way and that at one point this is what people believe, then later they believe this, then later they believe that, and later they believe this other thing. And you can kind of trace it chronologically if that were so, then if somebody had one Christology or the other, you could put them on this line and decide when they were writing, because, oh, they've got this Christology. That's a later Christology. So this must be a later author. You could say that. But the reality is theology and philosophy don't develop that way. Just, boom, like that, linearly. What happens is some people now believe things that used to be believed by everybody, but they still believe it. And some people back then used to believe things that later everybody came up to believing, and so you can't do it like that. I know some people who have, well, I'm just talking about sibelianism. I know people, I have students in my classes who think that it makes sense that Christ was in four modes of existence that God was, and that Christ and the father and the spirit are the same person. They're not three distinct people, but they're three modes of existence. I know christian students of mine who think that that's more sensible. That doesn't mean those christian students are living in the second century. See what I mean? They're accepting an older view, even though they're living much later. Paul has a view that maybe wasn't the original view, it was a developed view, but he has that view, even though later writers, ten years or so later, 15 years later, have an earlier view. [00:57:01] Paul has a view that ends up being a more known view, of more accepted view later. And so I don't think that it's just a straight line that everybody's theology changes at the same time. People believe old beliefs later and believe newer beliefs earlier, et cetera, et cetera. [00:57:21] You read more about that in my book, how Jesus became God. [00:57:26] Next question. [00:57:28] How over the last two millennia have theologians explained how a supposedly loving and just God could have introduced to humanity the one and only way to salvation, which required belief in and acceptance of that way, Jesus Christ. [00:57:46] Only after many millions or billions of humans had lived out their lives and died without ever having had the opportunity to believe and accept, what kind of post mortem salvation schemes did they espouse, and what's their basis for these assertions? Right. Well, so this would be a problem. It's one that I just alluded to. Suppose you say Christ is the only way of salvation and you have to believe in his death and resurrection? Well, there were millions of people who lived before Christ, and so many, many millions of people. So, like, are they all condemned because they didn't believe? [00:58:24] So theologians started dealing with this question early on. There's some hints that they were dealing with it by the New Testament itself. [00:58:34] Certainly by the time you get to the gospel of Peter. In the Gospel of Peter, have you preached to those who are asleep? The cross replies, yes, the message of salvation was taken down to those who had died earlier. This becomes a widespread view. As I said, it's found in this teaching called the harrowing of hell, which is an idea that Christ, between his death and resurrection, went down and brought salvation to those who died earlier. You don't have that stated concretely in the New Testament. There are a few passages that ancient scholars used to justify this view. [00:59:15] It is found in its most intriguing form in a book called the Gospel of Nicodemus, which is several centuries after the New Testament. And the Gospel of Nicodemus actually narrates Jesus'descent to Hades, where he sets free the prisoners down there. Interesting stuff. I have a chapter on this in a book called journeys to heaven and hell, and I posted on the blog. If you just look up harrowing on the blog, you'll see. You'll get an idea of how they worked this out and where and what the various options were for how it was Jesus'salvation went down to those who'd previously died. [01:00:03] Okay, I just have time for one last question. There is uncertainty about the date of the composition of the Gospel of Thomas, which has no crucifixion or resurrection of Jesus. [01:00:13] However, some scholars think that the portrayal of Thomas in John's Gospel is a refutation of the Gospel of Thomas, having Thomas himself seeing evidence of the crucifixion of the resurrected Jesus. So John must be familiar with Thomas's gospel. What do you think of this argument? [01:00:32] I mentioned the gospel. So in answering this, I mentioned the Gospel of Thomas earlier. It lists 114 sayings of Jesus. [01:00:40] It does not say anything about Jesus death and resurrection. [01:00:45] It doesn't say anything negative, doesn't say anything positive, doesn't mention it. It does say, though, that salvation comes by believing. [01:00:56] Scratch that. [01:00:58] Salvation comes not by believing, but by understanding the meaning of Jesus teachings. [01:01:06] That's how you get eternal life, by understanding the secret teachings of Jesus, and then the author gives you 114 of them. [01:01:16] Some scholars have said that the Gospel of Thomas is refuting, I'm sorry that the Gospel of Thomas was written without the death and resurrection of Jesus, and that John's gospel is written as a response, that John's gospel is showing that Thomas himself came to believe in the crucifixion and resurrection, which would make the gospel of Thomas prior to the Gospel of John. If John's responding to it, this is an argument that Elaine Pegels has made, I guess, in her book beyond belief. [01:01:54] This is an argument I don't agree with. I don't think it's right. I don't think the Gospel of John is responding to the Gospel of Thomas. [01:02:03] The Gospel of Thomas is usually dated to the. John's gospel is usually dated to the. Think those dates make better sense? [01:02:14] I don't think there's good evidence at all that John is responding to the Gospel of Thomas. [01:02:21] If there is a conflict between the two, which I don't think there really is, you could say that Thomas is responding to John. [01:02:29] The Gospel of Thomas doesn't say anything about Thomas not believing in the crucifixion and resurrection. [01:02:35] And so the fact that doubting Thomas comes to believe in the Gospel of John doesn't necessarily mean that it's responding to a gospel allegedly written by Thomas who thinks that the sayings of Jesus are what brings salvation. So I really don't think that it's a strong argument. I think you have to date the Gospel of John on other grounds, and you have to date the Gospel of Thomas on other grounds and see how the dates line up. We have a lot of books allegedly written by Thomas, not just this, but there are several books in the gnostic gospels, as they're called, that are allegedly by Thomas. And we have a number of books allegedly written by John. [01:03:22] We have a lot of books that are written about the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus. I don't think the idea that you've got one gospel that mentioned psalmist, another talks about him in a different way. Therefore, one's responding to the other really makes sense, unless you can show some definite evidence that, in fact, that's happening. And I don't think there is any definite evidence of it. Okay, our time's up. More than up. I had a number of other questions I really wanted to get to, but not this time. If you had a question that didn't get answered this time, then please ask it again next time, and I'll look forward to that. This will be our last one of this year. I want to go out by thanking you again for being a gold member, and I hope you can continue your membership and tell others about the possibility of being on the blog. Blog and being a gold member. If there are any things that we can do to make your experience on the blog better, then please do let us know about it. All right, thanks. And I will be doing this again next month.