Bart Ehrman quote from an article- please help refute!

[HarryStotle]

Yes, when in high school long ago, I believe they’d referred to this as the Messianic Sectet.

The term has a rather mixed, and confusing, provenance. Wrede, who coined the term, claimed the injunction to secrecy by Jesus was an invention of the Gospel writers, especially Mark, to explain away the alleged fact that Jesus never explicitly claimed to be God. It wasn’t a very compelling thesis to begin with, but the term has continued on. Today it refers to the accepted fact that Jesus did enjoin secrecy upon his followers and those who were healed by him, but the reasons for his doing so are credible, given what his ministry involved.

 

[kainosktisis]

Oops. That was a typo. I think I meant Messianic Secret. Sorry.

“Today it refers to the accepted fact that Jesus did enjoin secrecy upon his followers and those who were healed by him, but the reasons for his doing so are credible, given what his ministry involved.”

This is actually how I’ve come to understand it with time & more learning. I’m not sure that I’d paid enough attention in my high school Religion Studies Class to truly understand the relevance. I’ve never understood it to mean that He wasn’t God - just to clarify. He is God, & His secret, although I may not have understood the full implications of the secrecy at that time, was relevant to His mission as Our Promised Messiah & His Divinity.

 

[BartholomewB]

it is in the Old Testament embedded in the Prophets and Wisdom literature, in the Psalms, and in other books. It is necessary to see the cumulative case to be made and how the words of Jesus and books of the New Testament bring out the relevant passages from the Old, but it is there.

With respect, I suspect you may be overstating your case. Christians can easily find the hints and prophecies they’re looking for, because typically they have read the NT first and come to the OT prepared to find the clues they’ve been told are there. But from a Jewish perspective, someone who is thoroughly familiar with the OT and only then starts reading the NT, these echoes and connections aren’t apparent at all.

 

[HarryStotle]

HarryStotle:

it is in the Old Testament embedded in the Prophets and Wisdom literature, in the Psalms, and in other books. It is necessary to see the cumulative case to be made and how the words of Jesus and books of the New Testament bring out the relevant passages from the Old, but it is there.

With respect, I suspect you may be overstating your case. Christians can easily find the hints and prophecies they’re looking for, because typically they have read the NT first and come to the OT prepared to find the clues they’ve been told are there. But from a Jewish perspective, someone who is thoroughly familiar with the OT and only then starts reading the NT, these echoes and connections aren’t apparent at all.

They are clearly apparent, though they may not be convincing for some. A change of conviction, however, has a great many psychological and intellectual barriers to overcome. So you are correct, from a Jewish perspective the echoes and connections may not compel a change in belief.

 

[Mintaka]

A lot of Brant Pitre’s work has been about showing the Jewish sources, from Jesus’ time or before, which had keyed themselves to specific Messianic interpretations of verses and prophecies. He shows how Jesus then appeared to be fulfilling those expectations, both in ways which were easy to accept and in more unexpected ways.

I’ve also seen stuff by various people on how Jewish ideas of the Messiah/s evolved after Jesus, basically to reject many of those earlier ideas, or to make it clear that Jesus (and other messianic claimants) weren’t the intended Messiah/s. (And you’d expect that, because Jews who believed Jesus fulfilled the prophecies would generally have become Christian, and stopped being influential.)

So what Bob the 21st century Jew would find obvious is not necessarily going to be what Jacob the 1st century Jew would find obvious. There’s a lot of difference in oral culture and in Bible interpretation, even if Bob and Jacob would have similar ideas overall.

(For example, there’s a lot of pre-1st century stuff that shows that many 1st century Jews did expect God to come down and appear to His people face to face, in some way, and in a human form of some kind. They were expecting the Messiah/s and God, not just the Messiah/s. Obviously this is not something that most 21st century Jews would seem to be expecting, so it would be a difficult reading for Bob to “see.” Jacob might like or dislike the implications, but he would get the gist of jesus’ hints much faster than Bob.)

 

[Mintaka]

Going back to an earlier comment –

Actually, the Roman authorities would be concerned with arresting Jesus for claiming kingship, interested with a claim of prophecy (in case Jesus predicted the Emperor’s death, which was illegal), but would not care at all about Jesus claiming to be a god.

It was not illegal to claim godhood in the Roman Empire, as long as you didn’t attack the State. Lots of people claimed to be gods or goddesses, or to be possessed by them. Happened all the time in the pagan world. The Emperor was a god in a lot of Asian cities of the Empire, with temples and everything! So were a lot of members of the imperial family. In Rome itself, they held back during early times until somebody died, but soon there was deification in Rome of the living, too.

Now, I suppose they’d have a case for disturbance of the peace, since the Jews had strong views about gods. But that’s nothing. Claiming kingship of a land inside the Empire? That was treason.

So yeah, when the Montanists claimed that one of them was the incarnated Holy Spirit, the Roman government didn’t care one little bit. Much safer to claim godhood than claim to be a Christian, in the wrong place at the wrong time.

And going back to the OP’s question –

The OP ought to look up sources discussing the heresy of Adoptionism. If you want to argue historically, you still need to look up the theological sources. (You will also find better footnotes and sources that way.)

But the first place to look is whether Ehrman’s sources for the quote have any validity. If Ehrman doesn’t have any decent sources listed (which wouldn’t surprise me), you can then go look for your own. I don’t have Ehrman’s book, and you didn’t even say which book it is or where in the book. So it’s difficult to do the spadework for you.

Ehrman is very slippery. I still can’t forgive the dishonesty of him claiming that St. Epiphanius’ entire book on heresies was lies, especially the part where Epiphanius talked about a heretical group trying to seduce him into their weird sex practices when he was a kid – and then, later, silently quoting Epiphanius about the group, because Epiphanius is the only source that knew much about them. (For the record, St. Epiphanius’ account of the doings of this sex cult rings true to anybody who is a true crime buff, or has met iffy occultists of that sort. But yeah, don’t believe the victim.) It’s not “fraud,” but it’s not good scholarship or honest argument.

 

[HarryStotle]

HarryStotle:

So don’t confuse the claim that Jesus was God with the working out of what that meant or how it was to be properly understood.

I think you are the only one confusing these things. I don’t see any sign of it in Erikaspirit16.

How does my distinguishing these two things from each other imply that I am the “only one” confusing them?

Clearly, by being able to distinguish between them, it means that I am not confusing the distinction between them, no?

@Erikaspirit16 appears to confuse them precisely because she claimed it took 500-600 years to work out that Jesus claimed to be God.

Her words…

The business about the divinity of Jesus and exactly how all that works is something it took the Church about 500-600 years to work out so that what we believe today became the dominant orthodoxy.

The divinity of Jesus was established as the “dominant orthodoxy” from the get-go. Jesus established it.

The words to articulate that in Greco-Latin terms may have taken some 300 years to fully be expressed. The reason for that was because of the challenges to the Church from pagan detractors who demanded an apologia under their terms and conditions as the Church grew in influence and respectability, and was not so much merely dismissed with disdain.

It is a different matter to convince the dregs and lower classes of society than it is to offer a compelling apologia to the intelligentsia. A far different target audience.

At what point in history did the Church need to articulate or “work out” its Christology for a more cosmopolitan audience? After its legalization by Constantine – early 300s.

 

[Dovekin]

The original question was about the Christologies in the gospels an how and whether they differ. Erika’s point was that Christology was involved in a centuries long process to articulate who Christ was and how, centuries that included the writing of the gospels.

Your response in no way addressed that point. While you claim the divinity of Jesus was established as the “dominant orthodoxy” from “the get go,” that is not particularly relevant. The question is whether the gospels were part of the process of articulation. Is the get go before the gospels? Are you saying there a uniform portrayal of the divinity of Jesus in the gospels?

If you object to Ehrman, or Brown, describng a progression in Christology in the gospels, address them. Then we might have a chance of discussing whether there is a progression. As it is, your comment just confuses the original question by making a distinction but not applying it to the discussion.

 

[Dovekin]

I don’t see how a history of adoptionism would be helpful. Mark tells us nothing about Jesus before his baptism, so we cannot tell if he was adopted at that point or if he was divine from all eternity. There are a couple of encounters with his mother and family, but they seem more like repudiations than the parallel versions, which points toward a change like adoption. That is pretty meager. It is hard to see the difference in Mark.

Luke or John, adoptionism is not an option, Jesus is divine at least from birth. If you can prove from Mark alone that Jesus was not adopted, I do not see a reason for the excursion into a later heresy.

 

[deMontfort]

Modernism

 

[billsherman]

The original question was about the Christologies in the gospels an how and whether they differ. Erika’s point was that Christology was involved in a centuries long process to articulate who Christ was and how, centuries that included the writing of the gospels.

You have perfectly shown how nearly all people in this thread are trying to answer a historical question by using theological methods. Frequently they seem to be making the same mistake: assuming Ehrman is writing theology instead of history. I salute you.

 

[kainosktisis]

Frequently they seem to be making the same mistake: assuming Ehrman is writing theology instead of history.

I’ve only briefly been exposed to some of Ehrman’s work via DVD on something I’d gotten from a public library. I believe it was a course on early Christianity, & from my observations, if it appears that theological methods are being used to address his historical questions, it’s because his theological, or rather, atheistic/agnostic beliefs are the basis for his historical teaching. And it comes out. I don’t think I finished watching his DVD because it seemed based on such wrong-headed assumptions that I couldn’t finish it.

 

[billsherman]

I fail to see how the quote this thread is supposedly trying to refute has “his theological, or rather, atheistic/agnostic beliefs [as the] the basis for his historical teaching.” It appears to me that this quote is putting forth a directly historical thesis based on historical sources.

You may have a point with his classes, I have never seen him teach, so I will defer to you on that matter. There is a good chance no one else in this thread has participated in one of his classes, either. So it is probably best to stick to the task at hand.

 

[PJM]

“For Mark, Jesus was adopted to be God’s son at his baptism. Before that, he was a mere mortal. For Luke, Jesus was conceived by God and so was literally God’s son, from the point of his conception. (In Luke Jesus did not exist prior to that conception to the virgin – his conception is when he came into existence). For John, Jesus was a pre-existent divine being – the Word of God who was both with God and was God at the beginning of all things – who became a human. Here he is not born of a virgin and he is not adopted by God at the baptism (neither event is narrated in John – and could not be, given, John’s Christology).“

If YOU want the whole truth; USE the Entire NT!

 

[ATraveller]

And Jesus went on with his disciples to the villages of Caesarea Philippi. And on the way he asked his disciples, “Who do people say that I am?” And they told him, “John the Baptist; and others say, Elijah; and others, one of the prophets.” And he asked them, “But who do you say that I am?” Peter answered him, “You are the Christ.” And he strictly charged them to tell no one about him. -Mark 8:27-30

 

[ATraveller]

Some links that may be of interest:

https://www.reformation21.org/articles/jesus-interrupted.php

https://www.michaeljkruger.com/bart-ehrmans-worldview-problem/

https://www.michaeljkruger.com/bart-ehrmans-worldview-problem/

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[Erikaspirit16]

Those interested may actually like to go to Ehrman’s web site. He discusses why he doesn’t think Mark thought Jesus was divine. https://ehrmanblog.org/does-jesus-c...and-my-former-converts-mailbag-march-19-2017/

However, be warned that Bart requires a subscription to read ALL of his answer. The subscription is donated to charity.

Notice that he is very accessible–he answers questions in his blog, sometimes extensively. It seems to me that if you were serious in challenging him, you would go to the source…

For those who quote Mark’s story about Jesus healing the paralytic after he says “which is easier, to forgive sins or to make this man walk…” Ehrman’s answer is that Jesus was claiming authority from God to work miracles, not claiming that he WAS God. A reasonable interpretation.

I’m not sure why some of you are getting so upset about all of this. John clearly thinks Jesus is divine. Everyone agrees. But with the Synoptic Gospels, you have to read between the lines, interpret names and actions in a particular way, and do what a lot of commenters here are doing–take current orthodoxy and apply it retroactively to the early 1st c. church. And of course–as I mentioned earlier–it’s not so simple, even if you say “so-and-so- thought Jesus was divine.” Because then you come to the question “Divine in what sense? How could Jesus be both divine and human?” and of course that question is still under consideration today by many Christian and non-Christian religions. And for the first 600 years or so, that was the KEY question for Christians. The fact that CATHOLICS believe the issue was decided, and, in the words of one poster “from the get-go” doesn’t make it so. History shows this clearly. Everyone did NOT just fall into lock step with what is now orthodox teaching. But so what? Why is that so threatening to some people?

And in Matthew 16 where Jesus says to Peter “Who do people say the Son of Man is?” Peter answers with various things he’s heard: Jesus is Elijah; Jesus is John the Baptist; Jesus is Jeremiah or some other prophet. But notice that Peter never says “Some people think you are God himself.” That’s not an option. And when Peter says “You are the Messiah, the son of the living God,” you can interpret “son of the living God” in several ways. But to read our current orthodoxy back into Matthew is a stretch. Of course if you are Catholic, you do it; but a neutral third party wouldn’t be so sure. And I think that’s the OP’s issue–how can you “prove” Ehrman is wrong? I don’t think you can. It’s a matter of belief, not facts.

 

[Erikaspirit16]

Some links that may be of interest:

I read all that. Interesting, but I think you have to realize these are being written by a Protestant professor who also teaches in Charlotte NC, down the road from Chapel Hill. So there may or may not be some personal rivalry going on.

In any case, the 3rd paragraph of the blog says:

“Even though Ehrman does not offer a comprehensive assessment of his own worldview, it is important to observe that throughout the book he presents himself as simply a historian . For 300-plus pages Ehrman claims he is just doing, well, what historians do. He is very clear that “religious faith and historical knowledge are two different ways of ‘knowing’” (132) and he puts himself in the latter camp. He is only interested in studying those events that “do not require faith in order to know about them””

And I think that is fair enough. There are two ways to study any religion: as a believer and as an outsider. Ehrman is clearly in the ‘outsider’ camp. You do not have to become an agnostic or an atheist to realize that Erhman makes some good points, and often points that would NEVER be raised by a believer. It’s not legitimate to just dismiss Ehrman because he is no longer a believer. That’s an ad hominem attack. Deal with what he says, not who he is.

In the same way, all religions deal with the same basic problems: free will, the existence of the universe, the afterlife, etc. You don’t have to become a Buddhist or a Muslim to acknowledge that they have some interesting and logical answers to some of these questions, and their answers often throw light on your own beliefs. It would be foolish to simply say “I have the truth” and ignore everyone else–even Ehrman.

 

[ATraveller]

It’s not legitimate to just dismiss Ehrman because he is no longer a believer. That’s an ad hominem attack. Deal with what he says, not who he is.

There’s plenty of ad hominems going around, however, Kruger and others have dismissed him on what he has produced.

 

[Erikaspirit16]

There’s plenty of ad hominems going around, however, Kruger and others have dismissed him on what he has produced.

I agree. I wasn’t referring to the articles you posted!