The power of storytelling, and the problem of probability.

I’ve recently listened to the debate between Michael Shermer (skeptic) and Luuk Vandeweghe (Christian apologist) which took place in Sequim, Washington, USA, in March 2019, and was broadcast on the Unbelievable radio show and podcast a couple of weeks later.

It was a debate on biblical miracles, in front of a mostly Christian audience. It's fair to say that Vandeweghe won the debate. But I don't think he won the debate because he is right and has the facts on his side, I think he won the debate because he's a great storyteller, and told a compelling story of early Christianity which sounded entirely plausible, and therefore believable. Shermer never got the chance to take the story apart, and so wasn't able to counter the power of a good story.

Christians have always had great storytellers and great stories. But just because they have great stories, perhaps even the greatest story ever told, doesn't make the stories true. Sometimes fiction is more interesting than real life.

So let's break down Luuk Vandeweghe's story and see if it holds up to scrutiny. Obviously I'll only comment on a few aspects of it here, but I'll try and give the gist of the whole and be accurate in a few direct quotes.

He began by acknowledging that he was telling a story: "I want to tell you a story..." and used a repeated refrain to link together all the different characters he told us about: "They weren't liars and they weren't fooled".

He started his story in 66AD with a story about the emperor Nero in Rome, told by Tacitus. Vandeweghe doesn't tell us that Tacitus was only ten years old in 66AD, and wasn't there, and wouldn't write this account until at least 30 years later, he implied an accurate report of the events in AD66. He told how Nero took Christians, nailed them to crosses, and burned them as torches for his garden parties. He then told a tale of someone at the Colosseum, who could have saved their family members from being torn apart by wild animals if only they had denied Christ, but who chose to stay faithful. He said: "Tacitus tells us Christians gained the sympathy of the people because they never did this, they suffered, they endured, and they won over the hearts of Rome during that era, because they never went back on their testimony".

The problem I have with this, is that Tacitus says no such thing. Tacitus does not recount the story of the people at the Colosseum being given the opportunity to deny Christ and live. As far as I know, those stories come from 2nd century writings like the Apocryphal Acts, and writings like the Epistles of Ignatius, it's not in Tacitus. And the 2nd century writings contain a lot of stories that serious historians laugh at. They are not history. But here, a storytelling Christian has merged aspects of real history, with some ambiguous interpretation, with probably fictional stories, to make the story he wants to tell. This is not history, this is apologetics, and if the truth has to be bent along the way, so be it.

The storyteller told a good story, does it matter that it is probably not true? 

Is Luuk Vandeweghe a liar, or has he been fooled?

Here's what Tacitus actually said:

"Consequently, to get rid of the report [that Nero had ordered the fire in Rome], Nero fastened the guilt and inflicted the most exquisite tortures on a class hated for their abominations, called Christians by the populace. Christus, from whom the name had its origin, suffered the extreme penalty during the reign of Tiberius at the hands of one of our procurators, Pontius Pilatus, and a most mischievous superstition, thus checked for the moment, again broke out not only in Judaea, the first source of the evil, but even in Rome, where all things hideous and shameful from every part of the world find their centre and become popular. Accordingly, an arrest was first made of all who pleaded guilty; then, upon their information, an immense multitude was convicted, not so much of the crime of firing the city, as of hatred against mankind. Mockery of every sort was added to their deaths. Covered with the skins of beasts, they were torn by dogs and perished, or were nailed to crosses, or were doomed to the flames and burnt, to serve as a nightly illumination, when daylight had expired. Nero offered his gardens for the spectacle, and was exhibiting a show in the circus, while he mingled with the people in the dress of a charioteer or stood aloft on a car. Hence, even for criminals who deserved extreme and exemplary punishment, there arose a feeling of compassion; for it was not, as it seemed, for the public good, but to glut one man's cruelty, that they were being destroyed."

This does say that Nero blamed the fire of Rome on Christians, and had some Christians crucified, some burned as torches, and some torn by beasts. It doesn't say that any of them were given the option to deny Christ and be saved. And while it does say that the people of Rome had some compassion for the Christians, it doesn't say that this was because they were faithful to their beliefs.

Luuk made the claim that "the early martyrs weren't liars", but on the evidence of Tacitus, we don't actually know what the early martyrs said. They pleaded guilty to something, but Tacitus is unclear on what. Possibly the crime of setting fire to the city?

But the storyteller told a good story, does it matter that it is probably not true? 

Is Luuk Vandeweghe a liar, or has he been fooled?

The apologist's story now goes a couple of years before AD66 to the supposed martyrdom of Peter. Here, the apologist does that usual apologetic trick of overstating his case: "According to all the earliest sources that we have, Peter is the man who inspired Mark to write his gospel". Really? All the earliest sources? Paul doesn't say it, Acts doesn't say it, even Mark doesn't say it, secular historians like Tacitus and Josephus certainly don't mention it. In fact, most of the earliest sources we have do not mention the gospel of Mark or any connection between it and Peter. I think our earliest source on the supposed link between the two is Papias in the early to mid 2nd century. And there are reasons to question whether the writings Papias was talking about are actually the same thing as the book we now call Mark. And quite a few historians question the reliability of Papias. Most of the claims we have for a link between Peter and Mark are late 2nd century, possibly a whole century after the death of Peter, certainly more than a century after the death of Jesus. Yet the apologist declares, with apparent certainty, that the miracles in Mark came from the eyewitness accounts of Peter and that he died for his belief in those miracles.

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I'd like to insert a little parenthesis here about probability. I'll continue with Luuk's story in a minute.

Here our apologist made three historical assertions in quick succession. These are:

1. Peter witnessed the miracles of Jesus.
2. Peter told the stories to Mark who wrote them down.
3. Peter died because he would not abandon his belief in these miracles.

For the overall story to be true, all three of these need to be true. If one is false, the whole story is proven false. But historical reconstruction doesn't work in absolute truths, it works in probabilities.  The way probabilities work is that the probability of the whole is found by multiplying the probabilities of the individual components together. That is Ptotal = P1 × P2 × P3.

Suppose you think there is an 80% probability that each of these three statements is true, the probability of the overall story would be 0.8 × 0.8 × 0.8 = 0.51 or 51%. That's not a statement of high certainty, is it? But suppose we doubt the stories of Papius and think that it is unlikely that Mark's stories come from Peter, perhaps allocating that a 20% chance, and we think there's only a 50% that Peter actually saw miracles, and we think there's only a 30% chance that he would not have been martyred if he had changed his story, then we get 0.2 × 0.5 × 0.3 = 0.03 or only a 3% chance that the overall story is true!

In order for you to have (say) a 75% (or higher) probability in the overall claim, you actually need at least a 90% certainty in each of the three claims. Few historians would be likely to stake their claims that high.

This is what happens when there are only three claims being combined, Luuk's overall story has many more claims. If even a few of these have low probability, the likelihood of the overall story becomes very small. However, this reasonable application of probability in history is completely masked by compelling storytelling. A good story makes something plausible sound like something probable. They are very far from being the same thing. I'll try the sum at the end of this post... but now back to the story. 

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Luuk now makes something entirely up. He says to imagine the evangelist Luke in the crowd, watching the crucifixion of Peter. Where did that come from? I've never heard that claim before. It would sure help the apologist's case if the author of Acts was there at the events he describes in his book, or the events he alludes to, because -of course- the martyrdom of Peter is not actually recorded in Acts. If Luke was there and if he witnessed Peter not denying Christ and being crucified as a consequence, and if he wrote that in his book, that would indeed be good evidence. But the thing is, this didn't happen, he didn't see it, he didn't write it. This part of the story is a complete red herring.

But the storyteller told a good story, does it matter that it is probably not true? 

Is Luuk Vandeweghe a liar, or has he been fooled?

Although the chain of evidence Vandeweghe is trying to build has already been broken with the lie above, he carries on and makes a big deal of the historical reliability of Luke's writings. He portrays Luke as a top notch historian who interviewed named eyewitnesses, including Mary the mother of Jesus. He claims that every time a minor character is named, this is probably because Luke has interviewed the eyewitness in question, and has told their story. It makes a great story, but this is also a highly doubtful claim. Nothing in there can be stated with certainty.

Scholars have long known that Luke used Mark as his primary source, but freely changed the bits he didn't like and added in other stories to bulk out his gospel. While the opening statement of Luke's gospel does sound like a claim of historical scholarship, not everyone is convinced. Indeed, from all I've read on the subject of Luke (and Acts, for that matter) I am reasonably convinced that the final edition of Luke, including the dedication to Theophilus, is a 2nd century expansion of an earlier gospel that made no claim to scholarship. Look at the first couple of chapters of Luke compared to most of the rest of the gospel, they're not even the same genre; chapters 1 and 2 are a musical! If you start reading Luke's gospel at chapter 3, it reads like the start of a book. I think chapter 3 is where the original gospel began and chapters 1 and 2 were added on by whoever was compiling this book for Theophilus. If the compiler was someone called Luke, this can't have been the same character who Paul named in his letters a couple of generations earlier. The apologetic as to why the evangelist Luke was the same as the companion of Paul is quite convoluted and there are good counter-arguments. Its certainly a low probability claim, not a certainty. Yet Vandeweghe relies on Luke's 'unbroken line of evidence' to support his case.

The storyteller told a good story, does it matter that it is probably not true? 

Is Luuk Vandeweghe a liar, or has he been fooled?

The chain of evidence now jumps to an individual I have thought a lot about recently, James the Just, the alleged brother of Jesus. Luuk invokes Josephus at this point. As with Tacitus, Josephus was a child at the time of the events of interest occurred, and was not there to witness them. There is also suspicion that the works of Josephus have been edited by later Christian redactors. Certainly the 'Testimonium Flavianum' has evidence of someone tampering with the text, and if it wasn't for the words 'the brother of Jesus, who was called Christ' in the passage about James, there would be nothing about the story in Josephus for us to think that James was martyred for anything to do with the Christian faith. He was executed as a lawbreaker. Maybe he was just a lawbreaker who was executed, and who has accrued legends after his death. People considered to be martyrs do seem to attract stories of great deeds and holiness.

Luuk repeats the oft-told apologetic about how James was a skeptic and became a believer and became leader of the early church. Having invested a lot of time reading up on this and thinking about it, I am really not convinced that this is in any way historical. I think that James the Just was co-opted by the 2nd century church as one of 'their' early martyrs and turned into Jesus's brother in the stories. See my blog post about that here. For me, this is a really weak link in the story.

Once again Vandeweghe repeats the completely non-historical claim that James only had to do one thing to avoid being martyred, he had to deny Jesus. This statement has no basis in history. At best it is simply assuming a detail of one story fits into another story, at worst it is pure fiction.

But the storyteller told a good story, does it matter that it is probably not true? 

Is Luuk Vandeweghe a liar, or has he been fooled?

The apologist next made the claim that the Sanhedrin who killed James were the same group of people who killed Jesus. Maybe they were, maybe they weren't. Given the years that separate the two events, death of Jesus around 30 CE, death of James around 69 CE, it is unlikely that the group members would be the same, and even if one or two were the same, the chance that they would connect the two events in any way is tiny.

Vandeweghe concluded his story by invoking the words of the Babylonian Talmud, a book written between 500 and 600 CE. He described how the Talmud referred to Jesus as 'a sorcerer', and claimed that this belief "went right back" to the trial of Jesus. His point being that by using the word translated here as 'sorcerer' the Jews were acknowledging that Jesus actually performed magic. This is not the word for a trickster, this is the word for the real deal. In other words, the accusers of Jesus believed his miracles were real, even if they believed they were of diabolic origin.

And so, by following a chain of 'evidence' from 66 CE back to Jesus himself, the apologist concluded his case that the miracles of Jesus were real, because the Sanhedrin at the time believed they were real. It was a strong story. The fact that it is not based in history is irrelevant. Vandeweghe won the debate.

But, of course, there is no chain of evidence linking the Sanhedrin in Jesus's day with a book written about 5 centuries later. And even if there was, there are a few details in the Talmud that should give us pause for thought. The Talmud story of "Yeshu the sorcerer" names his five disciples, tried with him, as "Matai, Nekai, Netzer, Buni, and Todah". None of those names feature in the gospel accounts. And in the gospels, Jesus is tried alone, not with his disciples. Maybe Yeshu the sorcerer and Jesus of Nazareth are not the same character? If that's the case, then the apologetic case fails. The dates also do not line up. If you look at the Talmudic timeline, then Yeshua the sorcerer lived and died a generation or so after Jesus supposedly did.

The storyteller told a good story, does it matter that it is probably not true? 

Is Luuk Vandeweghe a liar, or has he been fooled?

I don't think Vandeweghe is a liar. I just think he fundamentally believes the Christian story, and so lines up a bunch of historical data in a way that is coherent with the thing he believes anyway. He's doing good apologetics and bad history. He's been fooled.

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So, how unlikely is his story? Here is a list of the links in his story, together with my estimates of probability for each of them. Assuming they are all required to prove the case, and therefore the probabilities multiply together, I'll do the sum and see just how probable or improbable I think the story is... I'll not allocate anything a zero probability as that messes with the calculations.

• Christians in the time of Nero were martyred for being Christians. (60-95% likely)
• They could have saved themselves by denying Christ. (20-50%)
• Peter witnessed the miracles of Jesus. (10-90%)
• Peter told the stories to Mark who wrote them down. (20-60%)
• Peter died because he would not abandon his belief in these miracles. (20-80%)
• Luke witnessed the martyrdom of Peter. (5-10%)
• Luke interviewed the people who knew Jesus. (10-50%)
• James the Just was the brother of Jesus. (5-95%)
• James was martyred because he was a Christian. (5-50%)
• James could have saved himself if he'd denied Jesus. (20-50%)
• The same people who killed James killed Jesus. (5-30%)
• The Talmud story of Yeshua the sorcerer is about Jesus. (10-60%)
• The Talmud story goes back to the time of Jesus. (5-20%)
• The Sanhedrin believed that Jesus could do miracles. (5-70%)

Here I've given reasonable ranges of probability from typically skeptical at the low end (actually, some of these should go way below 5% in that case) to fairly generous credulity at the upper end.

If we do the skeptical sum, we end up with a probability of 1.5 × 10^-12%, or 0.0000000000015%. That is about a one in 600 Billion chance of it being true. Not very likely, in other words.

Even if we go to the generous end of the scale, the probability of all of Vandeweghe's story being true is 0.02% or about a 1 in 5000 chance. Still not very likely.

With 14 links here, in order to obtain a probability of more than 50% we need to have more than 95% confidence in all of the links in the chain. If we want the overall probability to be 75% or more, our confidence in each of the 14 links would need to be 98% or higher. Historical probabilities almost never go so high. You basically can't conclude a historical fact on a long chain of cumulative evidence. (Which reminds me that I never completed the 2nd part of my review of Cold Case Christianity... maybe someday...) 

Of course, it is possible that Jesus was real and his miracles were real even if the apologist's story is false or partially false, but that's not the point here. The point here is that you cannot prove something historical by telling stories like this, even though they seem plausible to people who want to believe the story.

James, the brother of the Lord

This post is an offshoot from another post that I have half written, and which will emerge in due course. It concerns the 'Minimal Facts' approach to 'prove' the resurrection. One of the main four minimal facts concerns the initial skepticism, conversion, and rise to church leadership of James, the brother of Jesus.

However, I'm not sure this extrabiblical story has any solid grounding in history, so let's look at the character of James in the new testament and in the early church writings.

James in the Gospels

In the gospel of Mark (the first gospel written), James exists only as a name in a list of Jesus' brothers in one verse (Mark 6v3)

"Isn’t this the carpenter? Isn’t this Mary’s son and the brother of James, Joseph, Judas and Simon? Aren’t his sisters here with us?” And they took offense at him."

That is the only place where James is named in the gospel of Mark. He is also named in an equivalent verse in Matthew (13v55), but is not named in the other two gospels. There is no character of James the brother of Jesus in any of the gospels.

Jesus' (unnamed) brothers do have a very minor role in the gospels. After the wedding in Cana in John chapter 2, Jesus, his mother, brothers and disciples spend time together. No antagonism between Jesus and his brothers is implied, quite the opposite.

However, the (skeptical) character of James in the gospels is inferred largely because of this verse:

"Jesus’ brothers said to him, “Leave Galilee and go to Judea, so that your disciples there may see the works you do. No one who wants to become a public figure acts in secret. Since you are doing these things, show yourself to the world.” For even his own brothers did not believe in him." John 7v3-5

This is a confusing statement, verses 3 and 4 imply that the brothers know that Jesus is doing some form of wondrous works (i.e. they apparently believe in his power), but verse 5 states that they didn't believe in him (in what way did then not believe?). Furthermore there is this story in Mark 3v20-21:

"Then Jesus entered a house, and again a crowd gathered, so that he and his disciples were not even able to eat. When his family heard about this, they went to take charge of him, for they said, “He is out of his mind.”"

So, by inference, James (assumed to be part of 'his own brothers' or 'his family') thought that Jesus was 'out of his mind' and 'did not believe in him'. From this somebody deduced that James was not a follower of Jesus, and was therefore 'a skeptic'. Sorry, what? Is that really the best we can do? It is really, really unclear to me that we know anything at all about the character of James from the gospels. Surely on this basis we have to list Mary as a skeptic too?

It is interesting to note that Matthew's retelling of Mark's story in chapter 12 omits the verse about Jesus' family thinking he is 'out of his mind'. In Matthew, the family just turn up and want to speak to Jesus, and he ignores them. We learn nothing at all about the character of Jesus' mother and brothers from Matthew. Likewise in Luke.

In Summary, Matthew and Luke have nothing negative to say about James or any of Jesus' other family members, they are really non-characters. Mark names James in a list, and while he does note that Jesus 'family' thought he was out of his mind, there is no explicit mention of James in connection to this. John does not name James anywhere. But Jesus' unnamed brothers do express a very minor degree of skepticism.

Based on gospel evidence, it is far from clear that James the brother of Jesus did anything at all, or had any massively negative views about Jesus or his message.

Before we move on, I'd like to think through this again. The claim made by apologists is that Jesus' brother James was skeptical about his ministry, then later had a post-resurrection appearance by Jesus, changed his mind, became a follower and then became one of the main leaders in the Church in Jerusalem. He was later martyred.

Keep that sequence in mind. At the time of writing of the gospel accounts, generally taken to be post 70AD, James would have been a legend of the early church - one of the pioneering Church leaders, one of the most notable martyrs, someone important. Basically, he'd be considered a core character in any history of the early church that anyone would write. If you want to suppose that Mark was written pre-70AD, the same sort of reasoning applies, but James might still be a key character in the church, having not yet died.

Now consider the evangelists writing their gospels. Knowing who James would become, would Mark leave James as merely a name on a list? Would he mention the apparent skepticism of James in such an oblique way? Would he not have made James more of a character? I think if Mark knew who James would become, he would certainly not write about him in the way presented here. My conclusion - the first evangelist did not know the stories about James, the brother of Jesus, converting and becoming a leader in the Church.

What about Matthew and Luke? If they knew about James's story would they have modified Mark's story to make James even more anonymous? I doubt it. Conclusion, it looks unlikely that Matthew or Luke knew the story of James.

Finally John, who doesn't even name James in his gospel. Did he know about the conversion and rise of this skeptic to be the leader of the Jerusalem church? No. It doesn't look likely at all.

Basically, I think that the gospel stories themselves suggest that James the brother of Jesus was not a key player in the life of the early church. Maybe there was a James who was important, as we will see, but the gospel evidence suggests that this character was not identified with the brother of Jesus.

Before we move on, it is worth mentioning at this point that the gospels list two other characters called James - one the brother of John and son of Zebedee, and the other one the son on Alphaus. These are both characters, not merely names on a list.

James in Acts

Next we go to Acts. What does it tell us about James the brother of Jesus after the death of Jesus? Nothing. 

None of the mentions of any character named James in the book of Acts explicitly refer to him as the brother of Jesus. None of them.

James the brother of John is killed in Acts 12v2. After this there are three references to someone called James who is a leader of the church in Jerusalem. The book of Acts does not tell us who this James is; if this is James brother of Jesus, or James son of Alphaus. But given that Luke-Acts has never even mentioned that Jesus had a brother called James, our only reasonable conclusion is that the second James in Acts is the only other James previously mentioned, James son of Alpheus. Luke-Acts gives us no other character to assume. It would also make sense if the James in question was one of the disciples, not some non-character who hadn't been on the scene or part of the story before. If the other James was an outsider from the original apostle group, surely the writer of Acts should have introduced him in some way?

James in Paul

So from where do we get the idea that the leader of the Jerusalem church (after the death of James son of Zebedee) was James the brother of Jesus? We get it from one reference in Galatians 1v19:

"18 Then after three years, I went up to Jerusalem to get acquainted with Cephas and stayed with him fifteen days. 19 I saw none of the other apostles—only James, the Lord’s brother. 20 I assure you before God that what I am writing you is no lie."

That's it. About three years after his conversion, Paul met someone called "James, the Lord's brother" in Jerusalem, and he lists him in the same breath as mentioning the apostles.

No other mention of James in the writings of Paul specifies which James he means. In fact, it sounds as if Paul thinks there is only one James of note. Poor James son of Zebedee and poor James son of Alphaus, if Paul means the other one. Paul, it would seem, doesn't rate them.

In the creed at the end of 1 Corinthians, someone called James is named as being one of the recipients of a post-resurrection appearance of Christ. It doesn't say which James. Again, if you read Paul, it looks like he only knew of one James. Paul knows of no James who was martyred and then replaced by another James. Paul's writings only refer to one James, and aside from the Galatians verse above, he doesn't add any describing words.

It looks to me like somebody, sometime after the writing of the epistles and the gospels, contrived the skeptic-appearance-church leader story out of this very limited information. Apparently that is enough to make it a 'fact'. It all hangs on one verse in Galatians.

But let me go back to that one verse again before I move on. The plain reading of the verse is confusing. It suggests that the James under discussion was not an apostle. Paul plainly says "I saw none of the other apostles". These verses might have said 'the only apostle I saw was Peter, and I also saw James, the brother of the Lord'. What can we do with this? On one interpretation it suggests there was a character called James, who wasn't one of the original disciples, the group now known as apostles. This fits with the story. Or maybe this verse should be read the way it traditionally has, something like 'I saw none of the other apostles, except James, the brother of the Lord, I did see him', which would label this character as both a brother of Jesus and as an Apostle.

The creed in 1 Corinthians 15 says:

3 For what I received I passed on to you as of first importance: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, 4 that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures, 5 and that he appeared to Cephas, and then to the Twelve. 6 After that, he appeared to more than five hundred of the brothers and sisters at the same time, most of whom are still living, though some have fallen asleep. 7 Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles, 8 and last of all he appeared to me also, as to one abnormally born.

There is a parallel here between verses 5 and 7. V5 has "to Cephas, and then to the Twelve" whereas V7 has "to James, then to all the apostles". Were the apostles and the Twelve different groups of people? I've heard it suggested that they were. The Twelve (a symbolic name, I guess, because if the gospel accounts are accurate, then Judas was gone by this time) were the disciples who knew Jesus during his lifetime, the apostles were those who claimed to have post-resurrection visions of Jesus. These need not be the same groups of people.

I've also heard it claimed that this creed was an early attempt to unite two rival branches of early Christianity - the one that viewed Cephas and the Twelve as the founding fathers, and the one who viewed James and the apostles as the original guys. By putting both groups in the same creed, with equal standing, the author of this creed (pre- or post-Pauline? Certainly not Paul himself) tried, successfully as it seems, to unite the two rival proto-religions into one big happy family that became the Catholic (universal, i.e. unified) church.

James beyond the NT

If we go beyond the NT, the sources muddy the water quite a lot. There are snippets in Eusebius (3rd/4th century), some of them attributed to Hegesippus (mid/late 2nd century), whose writings are now lost to posterity, other than the quotes in Eusebius.

There is also one reference in Josephus (late 1st century) which, if judged to be authentic, would be the closest in time to the real character, if there was one. This is in Antiquities of the Jews, Book 20, Chapter 9, where it says:

"so [Ananus] assembled the sanhedrin of judges, and brought before them the brother of Jesus, who was called Christ, whose name was James, and some others; and when he had formed an accusation against them as breakers of the law, he delivered them to be stoned"

This passage doesn't tell us much about James, or about Jesus, other than that James was considered by the sanhedrin to be a lawbreaker and was executed by stoning. According to Josephus, this execution was unpopular and led directly to the removal of Ananus as high priest and the appointment of someone called Jesus ben Damnaus as high priest.

Richard Carrier observes that if the clause 'who was called Christ' is removed from the Josephus passage, the story still makes sense but has a different spin - James the brother of someone called Jesus is executed, and as some form of recompense for this someone called Jesus is promoted to high priest. It makes a lot of sense if these two Jesus characters are actually the same character. Carrier supposes that some reader of this text added a marginal note "who was called Christ" (perhaps even questioning this?) at some point and when this document was copied, the scribe, thinking that this was an omission from the earlier document, inserted it into the text. Its possible, and has certainly happened in the transmission of other ancient documents.

Hegesippus, quoted in Eusebius, says this:

"James, the brother of the Lord, succeeded to the government of the Church in conjunction with the apostles. He has been called the Just by all from the time of our Saviour to the present day; for there were many that bore the name of James. He was holy from his mother’s womb; and he drank no wine nor strong drink, nor did he eat flesh. No razor came upon his head; he did not anoint himself with oil, and he did not use the bath. He alone was permitted to enter into the holy place; for he wore not woolen but linen garments. And he was in the habit of entering alone into the temple, and was frequently found upon his knees begging forgiveness for the people, so that his knees became hard like those of a camel, in consequence of his constantly bending them in his worship of God, and asking forgiveness for the people. Because of his exceeding great justice he was called the Just, and Oblias, which signifies in Greek, ‘Bulwark of the people’ and ‘Justice,’ in accordance with what the prophets declare concerning him."

Does this sound at all like the child of a carpenter from Nazareth? Whoever this James was, he was raised as a Nazirite, and became the high priest - the only one permitted to enter the holy place in the temple; so he must have come from a priestly family.

Were it not for the 'the brother of the Lord' clause in the above passage, we would not consider this description as in any way coherent with the descriptions of Jesus' brothers in the gospels. Hegesippus' description leaves no room for the skeptic-turned-believer hypothesis - the James described here was holy from before he was born!

I suspect what we have here is a legend of a Jewish (not necessarily Christian!) holy man, possibly a high priest, called James. This is coherent with my supposition above that the James named by Josephus was brother of Jesus ben Damnaus, who must have also come from a priestly family as he became the high priest.

At some point along the way though, possibly due to Hegesippus himself, this character was merged with the largely unknown character of James, the brother of Jesus, who had just been a name on a list until then. My suspicion is that Hegesippus co-opted the well known character of James the Just, and made him a Christian saint, by identifying him as the brother of Jesus.

If that's not the case, then either Hegesippus is wrong about the character of James the brother of Jesus, or the gospels are wrong about him. We can't keep both as reliable historical accounts of the man, that's doublethink.

Clement of Alexandria (late 2nd/early 3rd century) also briefly mentions James the Just, claiming that following the resurrection, Peter, James & John deferred to James the Just as bishop of Jerusalem. While the whole notion of a 'bishop' in Jerusalem immediately following the resurrection seems a bit anachronistic, this shows that James the Just and James the brother of Jesus were clearly identified as the same person by the late 2nd century (which is consistent with Hegesippus as well). However, this is fully a century after the alleged guy lived!

In conclusion

So it looks to me like this:

• The earliest Christian documents (Paul's letters) know of only one character called James, who is a leader in the Jerusalem church. Only one verse in Galatians 1 identifies him as the brother of Jesus.
• The other early Christian documents (the gospels & Acts) know nothing about the character of James, the brother of Jesus. This seems inconsistent with later claims about his character.
• From the mid 2nd century onwards, James (the brother of Jesus), James the Just (a 1st century priest and holy man) and James (the 'bishop' of Jerusalem) were merged into one character.

Were it not for that verse in Galatians, the whole thing simply looks like a legend that has grown in the telling. So what are we to do with the verse in Galatians?

Robert M. Price, in his commentary on Galatians in "The Amazing Colossal Apostle" (which I am still reading and will review on this blog eventually), agrees with the claims of W.C. Van Manen (1842-1905) that Galatians was written not by Paul, but by Marcion in the early 2nd century. This claim appears to be largely based on the observation that Tertullian wrote that Marcion 'discovered' the letter of Paul to the Galatians, that is, this epistle was unknown to the church before Marcion. Price's analysis suggests that Marcion wrote the core of the epistle, but that the 1st chapter - including the verse we are discussing here - was added at a later date, by another editor, which places this verse squarely in the mid 2nd century. This coheres with all my suppositions above, resolving the problem in the chronology.

So there you have it. A very long winded rebuttal of one of the five 'minimal facts' used as part of Habermas & Licona's apologetic. For this one at least I am convinced that this isn't a 'fact'. But I guess I have a long way to go to bring down the whole argument!

Magnificent Obsession by David Robertson (a response, Part 4)

Dear D.,

Following my comments on the first five chapters of your book [here, here and here], I now get to Chapter 6: Meaning. It is a strange beast, touching on a number of different topics, not as focused as the previous ones.

You start with the 'eyewitness testimony' of the disciples and the old claim that people don't die for a lie, again. Furthermore you claim that if Jesus had remained dead in the tomb, then the authorities could have just dug him up and demonstrated that the stories the disciples were preaching were false.

Once again, you are using a story told in one part of the Bible to 'prove' the historical accuracy of a story told in another part of the Bible. We have no secular evidence that the disciples preached anything at all about the death and resurrection of Jesus in the vicinity of the supposedly empty tomb, in the weeks or months following the alleged resurrection event. No, the only evidence that such events ever happened is contained in the book of Acts.

Of course, you believe the book of Acts is accurate reportage. To counter that assumption, may I mention that the "Acts Seminar" - a bunch of proper Bible scholars who spent years studying and debating the book of Acts - gave as the primary conclusion of their study that the book of Acts was a work of fiction, most likely written in the early 2nd century? Conservative evangelicals disagree of course, but I think the impartial observer has to at least consider the possibility that Acts is - or contains - fictional elements.

If the gospel was not preached until years or decades after the supposed event, and perhaps then not by the supposed eyewitnesses, who could dig up a body to prove anything?

From here you go off on a rant about some of the usual 'new atheist' authors and arguments. Fair enough. But you don't really present your own case, you merely attack their weaknesses. Eventually you get to your point, that Jesus is God, and we finally get to the Trinity. You call this the 'cornerstone of Christian thinking' but, of course, can't explain it, because nobody can. It is literally a mystery. Or possibly a nonsense. 1 + 1 + 1 = 1. How can you believe something you can't explain?

You then touch on the 'but who made God?' question and don't really get anywhere. This discussion never gets anywhere because it is obvious to the believer that nobody made God and it is obvious to everyone else that the chain of cause and effect can't go back to something as complicated as an eternal and infinite triune Godhead. You can solve almost every finite problem by invoking an infinite and unseen solution, but you can't solve the problem of an infinite and unseen thing by invoking anything else.

You go a bit preacher for a while, revelling in the claim that Jesus is God, and then come back to some semi-apologetics questions, like why the Trinity isn't in the Old Testament (your answer: it is), and why did God have to become man to become our redeemer. 

Finally you get to the question of where Jesus is now and why could he not stay on earth. You don't actually address the first of those that well, considering that there are some biblical passages that imply that Christ remains in his human (perfected) body even now, i.e. he remains localised, while other passages speak of him 'filling all things' and the like, implying that he is anything but localised. I've heard your answer to the second of those before, and heard it from others than you. Of course Christ had to leave the earth, because if he didn't go, the Spirit could not come. Huh? So the Spirit and the Son are two distinct persons, but they can't both be on earth simultaneously? Why?

Through all of this you imply that the Trinity is the clear teaching of the Bible. It isn't. Sure, you can read the Trinity into the Bible in a good many places, but it is far from clear that all the Bible authors would agree with such a concept if you presented it to them. So at the end of this chapter I remain unconvinced that the Trinity actually makes sense. Oh well.

On we move to Chapter 7: Mission in which you defend the Church, by pointing out that it is made of flawed human beings. Yes it is. I don't really have much to comment on here. 

The only thing I really want to mention here is when you attack the straw man of "The Bible was compiled by the council of Nicea". While I have heard this claimed by Dan Brown and the like, this is a bit of a red herring. I'm far more convinced by David Trobisch's claim that the original NT was compiled and edited by Polycarp, and then widely distributed. But anyway, that's enough for now. I'll move on to Chapter 8 next time.

Cheers,

R.

The Historical Evidence for Jesus

I recently read G.A. Wells's book "The Historical Evidence for Jesus", which was written back in the early 80s. Considering some of the books I have read in the past few years, this was basically 'more of the same' with a few interesting nuances and insights along the way.

Wells believes that there was no historical person at the origin of the Jesus stories. Rather he, along with a number of other 'mythicists' hold that the gospel stories are myths made into history, rather than history wrapped in legends.

The book is exhaustive and goes into all the relevant 1st and 2nd century writings, as well as going completely off at a tangent and asking questions about the Turin Shroud. But when its on track, the book is interesting, even if much of this has been said in other ways many times since then (and a few before). 

Wells sets out a timeline of the early writings, beginning with the letters of Paul, then going through some of the later epistles, including some non-canonical ones, the gospels, the church fathers, and so on. 

The strongest part of his argument is in the parts he talks about Paul. It is quite clear from this analysis that Paul (or whoever wrote the 'authentic' Pauline epistles) says very little about any historical Jesus. The highlights of this are those passages where Paul is writing to whichever church and issuing advice for right living, etc. Sometimes, indeed most of the time, he does not claim these instructions come from Jesus, and there are several instances of things Paul is trying to convince his readers of where it would have been very useful if he could have quoted Jesus, but doesn't. But funnily enough, in the gospels, Jesus addresses those issues in clear and unambiguous ways. Wells's case is that if Paul knew of these sayings, he would have used them. He doesn't use them, so he didn't know them. Which suggests either that there was a lot about Jesus that Paul simply didn't know, or that those stories about Jesus were not in circulation at the time of Paul, perhaps because those stories about Jesus had not been devised yet.

In this I am convinced, it is clear that Paul had no knowledge of some of the gospel stories. Does that mean there was no historical Jesus? No it does not. It only means that Paul did not know the stories and, assuming he had interactions with Peter and James, as claimed in the epistles, it suggests that they did not know or did not pass on those stories.

So I am convinced that the gospel stories grew and developed after the time of Paul, and that Paul does not know or care much about a historical Jesus. I remain to be convinced that there was no Jesus.

Papias and the gospels

I've been listening to apologetics again. Every now and again in debates, an apologist pulls the 'evidence' of Papias out and muddies the debate waters considerably. Generally the debate gets bogged down at this point and no resolution is ever reached. The apologist thinks they have won.

Papias, you see, appears to offer early evidence in support of the claim that the gospel stories were written by eyewitnesses. His (early 2nd century) writings (now lost, but quoted by others) tell us that there was a written gospel by someone named Mark, who was a companion of Peter's, and whose gospel was a  record of the stories Peter used to tell, and also a written gospel by a disciple called Matthew, who was one of the original 12 apostles.

Apologists love this as it basically destroys all arguments that the gospels were written late and with no connection to the original disciples.

But I have a problem with the evidence of Papias used in this way, and it surprises me that I've never heard this rebuttal of Papias used in a debate. The thing is, Papias's description of the gospels of Mark and Matthew does not cohere with what we know about the two gospels we call by those names.

Papias says that the gospel of Mark he knew about was written in Greek but was not written in order. He also says that the gospel of Matthew he knew about was written in Aramaic, then translated into Greek, and was in order.

Over 200 years of textual study of the gospels have shown us that the order of events on our Mark and our Matthew are broadly the same, and also that our Matthew used the (Greek) text of our Mark as the basis of his gospel, which must have been composed in Greek. Also, as Matthew used Mark as the basis for all of his gospel, it looks quite unlikely that Matthew was himself an eyewitness. Why would an eyewitness use non-eyewitness material in preference to his own recollections?

In other words, if the gospel we know of as Mark is the same as the one Papias called Mark, then the gospel we call Matthew is not the gospel Papias knew as the one written by the disciple Matthew. If that gospel ever existed, it has been lost to history.

And furthermore, if our Mark is Papias's Mark, and Papias was right, then all three of our synoptic gospels are built on the wrong chronology of Mark's gospel.

Of course, our Matthew cannot be the same as Papias's Matthew, as it wasn't written in Aramaic, which must also give us pause to question whether or not our Mark is the same as Papias's Mark. We don't really know.

Whichever way you slice it, Papias is not good evidence that the synoptics are built on eyewitness testimony. All we can really learn from Papias is that there were written gospels in circulation in the early 2nd century, but that we have probably lost them.

Why did Jesus preach?

Why did Jesus preach? 

No, seriously, I mean it, why did he preach?

The gospel stories of Jesus show us many things, but if you read between the lines the following trends appear:

• Jesus was popular among the people because he healed people and told entertaining stories.
• Jesus primarily taught in parables which were generally not understood by his audience (and often not understood by his closest disciples).
• Indeed, Jesus did not want his audience to understand! (Luke 8:10 "He said, 'The knowledge of the secrets of the kingdom of God has been given to you [disciples], but to others I speak in parables, so that, "though seeing, they may not see; though hearing, they may not understand."')
• At the merest hint of trouble most of his audience disappeared - they had no loyalty to him, he was only a passing entertainment.
• Very few people had their lives transformed by meeting Jesus, and nobody is recorded as being transformed through hearing his preaching.
• Jesus recruited his disciples by command ("Come, follow me") not through his preaching.

So what was the point? The end result of Jesus's ministry appears to be a handful of committed followers. They started the church after Jesus was gone, the church was not started by Jesus through his ministry.

Its not even as though Jesus 'planted the seeds' that would ultimately be 'harvested' by the disciples in their later ministry. If Acts is to be believed, the church grew primarily in gentile and diaspora-Jew communities. There is no record of mass conversions among the Galileans. 

The sole purpose of Jesus's teaching, therefore, appears to be the edification of later generations of Christians, who would get to read his words many years later after the gospels were composed, duplicated and distributed. [Note to self: Remember to read "Let the reader understand" by Robert M. Fowler sometime]. In other words, the primary audience for the teaching of Jesus wouldn't be born for at least a century or two after the preaching was done. This doesn't seem to be a very effective way of doing things. If the later readers were really the intended audience, it would have been far, far better if Jesus had written letters or books himself.

I don't think I'm going too far by saying that, as far as the stories presented in the gospels go, Jesus preaching ministry was a complete waste of time. Nobody came to faith, no-one was saved, people were entertained, but then they moved on to the next thing and Jesus was forgotten. It doesn't really read like a divine master-plan.

2 Corinthians 11-12: Is it pure sarcasm?

In 2 Corinthians 11v24-27 Paul gives a very potted autobiography of his life (NASB):

"Five times I received from the Jews thirty-nine lashes. Three times I was beaten with rods, once I was stoned, three times I was shipwrecked, a night and a day I have spent in the deep. I have been on frequent journeys, in dangers from rivers, dangers from robbers, dangers from my countrymen, dangers from the Gentiles, dangers in the city, dangers in the wilderness, dangers on the sea, dangers among false brethren; I have been in labor and hardship, through many sleepless nights, in hunger and thirst, often without food, in cold and exposure." 

I have never heard anyone suggest that these verses are anything other than Paul giving brief but true account of his missionary life. Well, I had never heard anyone suggest otherwise until I read "Profit with Delight" a few weeks ago (see my previous post). In an offhand comment in that book, Richard Pervo asserts that Paul was talking sarcastically here and giving an extremely exaggerated, if not entirely fictitious autobiography here. Pervo implies that the author of Acts took these comments as true and based several incidents in Acts on these comments, but that Paul did not intend these to be taken seriously.

On re-reading the passage in 2 Corinthians 11 and 12, I think I see what Pervo is getting at and I'm amazed that I've never seen this before or heard or read anyone discussing this issue before. Let's think about the context.

Paul is comparing and contrasting himself to the "super apostles" (NIV) or "most eminent apostles" (NASB) or "great apostles" (NCV). From context it is clear that various stories about these 'super' apostles are circulating and some of the stories make the apostles out to be more than mere men. They are portrayed as super-heroes, doing amazing deeds and enduring amazing persecutions, etc. Reading between the lines here it is also apparent that no such stories are circulating about Paul, so he comes out of all the gossip looking like an inferior apostle. What he says in these chapters is to set the record straight and put himself on an equal footing with these "super apostles" - if he can't bring them down to his level (reality) he's going to need to boost himself up to their level!

Look at the language he uses:

"I wish that you would bear with me in a little foolishness; but indeed you are bearing with me." 

2 Cor 11v1 - he starts out here admitting that his readers will have to bear with him while he indulges in "a little foolishness". What foolishness? Well in the verses that follow he starts boasting about all he has done for the Corinthian Church. He boasts about how he was not a burden and how he is not inferior to the super apostles. The foolishness is the boasting. There is nothing amazing in here, all this reads like fairly reasonable and unremarkable events are being described. He lives, works and preaches. Nothing much to boast about, but he has dropped humility and considers this foolishness.

In the midst of all this foolish boasting he says a few very cutting things about the super apostles - that they are false apostles, deceitful workers and servants of Satan (2 Cor 11v13-15).

So when Paul is talking foolishly, he does normal things that he boasts about and the super apostles are knocked off their pedestals.

But he doesn't stop there... he goes beyond foolishness and into the realms of the "insane"  (2 Cor 11v23). It is in the context of speaking as one who is insane that he gives the biography that includes beatings, floggings, shipwrecks, starvation, etc. In other words, Paul himself says that only an insane person would claim that all these things happened to him! In other words, Paul is saying these things did not happen to him. He is fabricating a super-biography to make stories about himself equal to the stories about the super-apostles. But these are the words of someone who is insane, and by implication he is saying that these things did not happen to any of the super apostles either.

Wait a minute! The implications of this are that 2 Corinthians shows that the amazing stories about Paul in Acts are complete fiction! Scripture is disproving scripture!

But Paul doesn't stop there... he drops back from insanity into boasting and recounts the story of when he was lowered in a basket over the city walls in Damascus (2 Cor 11v32-33). So maybe this is the only 'amazing' story in this biography which is not insane - maybe the rest was made up, but this was true? Maybe.

But having said this, he doesn't stop there... he "goes on" (beyond boasting?) to "visions and revelations of the Lord." Are these mere boasting or are we back in the realms of insanity again? Is the famous vision of the "third heaven" (2 Cor 12v1-6) boasting or insanity talking? We can't tell. And given that, given the context, we must consider this claim of a vision to be suspect. Maybe Paul is saying that this kind of vision is the sort of thing claimed about the super apostles. Maybe not.

Putting the stories of Acts to one side for a moment, and merely considering the passage in 2 Corinthians, it seems reasonable, if not entirely likely, that the 'insane' passage is not biographical, and that any stories like this which are told about Paul or any other apostle, must be considered to be exaggerated gossip, at best, or pure fiction, at worst. So any such stories we read (such as Acts, and the various non-canonical apocryphal Acts books) must be considered with a pinch of salt.

When Paul boasts, he boasts in the mundane. Clearly his own biography actually was mundane, characterised by ordinary preaching and teaching, without miracles, signs and wonders. Everything else is was made up by his biographers to make him into a 'Super Apostle'...

Bart Ehrman, multiple attestation and probability

I've just listened to the entire 12 hour audio book of Bart Ehrman's "Did Jesus Exist?" which someone posted on YouTube. I transferred it to my iPod, and listened to it while commuting, of course.

I don't have too much to say about the book. I totally understand why many folks in the "Mythicist" camp are angry at this book, as it does seek not only to counter their arguments, but also makes a number of ad hominem attacks on them, individually, specifically, by name. But I'm not going to defend them here, they've gone as far as to write a whole book in response. I might read that eventually, but I'm in no hurry...

I also don't dispute the central thesis of this book. I'm reasonably convinced that there really was a 'historical Jesus' and that Christianity, at least in part, is based on some of his teachings and actions. I also believe, as explained in this book, that an awful lot of legends have been added to the historical core of Christianity, such that the modern religion is almost certainly something that the 'historical Jesus' wouldn't recognise at all.

But the main thing that annoyed me with Ehrman's book was the sloppy thinking at the centre of his reasoning. During his ad hominem attacks on the mythicists, he made a big deal about the fact that most mythicists (with the exception of Robert M. Price and Richard Carrier) do not have postgraduate degrees in relevant disciplines, and so (in his thinking) the arguments by these people can be largely dismissed. For Ehrman, appropriate qualifications are essential. It is odd, therefore, when he wades into the field of probability - something that he has no postgraduate education in - and bases the main points of his argument on probability judgements. He does not appear to understand how probability works.

The core of Ehrman's reconstruction of the historical Jesus is based on the criterion of Multiple Attestation - put simply this is taken to mean that if a story about Jesus or a teaching attributed to Jesus is attested in multiple independent sources, then it is more likely to be true or authentic than one which is not. Ehrman builds a library of stories and sayings that are multiply attested and concludes that these are most likely historically authentic.

Hang on, do you see what he did there? He takes a statement of relative probability (that Story A, which is attested in two independent sources, is more likely than Story B, which is found in only one source), and assumes it to be a statement of absolute probability. In other words, he seems to equate "more likely than" with "certainly happened". This is very sloppy thinking! An event that has a one in a thousand chance of having happened is more likely than an event which has a one in a million chance of having happened - a thousand times more likely in fact - but both events are still extremely unlikely. Relative probability tells us nothing without some quantification of absolute probability. Just because a story appears in multiple sources, doesn't mean it actually happened. It merely means that more people wrote it down.

Another annoying aspect of Ehrman's reasoning is the way he invents independent sources. I actually can't remember all the sources he claims, but his list of independent sources includes:

Mark; Q; M; L; John; Traditions in Paul; Traditions in Acts; Traditions in non-Pauline epistles; Revelation; and various non-scriptural sources.

This is all very impressive, but Ehrman forgets that Q is a scholarly construct which may or may not have existed. If it did exist, then the claim is that both Matthew and Luke used some of it, in addition to Mark, when creating their own gospels. There is no claim that both of them used all of Q in their gospels, so it seems quite likely that one or both of them might have missed out bits of Q. This means that it is possible that some, if not all, of the M and L material was actually part of Q. In other words it is quite possible that Q, M and L are not independent. Given that this is a real possibility, which we cannot discount, we cannot claim that these are independent sources.

For what its worth, I'm reasonably convinced by the Farrer hypothesis, that Luke used Matthew and Mark when writing his gospel. In this way of thinking, M and Q are reduced to a single source, and Luke (including L?) is not independent of either of them.

How Ehrman manages to justify to himself that the traditions in Acts are independent of L is a mystery to me. Both were written by the same author, it is supposed. And under the Farrer hypothesis, these become not independent from Mark and Matthew.

So I think Ehrman completely overstates his case. Sure there are some stories that are genuinely multiply attested, but not half as many as Ehrman makes out.

While I basically agree with Ehrman's conclusions, I think his overly exaggerated claims of authenticity don't do his case much good. The same case could be built on more sober and reliable reasoning.

Life of Apollonius of Tyana, by Philostratus - some thoughts

I've recently listened to the Librivox audio book of the Life of Apollonius of Tyana, by Lucius Flavius Philostratus. I don't intend to review it here, but here are a few thoughts on the content of this book, and their implications for how we should read the gospels and Acts in the New Testament...

Apollonius is one of those characters who gets mentioned in theist-atheist debates as a sort of messiah-figure who was approximately contemporary with Jesus. He apparently lived in the late 1st century CE. What we 'know' about him we know from the biography written by Philostratus in the early 3rd century. Philostratus claims his primary source was a biography of Apollonius written by one of his disciples, Damis, but this work has either been lost to posterity or is an invention of Philostratus's own.

The main point of interest here, for me at least, is that this book is a biography of a miracle-working 'son of god' character, and so any parallels with the gospel accounts might be of interest and might be able to tell us something about the gospels. I don't think this necessarily goes any further than a might, though.

So here are a few thoughts on Apollonius that might be relevant to our reading of the NT stories as well:

The introduction is much like Luke's introduction
Philostraus introduces his work in pretty much the same way that the (anonymous) writer of the third gospel does, although Philostratus is much more wordy and 'Luke' more concise:

"It seems to me then that I ought not to condone or acquiesce in the general ignorance, but write a true account of the man, detailing the exact times at which he said or did this or that, as also the habits and temper of wisdom by means of which he succeeded in being considered a supernatural and divine being.And I have gathered my information partly from the many cities where he was loved, and partly from the temples whose long-neglected and decayed rites he restored, and partly from the accounts left of him by others and partly from his own letters. For he addressed these to kings, sophists, philosophers, to men of Elis, of Delphi, to Indians, and Ethiopians; and in his letters he dealt with the subjects of the gods, of customs, of moral principles, of laws, and in all these departments he corrected the errors into which men had fallen. But the more precise details which I have collected are as follows." (Book 1, Chapter 2)

This is broadly similar to Luke who says:

"Many have undertaken to draw up an account of the things that have been fulfilled among us, just as they were handed down to us by those who from the first were eyewitnesses and servants of the word. With this in mind, since I myself have carefully investigated everything from the beginning, I too decided to write an orderly account for you, most excellent Theophilus, so that you may know the certainty of the things you have been taught." (Luke 1)

Both authors are disappointed by the current state of knowledge, cite their sources (vaguely), and claim to be writing a true and orderly account. As we will see, Philostratus doesn't appear to be writing something that is either true or orderly, so we should perhaps question Luke's accuracy here too?

Both feature miracle-working healers
For the most part, Apollonius does few actual miracles in the book, but there is an interlude from Book 3, chapter 38 and following, where all of a sudden lots of sick and demon-possessed people suddenly appear and all of them are healed, one by one, very much as in the gospels. As is common in Philostratus, he gives a much more detailed back story for each of the characters being healed than any of the gospels do. The purpose of all these healings, which are clearly legendary in nature, is to demonstrate the divine-man nature of Apollonius. Why should we assume the similar stories in the gospels are real and not merely fabricated to demonstrate the divine nature of Jesus?

The (lack of) distinction between the narrator and the characters
It is clear that Philostratus frequently uses the character of Apollonius to make the philosophical points that he (the author) wants to make. But he also makes many philosophical observations as the narrator. Sometimes it is hard to distinguish whether or not Apollonius is saying something or the narrator is - they speak with the same voice. In other words, Philostratus puts his own words into the mouth of Apollonius. Biblical scholars have made the same observations about the fourth gospel in particular. Consider, for example, the famous passage in John 3:

"Very truly I tell you, we speak of what we know, and we testify to what we have seen, but still you people do not accept our testimony. I have spoken to you of earthly things and you do not believe; how then will you believe if I speak of heavenly things? No one has ever gone into heaven except the one who came from heaven—the Son of Man. Just as Moses lifted up the snake in the wilderness, so the Son of Man must be lifted up, that everyone who believes may have eternal life in him. For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him. Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe stands condemned already because they have not believed in the name of God’s one and only Son." 

At what point in this passage does Jesus stop talking and the narrator take over? Most translators opt to stop the quote by Jesus just before the most famous verse, and attribute that to the narrator, but there's nothing in the original Greek to suggest a change of voice there. Both Jesus and the narrator speak with the same voice - could it be the narrator putting his own words into Jesus's mouth, much like Philostratus does with Apollonius?

One thing is clear when reading Philostratus, his primary objective in writing the book is not to tell us about Apollonius, but it is to use the character and story of Apollonius as a means of showcasing his own ideas of the 'ideal philosopher', his own opinions, and his own knowledge on various topics. It is reasonable to suppose that all the 'wisdom' and 'facts' expressed here come not from a single human (or divine) source, but come from many different sources, which the author has compiled together, and are only presented as being the wisdom of a single man. Apollonius is portrayed as the ideal philosopher, and while there is a consistency in the things attributed to Apollonius, there is no reason to suspect that the historical Apollonius said all those things. Is the same possibly true of the bible? Could some or all of the 'wisdom' attributed to Jesus or Paul have originated from other people? There is no compelling reason to think not. Certainly, as I mentioned in a previous post, the 'quotes' of Peter and Paul in Acts seem to originate from the same source, not two distinct characters - such that there is actually no reason to suppose that either Peter or Paul was the original source...

Miracles and legends
Apollonius is presented as being a miracle worker and healer, there are no two ways about this. What is surprising to me is that there is an awful lot of narrative in which he doesn't actually do any miracles. For the vast majority of the books, his 'miraculous' deeds are mostly his wisdom on certain topics and the way he seems to know things in advance of them actually occurring (on one occasion he produces a letter to give to someone he met for the first time, which was exactly what was needed, and which he apparently wrote in advance knowing he was going to meet the guy). It is clear that the author thinks that wisdom and following the lifestyle of a philosopher are much more important than the miraculous stuff, but yet the miracles are included to demonstrate the divine character of the man. In the gospels, the ratio of miracles to teaching and narrative is much higher.

It seems like a collection of material from other sources
One thing that surprised me in the Apollonius stories was the section in Books 6 and 7 where the author gives up on trying to create a coherent narrative for Apollonius and simply strings a list of random stories about the philosopher together, joined by phrases like "And it is said that he also did..." and "On one occasion he said..." and so on. This very much suggests that Philostratus was not the author of all the stories, but really was trying to compile a full account of his subject, by collecting all the various (and occasionally contradictory) stories about him. So maybe all this stuff does pre-date Philostratus, and he is merely the compiler. That would put the original (highly legendary) stories back much closer to the time of the "actual events". I'm sure if there were Apollonius Apologists, they would use this to demonstrate the reliability of the material and the truth of the stories...

Interviews with leading authorities
In Books 7 and 8, Apollonius travels to Rome and is imprisoned, then is brought before the Emperor and pleads his case. It reads very much like the stories of Peter and Paul in prison, then being brought before the (local) authorities, etc., where the central character then gets the opportunity to make a public defence of their way of life or beliefs, commonly confounding or surprising their audience. Was this just a genre convention of the time?

Miraculous release from prison
In Acts, both Peter and Paul on separate occasions get released from prison in miraculous ways. Their chains simply fall off and they are able to simply walk out of their cells. In Book 7, chapter 38, Apollonius also miraculously steps out of his shackles, demonstrating that he could leave at any point if he chose to do so (although, in this instance he doesn't). Is this another genre convention? If so, it suggests that the miraculous escapes of Peter and Paul are no more real than the miraculous ability of Apollonius to remove his chains.

The ability to appear and disappear at will
In book 8, chapter 7, having been acquitted by the emperor, Apollonius vanishes into thin air during his trial, thus confirming - for the first time in the book - his completely divine nature. This is followed by a sudden appearance by the philosopher in an (implicitly) closed room, very much like the post-resurrection appearances of Jesus in the upper room in John. Thus Jesus's post-resurrection ability to appear and disappear at will appears to be shared by Apollonius. Given that nobody really believes that Apollonius had this ability, why should anyone believe that Jesus had it either?

The death of the main character
The death of Apollonius is not recorded, although several conflicting stories are mentioned. This is, of course, quite unlike the gospels, but it strikes me that it is broadly similar to Acts, where the death of Paul is alluded to, but not described. Perhaps another genre convention?

Post-mortem visitations to opponents
Following his death, Apollonius miraculously appears to one character in a striking vision, which is not totally shared by those around him, although they realise something miraculous is going on. Furthermore, this vision is not delivered to one of Apollonius's disciples, but rather to one who is largely against them and disputes the teachings of the philosopher. Of course, the vision transforms the man from skeptical opponent to fervent believer. Does that sound vaguely familiar? Sounds a bit like Paul's Damascus Road experience to me. Why should the Paul stories be considered fact and the Apollonius story be considered a fiction? Seems to me quite likely that they both emerge out of the same literary genre conventions.

Conclusion?
So there you have it. A few comments on the semi-parallels between the NT writings and the stories about Apollonius of Tyana. Given that the Apollonius stories are definitely later than the gospels (even acknowledging the least-conservative opinions on gospel dating out there), it could be that the stories of Apollonius have simply incorporated parts of the gospel stories, so we could be dealing with literary borrowing here. But I don't think so. Certainly, the author of the Apollonius stories has no interest whatsoever in any Jewish wisdom. While Apollonius travels widely to India and Ethiopia and Rome, he never stops in Israel or makes any mention of the Jewish people or religion. The view of the gods in Philostratus is exclusively Greek in outlook, and the only foreign philosophies deemed worthy of consideration are those of India and Egypt/Ethiopia. There is no evidence of the influence of the teaching of the gospels in Philostratus at all.

It seems to me more likely that the gospels and Philostratus emerge from the same milieu of stories, rather than that there is any direct literary borrowing. But if the memes in these stories have a common ancestry, then that implies strongly that the NT stories about Jesus and Paul are not necessarily original, but descend from earlier stories of the same type, which were not necessarily about Jesus. In other words, Jesus was not unique.

Of course, this is only a mild inference from a single pass through a text, not a detailed study. Others have inevitably gone through this in much greater detail than I ever will, and I expect that there will be a whole range of opinions out there among those who have studied this more. But for me, this has added weight to the hypothesis of the non-uniqueness of the gospel stories, which further undermines my trust in the biblical stories.

Apollonius almost certainly wasn't a miracle working son of god who lived on after death and made post-mortem appearances. The evidence seems to suggest that Jesus wasn't that either.

Luke-Acts and the atonement

I've just discovered a debate that theologians have been having on and off for decades. The debate concerns whether or not the author of Luke-Acts believes that Jesus death had atoning power or not.

I'll admit, this came as something of a shock to me. While I've known for years that each of the gospel writers has their own agenda and their own take on who Jesus was and what he came to do, I actually thought that they all basically agreed on what Jesus death on the cross was all about. But apparently not.

For some time I've been meaning to read up on the things that Matthew changed when he expanded on Mark, and the things that Luke changed when he expanded on Mark, but had never really found the time. Now, quite by accident, I have stumbled upon this astounding claim:

When Luke used Mark to create his gospel, he deliberately removed verses that said that Jesus death was an atoning sacrifice. 

Specifically, the debate hangs on a few verses:

1. Mark 10:45 says "For even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many." Luke uses much of Mark in his gospel, including material from immediately before and immediately after this, but omits this verse.
2. Luke 22:19-20 says "And he took bread, gave thanks and broke it, and gave it to them, saying, “This is my body given for you; do this in remembrance of me.” In the same way, after the supper he took the cup, saying, “This cup is the new covenant in my blood, which is poured out for you." but some manuscripts only have "And he took bread, gave thanks and broke it, and gave it to them, saying, 'This is my body.'" that is, some manuscripts miss out the bit that suggests there is some atonement going on. I've just been reading Bart Ehrman (in 'The orthodox corruption of scripture') giving a very compelling case for why the shorter reading is the original. This is the only verse in Luke that suggests that Jesus's death has atoning power.
3. Acts 20:28 says "Keep watch over yourselves and all the flock of which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers. Be shepherds of the church of God, which he bought with his own blood." This is the only verse in Acts that suggests that Jesus's death has atoning power, and much like the verse in Luke, there is a good case to be made that these words were not part of the original.

Without Luke 22:19b-20 and Acts 20:28 there is no concept of atonement in all of Luke-Acts. When Jesus died, according to Luke, it wasn't on behalf of sinners.

So what is the cross all about according to Luke-Acts? Let's have a look at the preaching of Peter and Paul in Acts.

Peter's preaching in Acts 2 has this basic message:

Jesus was a man sent by God. We know he was sent by God because of the miracles. According to God's plan he was killed. God raised him to life. God made him Lord and Messiah. God gave him the Holy Spirit, which he now pours out on his followers. In order to get the Spirit you need to repent and be baptised in Jesus's name. The process of baptism forgives your sins.

The objective of Peter's message here is that you get the Holy Spirit. There is no atonement in Jesus's death. Forgiveness comes through repentance and baptism.

In Acts 3, Peter's preaching touches on similar themes, although here forgiveness comes through repentance and baptism isn't mentioned.

In Acts 4, Peter's message to the Sanhedrin is that salvation is found in Jesus, but this appears linked to his exalted current status, not to his death.

In Acts 5, Peter's words suggest that God gave Jesus the role of Saviour after his resurrection, so it was neither the death or resurrection that has saving power, but rather Jesus's current exalted status.

Stephen's preaching in Acts 7 doesn't actually include a 'gospel' message, but it is clear that it is the power of the risen Jesus that matters.

In Acts 8, the thing with Simon the Sorcerer is all about how you get the Holy Spirit. Again, this seems to be the objective of preaching in Acts. 

Again, in Acts 10, in Peter's preaching to Cornelius, it is what God did to Jesus after his ascension that matters, and believing in the risen Jesus is the way to receive the Holy Spirit.

The same basic message features in the preaching of Paul in Acts 13. Jesus was a good man, wrongly killed, vindicated by god, raised, and then made Son of God and Saviour. Some of the same is in Paul's famous preaching in Acts 17.

Throughout all the preaching of the apostles in Acts, the same basic message is evident: Jesus was a good man, wrongly killed. He was vindicated by God and raised from the dead. He became the Son of God and Saviour. He can forgive the sins of the repentant and give the Holy Spirit.

There is no atonement in the preaching in Acts. The cross is not central. There is barely any future hope of heaven or resurrection either. The gospel message in Luke-Acts is for now and it is this: repent, be baptised in the name of Jesus and receive the Holy Spirit. That is all.

How come I've never noticed this before? How come millions of Christians haven't noticed this either?

The 'gospel' of Luke and Acts is different to the gospel of the epistles and the other three gospels.

Another nail in the coffin of inerrancy.