Episode Transcript
[00:00:01] Speaker A: Some Key Passages from the Gospels Questions from Readers Answered by Bart Ehrman Read by John Paul Middlesworth I've received some terrific questions about the Gospels recently. Here's a good sample and my responses.
[00:00:18] Speaker A: I have a question on the Gospel of John. This Gospel describes Jesus as a pre existing divine being, the Word who became flesh.
But it does not mention any virgin birth of a divinely sired baby. Without the virgin birth, how did John imagine the incarnation to have happened? Did Jesus simply materialize in the world as a baby or as a full grown man?
What can we know about this?
[00:00:45] Speaker A: Ah, good question.
Actually, John's view of incarnation is at odds with the idea of virgin birth, even though Christians have long conflated the two by saying the line in the Creed and he became incarnate through the Virgin Mary. When you read the virgin birth narratives of Luke, it indicates that Jesus became the Son of God at and because of his conception.
The Holy Spirit will come upon you so that the one born of you will be called holy, the Son of God.
[00:01:14] Speaker A: He's God's Son because of his conception and it is how he came into being.
In John, on the other hand, Jesus is not the Son of God by conception, but from eternity past.
In the beginning.
It's only when both views are accepted as authoritative that the idea of an incarnation via virgin birth comes into being.
So how did Jesus come into the world in John's view?
He doesn't tell us explicitly, but since his biological mother and brothers are mentioned, I would suspect he thought that Jesus was conceived and born as all humans are through sexual intercourse, but that it was even so not a normal birth. It was the way the Son of God chose to enter the world.
That may seem strange. The pre existent Son of God was physically born, but there's no non strange way to think about it. And there are plenty of strange accounts of Jesus coming into the world in Christian writings such as in the Proto Gospel of James.
[00:02:15] Speaker A: If the signs in the fourth Gospel are there to prove something, why does John's Jesus say blessed are those who believe without seeing? Isn't this a contradiction?
[00:02:29] Speaker A: Ah, the author is affirming that up till then in his narrative, faith came only from seeing Jesus miracles, including Thomas.
Now Jesus will no longer be around and so people will have to believe without seeing them, but they can hear about them, read about them. In this account, as he indicates in 20, 30 31, the signs are written so that you might believe.
[00:02:56] Speaker A: Here still, it is the miracles that produce faith, but only as heard read about.
[00:03:03] Speaker A: If apocalyptic preachers were expected to pronounce judgment on the Temple. Why do critical scholars still treat this prediction as a key factor in dating the Gospels? I've often heard it argued that even if Jesus genuinely made such a prediction, the Gospel writers included it to highlight his prophetic foresight. But if condemning the Temple was a standard feature of apocalyptic preaching, wouldn't that alone explain its inclusion without having to assume it was written after the event?
[00:03:33] Speaker A: Ah, right. Good question, Mark Goodacre made an argument once that struck me as convincing that for later authors who want to show that someone made prophetic predictions that eventually came true as they living later knew, it is those predictions they bring up repeatedly as you get in the predictions of the destruction.
This one prediction is one they knew came true and so they emphasized it. They don't record other predictions of Jesus that did not come true, only ones that did. For example, also ones about his own coming death and resurrection, the denials of Peter, the betrayal of Judas, etc.
That suggests they repeat Jesus prediction of the destruction of the temple precisely because they knew it happened and it verified Jesus insights.
[00:04:21] Speaker A: Twice in John's Gospel, the author has someone identify Jesus as the son of Joseph, once by a sympathizer and again by enemies.
In neither case does the author take the opportunity to hedge or qualify the claim.
Why create a problem for himself by even bringing it up unless the author accepted that Joseph was Jesus father?
Should we take this as a hint that perhaps the author saw the incarnation of a pre existent divine being as compatible with the normal biological birth?
[00:04:54] Speaker A: Yes, it was a point noted by later scribes who copied John's text and sometimes changed it so it didn't mention Joseph as his father.
But father could mean lots of things, and there are lots of ways to interpret the text. Joseph could be his stepfather. I called my stepfather my uncle all the time, or his adopted father. Or more likely, in my view, is what you suggest.
The author may have thought that Joseph was indeed his earthly father and the word of God became incarnate the way every human being becomes incarnate through the sex act.
The only reason we are averse to this idea is that we think Mary had to be a virgin. But this author didn't think so, or at least he never said so.
And these verses seem to indicate he did not.
[00:05:41] Speaker A: In Mark 9:1, Jesus says until they see that the kingdom of God has come with power.
Mark writes 40 or so years after Jesus dies and still says that this kingdom is coming with power.
It's been 40 years, not much has happened. And Nero has persecuted some Christians.
Not much power.
Why does Mark use that word power?
Did the destruction of the temple signal the coming of the kingdom? Did Mark really think Jesus said those words and wanted to be faithful? Or does Mark just think it is still coming and soon?
[00:06:18] Speaker A: It is usually understood to mean the kingdom would not ease into the world, but would come with a mighty act of God that destroys all his enemies.
My sense is that Jesus actually said something like this, and and Mark is recording it because he still does think it's coming soon, just as many people today still think Jesus means soon in their own lifetimes.
It's interesting, though, that Luke, writing later drops the words in power, probably because Luke, unlike Mark, thinks the kingdom is already being manifest here on earth in the work of Jesus and his followers.
See, e.g. luke 17:20 21.
