He saved others?

During the crucifixion narrative, in Mark 15v31 it says: 

"In the same way the chief priests and the teachers of the law mocked him among themselves. “He saved others,” they said, “but he can’t save himself!"

This seems a bit like an anachronism to me, because at this point in the story, Jesus hasn't 'saved' others. He has healed a lot of people, sure. And the Greek word for heal appears to be the same word as for rescue or save; σῴζω (or 'sōzō'). But it makes no sense for people observing the crucifixion to make any connection between someone healing people of diseases and having the ability to rescue themselves from the cross. Its like they are saying 'oh, he was a doctor, he must be a good escapologist as well...'; it makes no sense, in the context.

Where it does make sense is later, after Jesus gained a reputation for being a saviour - one able to save others from going to hell. Once there are Christians who believed in Jesus as saviour, it would make sense to look back on the cross and wonder why he couldn't save himself.

For these reasons I think this detail in the crucifixion story is not historically accurate, but was probably a literary construct, written by a Christian some time after the fact, putting words into the mouths of his imagined characters. I can't see how anyone would have really said that, when watching a real crucifixion.

Richard Dawkins, appearance of design, and the Bible

In the opening paragraphs of "The Blind Watchmaker" (1986), Richard Dawkins states that 

"Biology is the study of complicated things that give the appearance of having been designed for a purpose" 

and then goes on to explain that the appearance is misleading, there is no particular designed purpose, and that no designer is required to explain the observed complexity.

Christian apologists and others have given him a hard time over this statement ever since. For the apologists, ID proponents and other evolution sceptics, the apparent face value completely trumps the hidden and complex set of processes which need to be explained to provide the evolutionary story.

So what has this got to do with the bible?

Well, I was thinking about this the other day and I realised that there are several things in the bible which appear to be something at face value, but theologians and apologists have to do a lot of wriggling around to provide complex explanations of why the face value is not the truth.

For example: The literary relationship between Matthew, Mark and Luke, a.k.a. the Synoptic Problem. At face value, it looks as though one or more of the gospel writers was copying from the others. These are not independent stories, told by eyewitnesses, these are stories copied from one source to another and edited to fit the agenda of the author. And yet many apologists will totally dispute this, providing complex but 'plausible' sequences of events that could maybe explain how these supposedly independent gospels could have come to look so similar.

Or, for example: The authorship of the Pauline Epistles. Once I read Romans and Ephesians more or less back to back. While the theology of both epistles is broadly similar (as far as I can tell), the writing style is completely different. If you look at it objectively - at face value - the epistle to the Ephesians looks to have a completely different author to the epistle to the Romans. Indeed, even within the epistle to the Romans, chapters 9-11 seem to be written by someone with a different style to the writer of the other chapters. The face value appearance, based on writing style, is that if Paul wrote most of the epistle to the Romans (Ch 1-8 and 12-16) then he did not write chapters 9-11, or Ephesians, or Colossians, or the Pastorals, etc. And yet apologists will bend over backwards to provide convoluted theories about how people can change their writing style over time, and what we are seeing here is the difference between young Paul and older Paul. But, as far as I can tell (I'm no expert here), there is little evidence from secular scholars of writing style to support such a radical shift in someone's writing style as they get older. Face value suggests multiple authors, some of whom must be pretending to be Paul.

The thing is, sometimes things are what they appear to be at face value, and sometimes they are not. You can't simply dismiss face value, but then again, you have to take complex and convoluted explanations seriously, because sometimes they might be the way things are. Life isn't simple. Sometimes it is, but sometimes it isn't. And that - in itself - is a complex issue to resolve.

Other boats?

There is a peculiar detail in Mark's gospel that I've never noticed before. It is found as part of the story of the stilling of the storm in Mark 4:

35 That day when evening came, he said to his disciples, “Let us go over to the other side.” 36 Leaving the crowd behind, they took him along, just as he was, in the boat. There were also other boats with him. 37 A furious squall came up, and the waves broke over the boat, so that it was nearly swamped. 38 Jesus was in the stern, sleeping on a cushion. The disciples woke him and said to him, “Teacher, don’t you care if we drown?” 39 He got up, rebuked the wind and said to the waves, “Quiet! Be still!” Then the wind died down and it was completely calm. 40 He said to his disciples, “Why are you so afraid? Do you still have no faith?” 41 They were terrified and asked each other, “Who is this? Even the wind and the waves obey him!”

Have you ever noticed that short statement at the end of v36? Jesus and his disciples are in one boat, travelling across the sea of Galilee, but there were other boats travelling with them. These other boats explicitly do not contain members of 'the crowd' as v36 says they left them behind.

These other boats play no further role in the story, and appear to be entirely absent by the time of the storm and the miraculous calming. So why mention them at all? Matthew (ch8) and Luke (ch8) omit this detail of the story in their tellings of it.

This is one of the peculiar details in Mark that may reveal something about the sources Mark used for his gospel. Mark is clearly adapting an earlier story to present here. It looks like the earlier story included multiple boats, and even though Mark's telling of the story does not require the other boats for the narrative to make sense, he keeps the short statement about them anyway. Matthew and Luke, realising the redundancy of this statement, remove it.

So what possible function could the other boats have in the earlier story, the one that Mark adapted? A few options seem reasonable. It could be that these other boats were lost in the storm, and only the boat containing Jesus was saved. That would make narrative sense, and also be a good theological analogy. But that's an analogy that Mark doesn't make, so perhaps that suggests that this is not the original story.

Dennis R. MacDonald makes a compelling case in his book "The Homeric Epics and the Gospel of Mark" (which I am reading at the moment) that this story about Jesus is based on a story about Odysseus in Homer's Odyssey.  I won't detail the parallels here, but suffice it to say there are clear narrative and vocabulary parallels between one specific passage in the Odyssey and this passage in Mark. In Homer, there are other boats, and these do play a minor role in the story. If MacDonald's case is true, then Mark used elements of a story about Odysseus, which which many of his readers would probably be familiar, as the basis for a story about Jesus. I've read elsewhere that this was actually fairly common in ancient literature (written in Greek), writers adapted well known stories so that they could highlight certain features of their hero (in this case Jesus) - that is, showing the ways in which their hero is like the well known hero, and sometimes highlighting the ways in which their hero is even better than the well known hero. Here Jesus is shown to be better than Odysseus, as the latter merely survived the storm, but the former demonstrated power over it.

The question for us, however, is whether or not events told in this way actually happened or not? Was there a real story about Jesus which has been told 'through the lens' of Homer, or is this a story of Homeric origin which has been fictionally recast with gospel characters to demonstrate just how much of a hero Jesus was to a Greek-literate audience?

We actually face this question again and again in Mark, the story as presented reveals details of an older source text, so is the source text the sole origin of the story, or is Mark's telling of the story a fusion between an earlier Jesus story and an older written document? This question becomes most important when we get to the crucifixion narrative. Is that a fusion of an earlier story about Jesus with the framework of Psalm 22, or is it a work of midrash, fictively expanding on Psalm 22? I'll leave that quandary for another time.

For now the question is whether the stilling of the storm story is a fusion of a Jesus story with an Odysseus story, or is it a fictive riff on the Odysseus story to show how Jesus is better than the Greek hero? How could we even tell? If we had access to any pre-Markan Jesus stories set on lakes, then maybe we could parse this story, but as it happens we do not, and therefore cannot.

I'm reasonably won over by MacDonald's thesis that the Sea of Galilee stories of Jesus are fictive attempts to put Mark's Jesus into similar situations as Odysseus. Indeed, it would seem that before Mark wrote his gospel, nobody ever referred to this small lake in the 'Holy Land' as anything other than a small lake. It was never a 'sea' before this. Mark, it would appear, beefed up the designation of this lake to a 'sea' so he could set Odysseus-style stories on it. The 'other boats' are just a little editorial oversight that Mark forgot to remove for his retelling of the story.

Of course, all this could be waaaay off the mark. Maybe the other boats had a completely different origin in Mark's non-Homeric source. I'd love to hear other opinions about what these boats are doing in this story.

The gospel before the gospel

I've recently read Richard Carrier's "On the Historicity of Jesus" (OHJ). Its a big book. More thoughts likely to follow in later posts. But for now, this issue strikes me as important:

In Zechariah chapters 3 and 6 there is a character Carrier describes as 'Jesus Rising'. That is, in an old testament book, there is a character called Jesus (=Joshua, it's the same name) who rises in some (poorly defined) way. In the new testament, of course, Jesus rises from the dead. 

Carrier suggests that the Christian belief that Jesus rose from the dead could, in part, derive from a pre-existing belief that someone called Jesus would rise / had risen. Here's a bit of chapter 6 from the NIV:

9 The word of the Lord came to me: 10 “Take silver and gold from the exiles Heldai, Tobijah and Jedaiah, who have arrived from Babylon. Go the same day to the house of Josiah son of Zephaniah. 11 Take the silver and gold and make a crown, and set it on the head of the high priest, Joshua son of Jozadak. 12 Tell him this is what the Lord Almighty says: ‘Here is the man whose name is the Branch, and he will branch out from his place and build the temple of the Lord. 13 It is he who will build the temple of the Lord, and he will be clothed with majesty and will sit and rule on his throne. And he will be a priest on his throne. And there will be harmony between the two.’ 14 The crown will be given to Heldai, Tobijah, Jedaiah and Hen son of Zephaniah as a memorial in the temple of the Lord. 15 Those who are far away will come and help to build the temple of the Lord, and you will know that the Lord Almighty has sent me to you. This will happen if you diligently obey the Lord your God.”

Erm, nothing about 'rising' there at first glance. The word in question, in verse 12, is translated 'Branch' in the NIV. More literal translations render this as 'sprout' rather than branch. That is 'sprout' in the sense of 'sprout out of', like a budding branch, or a plant breaking out of the ground. Still not 'rising'. If you translate your Bible from the original Hebrew into English, then 'sprout' or 'branch', or possibly 'emanation' is the best that you can do.

But have a look at the Septuagint (LXX). In the LXX, the word ἀνατολή ("anatole") is used as the Greek equivalent of the Hebrew word צֶמַח ("tsemach"). Strong's definition of tsemach (H6780) is "sprout, growth, branch", whereas Strong defines anatole (G395) as "a rising (of the sun or stars)" or "the east (the direction of the sun's rising)". So a reader of the LXX would not understand the above passage to be referring to a 'branch' or even a 'sprout', but would only really have the image of the rising sun in mind. Something like:

11 Take the silver and gold and make a crown, and set it on the head of the high priest, Jesus son of Jozadak. 12 Tell him this is what the Lord Almighty says: ‘Here is the man whose name is Rising, and he will rise up from his place and build the temple of the Lord. 

So if a reader of the LXX took the words in verse 12 ('here is the man') to refer to the high priest in verse 11, he would indeed think he was reading about a priest called Jesus, whose name is Rising. That is "Jesus Rising". Maybe Richard Carrier is right?

But. Its a fairly convoluted path we've had to take to get to this point, isn't it?

It seems unlikely that many people would jump through all these hoops to end up with a belief that a priest called Jesus would in some (undefined) way rise up. Certainly, this is far from the mainstream interpretation of these verses. So is it too 'out there' to be worthy of consideration?

I don't think so. You see, nobody ever claimed that Christianity or Christian belief ever emerged from the mainstream Jewish consensus belief. They started as a fringe group, with some pretty 'out there' beliefs.

All it really would need is someone to interpret the LXX as speaking about a character called Jesus who would in some way rise up, and then speculate about what kind of even this 'rising' might be (we've all heard of believers like that), and teach others about that speculation (we've all heard of preachers like that), and it is entirely plausible that a minority belief could arise that there would be a high priest called Jesus who would rise (or had risen) (into the sky? from the dead?). If that rolling stone gathered a small amount of moss, its not implausible to see how this belief could have entered proto-Christian thinking before the early 1st Century. Zechariah wrote sometime BCE, possibly two or three hundred years before the emergence of Christianity. It is totally plausible that this belief could have become part of Jewish belief, on the fringes of orthodoxy, in that time.

So we could have had a proto-gospel, decades or centuries before the gospel message we know about.

Makes you think, doesn't it?

Mary and Joseph. No, not them, the other ones...

The synoptic problem fascinates me. I'm not sure we'll ever get to a complete resolution to the problem, but as of now I am reasonably convinced that Mark is the earliest gospel we have, and that both Matthew and Luke used Mark as their primary source when writing their own gospels. Matthew (probably written before Luke) certainly used Mark as the basis and template for his gospel - he includes almost all of Mark and some of it is even word-for-word the same. But in writing his own gospel, Matthew sometimes leaves some bits of Mark out (presumably because he does not like them), modifies some bits of Mark (presumably to make them more coherent with his own beliefs) and then adds in lots of other stuff that Mark doesn't have. Some of this may have come from other sources, some of this may have been the invention of Matthew.

One of Matthew's additions to Mark regards Mary, the mother of Jesus. Mary, mother of Jesus only appears in one verse in Mark:

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."

There is another character in Mark who is often assumed to be Mary, the mother of Jesus, but this character is never named as such, or even implied to be such in the gospel. This Mary is "Mary the mother of James the younger and of Joseph" (Mark 15:40), "Mary the mother of Joseph" (Mark 15:47) and "Mary the mother of James" (Mark 16:1).

There are a few possibilities here. One is, of course, that this Mary was actually the mother of Jesus, and that James (the younger) and Joseph were two of Jesus's brothers. The problem here is that Mark, who quite often calls a spade a spade, never says so. Why would Mark place the mother of Jesus at the tomb scene and not say directly who she was? Is this one of those places where Mark is trying to make the reader work things out for themselves? I don't think so. There is no great insight to be gained by working out that Jesus's mother was at the tomb. So I find myself considering another possibility.

What if Mark 6:3 is not original to Mark? We know that the text of the gospels has been modified as it passed through the hands of those who copied it. Sometimes they inserted stuff. What if this verse was one of the insertions? Well, why would anyone do that? Before I get there, think what the implications would be for Mark's gospel if 6:3 was not there - the story of Jesus would never mention named family members, the only place they would show up would be in chapter 3, where they get instantly dismissed as irrelevant, and Jesus doesn't interact with them. If Mark 6:3 was not part of the original, then Mary the mother of James and Joseph would only be described in this manner to distinguish her from Mary Magdalene, there would be no connection to Jesus implied. She was just some follower, who happened to be called Mary. Maybe James and Joseph were important people when the gospel was being written, so that's why she is designated this way? (e.g. "OK, so our guy James wasn't important in the Jesus story as it happened, but look, his mother was right there at the centre of things...")

So why would anyone insert Mark 6:3? Well, to big-up the role of James and the other brothers! (e.g. "OK, so our guy James wasn't important in the Jesus story as it happened, but he was his brother!") By adding in this verse the gospel editor makes James and Mary his mother become major players. So there's a possible agenda here which would add the verse in.

So, for the rest of the post I'm going to assume that Mark 6:3 is not part of the original, and was added early on, before Matthew got his hands on the copy of Mark that he would modify into his own gospel. I can't prove this point, I don't necessarily believe this point, but I'm going to speculate on the assumption anyway. Sometimes that takes you interesting places.

But before we go on with speculation about Mary, we need to do some other speculation about Joseph.

Joseph, husband of Mary and presumed father of Jesus does not feature in the gospel of Mark. He is simply not there, and there is no role for him to play in the story. The only two Josephs in Mark are Joseph, brother of James and son of Mary, who is named in the gospel but doesn't feature as a character, and Joseph of Arimathea, who appears abruptly in Mark 15:43-46 asks for Jesus's body and buries it, he has no other role in the gospel. It is possible that these two Josephs are the same character. Indeed, without Mark 6:3, there really is no need to specify Joseph as the son of Mary unless he has some role to play in the story or in the early church. (NB, James certainly has a role in the early church, but Joseph...?) So it seems possible that Joseph is introduced (in Mark 15:40) as Mary's son, just before he appears in the story to play his part in the story.

I don't think I'm over-stating my case too much to say that the two most important characters at the end of the gospel story, one involved in the burial of Jesus and one (actually two) involved in the discovery of the empty tomb, were Joseph and Mary (two Marys). Let me just say that again. The two named characters at the end of the gospel who oversee the burial and find the empty tomb are called Mary and Joseph. Other sources say these are the names of the parents of Jesus, there at the very beginning of the story: Mary and Joseph at the start and Joseph and Mary at the end, what's the chances of that? Well, pretty slim if this is a real story, but not at all unlikely if there is any literary invention going on.

My conjecture is this: that between the writing of Mark's gospel, and the writing of Matthew's gospel, the Jesus story grew in the telling (possibly in written form as a modified version of Mark, or as a proto-Matthew, now lost), and new characters called Mary and Joseph were invented to 'bookend' the gospel, to match the Joseph and Mary at the end.

Why call them the same names? Well, because the writers of books in bible times (old and new testaments) loved writing in "chiastic structures" (see Wikipedia for an explanation) to give their stories symmetry. That is, the first part of the story is mirrored by the last part, the 2nd part is mirrored by the 2nd last, and so on. Mark's gospel has no birth story to mirror the death story, so someone invented it, and simply used the two names that were already there at the end to mirror in the beginning. Having named Jesus's mother as Mary in this way, it now makes sense to tie up the loose ends by inserting Mark 6:3 and implying that James's mother Mary is the same as Jesus's mother Mary, which only goes to boost the profile of James.

So by the time Matthew and Luke write their gospels, tradition has it that Jesus mother was called Mary and his presumed father was called Joseph.

It is interesting to note that both Matthew and Luke have Mary the mother of James at the empty tomb, but don't join the dots to make her Mary the mother of Jesus. Meanwhile (or possibly much later) John has "the mother of Jesus" at the crucifixion, not the empty tomb, but never calls her Mary.

Make of all that what you will.

Happy Christmas to everyone who has read this far!

Seekers and the pearl of great price

Matthew 13:45-46

"Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a merchant looking for fine pearls. When he found one of great value, he went away and sold everything he had and bought it."

This parable bothers me. It is a story that has clearly been distilled down to its essence before it ended up in the gospel, but even given that, this is only half a story. What happens next? The merchant has nothing but a pearl. No food, no house, no clothes (other than those he is wearing, I suppose), etc. Nothing but a pearl. The options are basically that either the merchant goes on to sell the pearl (at a profit, this is his job, after all!) or he keeps the pearl but has nothing to live on and so, ultimately, dies. Neither of these options are the point of the parable, as it is preached in many sermons, and probably as it was originally intended. The point, surely, is that the pearl is worth giving everything else up for. But it is actually a pretty poor parable for that. The immediately preceding parable in Matthew is much better as there the man in the story finds treasure in a field, buys the field, and hence becomes rich. This one doesn't really seem like a well thought through parable, not very divinely inspired.

But it leads me on to thinking about 'seeking' and 'finding'. Have you ever been in a 'seeker friendly' church? The word 'seeker' is generally used in a positive sense by Christians to refer to a non-Christian who is looking for spiritual fulfilment. A seeker friendly church is one which avoids anything which might put the 'seeker' off the idea of church, so is welcoming, modern, warm, avoids too much ceremony, generally plays contemporary worship music, etc. Behind the idea is that once the seeker finds Jesus, they will stop seeking, and stay in the church.

In some ways, I think I'm a seeker who has carried on 'seeking' beyond the church. The church can't really cope with that, of course. It assumes that there can't be anything greater or better, but it has never actually looked. Once upon a time I found a pearl of apparent great price. But ultimately I found it to be unsatisfying, and very possibly a fake - although a very attractive and impressive fake. I don't want to sell the pearl on, but I've come to realise that there probably is a greater pearl out there, somewhere else. The merchant in the parable doesn't know if the pearl he has found is the greatest pearl there is, he doesn't look. 

Surely, in the quest for truth, even if you think you have found something of value, you never know if you have found everything, so you have to keep seeking? Anything else is just giving up.

I looked under chairs
I looked under tables
I'm tryin to find the key
To fifty million fables 

They call me the seeker
I been searchin low and high
I won't get to get what I'm after
Till the day I die

The Who - The Seeker (1970)

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.

Question Mark, Part 2

The Gospel of Mark starts with a verse that contains so much it needs its own blog post:

"The beginning of the good news about Jesus the Messiah, the Son of God"

Mark 1v1; NIV

As far as Mark (or whoever the anonymous author was, for simplicity I'll just keep calling him Mark) is concerned, the "good news" about Jesus starts here. Mark gives no birth stories for Jesus, he tells us nothing here about Jesus's mother. So, on the assumption that this book was written before Matthew and Luke, who added birth stories when they rewrote Mark later in their own gospels, we have two options. Either Mark did not know the birth stories of Jesus or he did not think they were important. Either way, they are not part of his 'good news'. Furthermore, Mark does not trace the 'beginning' of his story back to the creation of the world, like John does. John's story starts with a pre-existent Christ, Matthew and Luke start with the immaculate conception of Jesus, Mark starts here, with a fully grown man, called Jesus. What happened before this point seems to be irrelevant to Mark. It sounds like the 'good news' is about what Jesus did, not where he came from.

Next, we have to consider what the "good news" (εὐαγγέλιον; euaggelion) actually is. This is a word that is actually used less frequently in the gospels than you might expect. Neither Luke or John actually use the word. Matthew uses it only four times, and each of them is in content he borrowed from Mark. Mark uses the word seven times (there is an eighth in the non-Markan bit at the end of Chapter 16, but we'll ignore that for now), and in most of them the word refers to the message that Jesus himself actually taught. In other words, the message spoken by Jesus, not the message about Jesus. Here, in verse one, the word cannot refer to Jesus's teaching as he hasn't said anything yet.

I think Mark is being quite clever here (and this thought is not original to me, I get it from Robert Fowler's book "Let the reader understand" which I have recently read, and which will get several future mentions in this series of posts), what he is doing is intentionally muddying the waters so that the reader - from the outset - comes to consider this written 'good news' as being synonymous with the preached 'good news' of Jesus. So when we read later on that "The good news must first be preached to all the nations" (Mark 13:10), we subconsciously think that it is this book, this message, which is the thing that must be preached all around the world. Mark is covertly claiming ownership over the gospel message.

Up until Mark writes, in the early history of the church, as far as we can tell, the "good news" was the message preached by Paul. The epistles use the phrase 'good news' far more frequently than the gospels actually do. Here Mark is attempting to co-opt the gospel. To make it his own. I think he managed it. We hardly ever refer to the writings of Paul as 'gospels' we always refer to the four story books of Jesus by that name. Right from the word go, Mark has taken the gospel away from Paul, even to some extent away from Jesus, and made it his own.

I think that might be important. Is Mark a rival to Paul? We know there were many factions in the early church, much more separate in doctrine and ethos than contemporary divisions in the church, who were in competition with each other. Is Mark writing to a different one than Paul was?

But who is this Jesus that Mark tells us about? From the outset, Mark makes the claim that Jesus is both 'Messiah' and 'Son of God'. But what did he mean by those phrases?

He never actually explains what he means when he uses these words. He either expects the reader to know what he means, or he expects the reader to work it out as they read. What he does not do, at all, in this gospel, is explain things.

I'm going to start with "Son of God" and come back to "Messiah".

Did Mark even originally write 'Son of God' here? This wording is not in some of the many manuscripts we have - was it removed from them by someone who objected to this phrase, or was it added to the others by a later redactor with a point to make? I don't know. We'll keep both possibilities in mind here.

A few characters in the gospel of Mark say that Jesus is the "Son of God", but not the ones you might expect. In 3:11 and 5:7 evil spirits say this of Jesus, and both times he rebukes and silences them. In 15:39, just after he has died on the cross, a Roman says "Surely this man was (the) Son of God" (the Greek contains no definite article, so the reader does not know if the Roman thought Jesus was 'the' son of God or merely 'a' son of (a) god). On two occasions (1:11 and 9:7) a voice out of thin air says "this is my son" but the speaker is never explicitly identified as God. Finally, during his trial (14:61), he is asked if he is the son of "the Blessed", which implies God, to which Jesus responds "I am". That's it for this gospel. Aside from the opening verse, the narrator never calls Jesus 'Son of God' and aside from the answer in his trial, Jesus never says this of himself. Also of interest is that the disciples never, at any point, say that Jesus is the Son of God, not even at the Caesarea Philippi confession by Peter (he does in Matthew, but not here in Mark).

So the title "Son of God" features in the first verse, which implies it is important, but then doesn't feature much in the rest of the gospel, which suggests otherwise. And it must be noted that this gospel is written such that all the important material comes from the mouth of Jesus or the voice of the narrator, and secondary characters in the story usually get things wrong and make wrong statements. So when "Son of God" is mostly to be found on the lips of the demonic enemies, we have to wonder whether "Jesus is the Son of God" is actually a message the author is trying to convey. (Especially if he didn't originally have it in verse 1.)

What did the early readers of this gospel understand by the phrase "Son of God"? The challenge here is to not read too much later belief into the earliest days of the Church. What is clear is that Mark doesn't mean "second person of the Trinity" here. As far as I can tell, the Trinity concept wouldn't come along until after John was written. Here we are most likely dealing with the belief that God is the only one monotheistic God, and Jesus is, in some sense, his son.

As far as I can tell, ancient readers of this phrase would have understood this in one of two ways: either he was the son of God in the same manner as King David was in the OT - God's chosen, appointed and beloved agent, or it was understood in the same manner as Hercules was the son of God - literally the offspring of a sexual liaison between a god and a human woman, a semi-divine demi-god. I can see no third option in ancient thinking. Once again, the problem the reader of Mark has is knowing what exactly Mark means. He doesn't say. I suspect the lack of interest in Jesus's mother in Mark might suggest that the demi-god option is less likely, but we  can't be sure.

Finally we get to the word "Messiah" and again we need to avoid two thousand years of Christian thinking clouding our thoughts about this word. Insofar as there was messianic expectation in the time that this was written (and some have claimed that there wasn't half as much messianic expectation as Christian theologians would have you believe), the expectation was for a conquering king to arise and throw the oppressors out of Judea and restore 'true' religion to the temple in Jerusalem. There was no expectation of a 'messiah' who could be killed, who wouldn't throw out the Romans and, furthermore, who would allow the Romans to utterly destroy the temple. None of that was part of messianic expectation. So when Mark says Jesus is the Messiah, his readers can only understand that this is the guy who has come to smash the Romans. So  when the Romans smash him, the reader should be shocked. This defies all expectation. But in some ways I think that is the intention of Mark - he sets the reader up with some expectations and then pulls the rug out from underneath.

One of the main things I've taken away from Robert Fowler's book is that Mark doesn't tell the reader things directly, he wants the reader to make up their own mind, but sometimes he provides contrary statements and allows the reader to choose. Is Jesus the messiah? The Son of God? Is  this message even good news? Mark actually doesn't tell us.

But let's dive in and see some of the things he does tell us... next time.

Question Mark, Part 1

It is a long time since I read an entire book of the bible, beginning to end. It is even longer since I studied an entire book of the bible, beginning to end. Last time I did either of these two things, I read and studied the various books of the bible under the assumption that I was reading the Word of God. 

Over the last five years I have slowly, and somewhat reluctantly, come to the understanding that the bible is not the Word of God. The bible was written by human people with human motives, and while some of them might have felt inspired to write these words, there is no strong evidence that any divine being had any part in the composition and compilation of this book. (Note: the question of whether or not there is a divine being is an entirely separate one - the lack of divine inspiration of the bible does not entail that there is no God.)

Sloughing off the assumption of divine inspiration or authorship leaves me with a different set of assumptions when I read the text of the bible. It means I come away from reading the book with different questions and different conclusions. Its almost like reading a different book.

So I want to return to a few books of the bible and read/study them again, through different eyes. Before I would read the bible to learn something new about God or to find guidance in its pages, now when I read the bible I have a whole load of new questions to ask: Who wrote this? What was their purpose in writing it? Who were the intended audience? Did the author intend these words to be taken literally? Was the source material reliable? Is any of this true? Has anyone edited or rewritten these words since the original author wrote them? And so on. Previously the answers would always have been: God; To instruct me; Me; Yes; Yes; No; etc.

So I am returning to the Gospel of Mark, to read it through new eyes. My intention is to post my thoughts and questions here as I go along. Maybe I'll come to some conclusions along the way, maybe not. We'll see.

Why Mark? Well, because it is generally held to be the earliest of all the gospels we have, and the others are somewhat derivative of it. Some hold that Mark is actually the very first gospel. So its a good starting point. Also, it is quite short. So let's begin.

I'm going to begin by not assuming anything, insofar as I can. We don't know who Mark was. We don't know if he was called Mark. Mark was the most common name in the ancient Roman world, so this name could have been added to make it the gospel of everyman. The gospel according to Joe Bloggs. There is no particular reason to suppose that Mark (for simplicity, I'll continue to use the traditional name) is the same as the character of John Mark who makes a brief appearance in Acts. There is no particular reason to suppose that Mark was an eyewitness of the events presented, or even knew eyewitnesses. 

Another thing we don't really know is when the gospel was written. Some hold that it must have been written before the fall of Jerusalem in 70AD. Some hold that it must have been written after that event. I've even heard some claim that the work was written in the early 2nd century, not the late 1st century. And some, who see Marcionite content in the gospel, say that it is Marcionite in origin, which forces it a decade or two into the 2nd century, at the earliest. But let's just start by saying we don't know when it was written and go from there.

We also don't really know where it was written or who it was written to, although various theories have been proposed over the years. It is written in Greek, but was it originally in Greek or is the earliest version we have a translation of an earlier version? These are all questions we will address as we go.

So let's start with something I am reasonably sure of. I am reasonably convinced that the version of Mark we are able to read nowadays is pretty much unchanged since the mid 2nd century, which is when the NT documents began to be duplicated on mass, and widely distributed. The transmission chain may go back much earlier than that, but we can't be totally sure what happened earlier than the mid 2nd century.

I am reasonably convinced that the version of Mark we now have is basically a copy of a copy of a copy (etc.) of the gospel that was 'published' and distributed in the mid 2nd century. Prof David Trobisch says Polycarp was probably responsible for the compilation, duplication and publication of the NT canon, and who am I to argue with him? I find his case compelling.

What happened before this 'publication'? Well there are various theories. If we put all the possibilities together, we get a chain of events that could be as long as this:

1. Events occurred. 
2. Stories about these events were transmitted orally, perhaps for several decades.
3. Some of those stories may have been embellished in transmission.
4. Some of the stories may have been lost.
5. Other stories were made up.
6. The fictional stories were transmitted orally, perhaps for several decades.
7. Some of those stories may have been embellished in transmission.
8. Someone (lets call him Mark) collected some of these stories and wrote a gospel of Jesus out of them.
9. He may have invented some scenes in the gospel to provide a bridge/narrative framework between stories he got from his sources.
10. He may have also invented some stories that fitted his agenda and added them to his gospel to flesh it out. We now have what some scholars refer to as "Ur-Marcus".
11. This gospel was used by a community of people somewhere.
12. As the needs of the community changed, stories could have been dropped, edited or added to the gospel.
13. This could have happened several times.
14. It may have been picked up by other communities, with different agendas to the first, who may have modified it to fit their own purposes.
15. Eventually the gospel came into the hands of the final editor, who may have modified the gospel to make it consistent with the other books in his collection.

Some claim there may even be more steps in the chain than that.

I'm not saying that I believe all these steps happened. This is a compilation of all the theories that I've heard. I think it is highly unlikely that all these steps occurred, but probably some of them did. The most conservative evangelical view is probably that 1, 2, 8, 11 and part of 15 occurred, while 3, 5, 8, 10, 12, etc. didn't. The most radical critical view is that 1-4 did not happen and everything started with the made up stories at point 5 or 10. I expect the truth is somewhere between those two extremes.

Occam's razor would have us shave away all the 'unnecessary' items on that list. So as we go through the book of Mark I'll highlight things that might suggest that some of those items are 'necessary', or at least possible, and should not therefore be discounted out of hand.

So having said all that, let's begin with Mark, chapter 1, verse 1... (in a future post)

The idiot apostles...

I'm currently reading "Let the Reader Understand" by Robert M. Fowler. Its pretty technical and theological stuff for bed-time reading, but some of it is really fascinating. Its basically an analysis of the gospel of Mark, but keeping its eyes firmly on questions like "what is the author trying to achieve here?" and "what effect does this passage have on the reader?"

The bit I've just read discusses the pairs of miracle stories in the first half of the gospel and points out something I'd never noticed, or even considered, before.

Take, for example, the "feeding of the five thousand" in Mark 6:30-44 and compare it with the "feeding of the four thousand" in Mark 8:1-10. I've heard various theories about why both stories are actually included in fairly short a gospel. The reader knows what Jesus can do after the first story, so why repeat it a couple of chapters later?

The most mundane explanation for including the story twice is because it happened twice. Possibly more than twice. Could be, but in a short gospel, where the author had to have left out some stories, why repeat this? Surely once is enough?

A more compelling explanation for the repetition of the story is that this is not to tell us something about Jesus (one telling of the story could do that), but rather it is to tell us something about the disciples. For the disciples behave in a completely incredible manner here. Or rather, they behave in a totally believable manner in the first telling of the story - stating, quite rightly, that a few small loaves and fish cannot be used to feed thousands of people - but then behave in a totally unbelievable manner the second time, because they do the same thing twice. The point is that they have learned absolutely nothing whatsoever from the first miracle and so can't comprehend the possibility the second time around.

This is the plain explanation here. Mark deliberately sets out to make the disciples look like idiots here. Well, either that, or the disciples really were idiots and this really happened, exactly as described. The problem is that nobody is actually that stupid. If the disciples really had seen Jesus miraculously duplicating food for 5000 people on one occasion, on a second very similar occasion, not long afterwards, it is literally inconceivable that none of them would have said something to Jesus along the lines of "we have a small amount of food, can you do that miracle again and turn it into lots of food?"

The only option we are left with is that the author of this gospel intended to make the disciples look like idiots. That is the only agenda in the repeated story. By itself, this is sufficient evidence to demonstrate that this gospel contains fiction.

But the thing that Robert Fowler points out in his book, which I had never noticed before, is that the two stories have been carefully constructed to emphasise the stupidity of the disciples.

Story 1 (Mark 6:30-44) goes like this:

...many who saw them leaving recognized them and ran on foot from all the towns and got there ahead of them. When Jesus landed and saw a large crowd, he had compassion on them, because they were like sheep without a shepherd. So he began teaching them many things.
By this time it was late in the day, so his disciples came to him. “This is a remote place,” they said, “and it’s already very late. Send the people away so that they can go to the surrounding countryside and villages and buy themselves something to eat.”
But he answered, “You give them something to eat.”
They said to him, “That would take more than half a year’s wages! Are we to go and spend that much on bread and give it to them to eat?”
“How many loaves do you have?” he asked. “Go and see.”
When they found out, they said, “Five—and two fish.”
Then Jesus directed them to have all the people sit down in groups on the green grass. So they sat down in groups of hundreds and fifties. Taking the five loaves and the two fish and looking up to heaven, he gave thanks and broke the loaves. Then he gave them to his disciples to distribute to the people. He also divided the two fish among them all. They all ate and were satisfied, and the disciples picked up twelve basketfuls of broken pieces of bread and fish. The number of the men who had eaten was five thousand.

The story is told from the point of view of the disciples. And the disciples are shown here as sensible and practical people; they suggest the people need to go home and find food, and they calculate how much it would cost to feed the multitude, when Jesus instructs them to do something unexpected (get the people to sit down), they go along with this.

So the disciples come out of the first story quite well. However, when we turn to story number 2 (Mark 8:1-10) it goes like this:

During those days another large crowd gathered. Since they had nothing to eat, Jesus called his disciples to him and said, “I have compassion for these people; they have already been with me three days and have nothing to eat. If I send them home hungry, they will collapse on the way, because some of them have come a long distance.”
His disciples answered, “But where in this remote place can anyone get enough bread to feed them?”
“How many loaves do you have?” Jesus asked.
“Seven,” they replied.
He told the crowd to sit down on the ground. When he had taken the seven loaves and given thanks, he broke them and gave them to his disciples to distribute to the people, and they did so. They had a few small fish as well; he gave thanks for them also and told the disciples to distribute them. The people ate and were satisfied. Afterward the disciples picked up seven basketfuls of broken pieces that were left over. About four thousand were present. After he had sent them away, he got into the boat with his disciples and went to the region of Dalmanutha.

Note that this story is told from the point of view of Jesus. We get his feelings towards these people in a direct quote from him, not in third person as in the previous story. Here, before the disciples have even suggested that the people be sent away, as in the previous story, Jesus explains why this would be a bad idea. And then the idiot disciples demonstrate that they have no recollection whatsoever of the earlier incident.

This change of point of view is mirrored in other pairs of stories in Mark. Each time showing the disciples favourably the first time, from their own point of view, and as idiots the second time, from the point of view of Jesus.

I'm convinced. Not only is the author of this gospel a much cleverer writer than I had previously thought, he really wants to convey to us that the disciples were idiots.

Were the disciples really idiots? Probably not. If there was a real Jesus, and if he recruited real disciples, and if he actually discipled them, then they must have learned from the master. That is what 'disciples' do. A real disciple cannot be a real idiot. So what we have here is not history but polemic. And not polemic against people outside the church, but polemic against the supposed founding fathers!

The characters in the story are idiots, not real disciples. The real disciples of Jesus (as far as this author is concerned) are the author himself and the implied reader of the text. This work is clearly written by someone from some rival faction of the early church - a faction opposed to the faction which claimed the disciples as its founders.

You certainly don't get taught that in Sunday school!

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.

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.

A couple of books by Amy Orr-Ewing

I've just read a couple of books by UK based apologist Amy Orr-Ewing recently (thanks to Wee Scoops for lending them to me; she commented on the first of these books here). AOE works for RZIM and the OCCA. I have to say, at the outset, that I've heard a few talks by and interviews with Amy Orr-Ewing and she sounds like quite possibly the nicest person who ever lived, ever. No, I really mean that. But being overwhelmingly nice doesn't necessarily mean she's consistently right, or has greater insight into the reality (or otherwise) of Christian faith, so what follows is an honest (yet critical) response to her two books "Why Trust The Bible?" and "But is it Real?" (in the order I read them, not the order she wrote them...) 

I wrote a blog post called 'Why trust the bible?' a couple of years ago, and this question has dominated my philosophical thinking over the past couple of years, for if the Bible is trustworthy, then Christianity is basically true, there is a God and that has massive implications for all of our lives. But if the bible is not trustworthy, then Christianity falls apart. Sure, that wouldn't necessarily mean that there is no God, but it would be good evidence that even if there is a God, the Christian picture of him is flawed at best, and totally wrong at worst. So the question really matters to me.

I have to say that most of my reading and reflections on the bible over the past few years have led me to (tentatively) conclude that the bible isn't really all that trustworthy - it contains errors and makes claims that have little or no grounding in reality. It is not always consistent with history and paints an inconsistent picture of the God it claims to reveal. But anyway, on to AOE's book on the subject.

In "Why trust the Bible?" she addresses 10 questions that she says have been put to her by non-believers countless times over the years. The foreword by RZ and the first few chapters seem to place the focus of the book in a post-modern world where there is no such thing as truth. To be honest, I can't be bothered with such debates; there is truth, the question here is does the bible contain it? The only notable thing in chapter one is the admission that there are basically 3 options concerning the gospel writers (specifically Luke and John, who she assumes to be 'the doctor' and 'the fisherman' respectively) are either that (i) they are honest in their writing, but deluded in their beliefs, (ii) that they are intentionally writing fiction or falsehood, or (iii) that they are honest in their writing and accurate in their beliefs. In this book she never offers any evidence to support or refute any of these options, but merely presents an anecdote about someone coming to faith, because the story is being related by a fishermen - and fishermen are the type of folk who are honest and not easily duped. Huh?

In chapter 2 she keeps on about post-modernism and questions whether we can know anything about history. Then she plays the Nazi card and talks about questioning the Holocaust. Sigh. There is a vast difference between events involving a handful of peasants some 2000 years ago and events involving millions of people across all strata of society only a few decades ago, this chapter doesn't seem to notice this. Having discussed this for most of the chapter, she then misinterprets Luke's words "carefully investigated everything from the beginning" to mean "spoke to eye-witnesses", which is stretching the text a bit. Anyway, she then moves on, in chapter 3, to the NT manuscripts. Yes, there are a lot of them, and yes, they do go back to within a few generations of the alleged events, nobody seriously doubts this. She does tread on some pretty shaky ground in claiming that some of the Dead Sea Scrolls contain fragments of NT writings, something that has been pretty solidly debunked since it was first suggested in the early 1970s. Of course, she doesn't rely on this as evidence - it would never stand up in court - but by mentioning it, she does imply that this is potential evidence, something I believe it is not.

And finally, in chapter 4, we begin to get to the point. Are the NT stories reliable? Here she plays the usual apologetic card that discounting the possibility of miracles is 'closed-minded' and then trots out the usual argument that the disciples would never have died for a lie. There's nothing new here and no new perspectives. Then she does a whistle-stop tour through the non-biblical sources and makes a case that the bible has been faithfully transmitted. I must have read too many apologists recently, as I've heard all this too many times and it seems to me that all this evidence really only supports two things that nobody really doubts: (1) there were Christians who worshiped Jesus as God in the early 2nd century, and (2) we can be reasonably sure what the text of the bible was in the late 2nd century. None of the non-biblical sources tells us anything about Jesus, all of them tell us about Christian belief. Nobody doubts that there were early believers, the question is whether or not those believers had the truth.

Chapters 5 and 6 introduce further distractions away from the main point. Concerning the formation of the canon, she claims that this was an organic process, over a few hundred years, with no human guiding hand. This is at complete odds with the claims of David Trobisch who demonstrates (rather convincingly) that the Canon of the NT was 'published' by a single editor in the mid-late 2nd century. It is also clear to me that the 'Catholic' canon was formed as a response to the earlier Marcionite canon. She then goes off on a tangent to demonstrate that the bible is superior to holy books from other religions. While she may be right, this doesn't render the bible 'trustworthy'; only more trustworthy than other fictions...

Chapters 7, 8 and 9 are other tangents, dealing with the apparent sexism of the bible, the violence of it and the attitudes to sex in it. More than other chapters in the book, it is apparent in these three that the target audience of this book is people who are already Christians, but may be facing doubts raised by others. The message here is 'don't worry, the bible's not as out of date as you think'. These chapters touch lightly on a few important topics, without ever really grappling with the issues adequately, and - obviously - conclude in favour of the standard Evangelical Alliance position on sexual issues. Why AOE feels the need to conclude in favour of 'just war' as against a pacifist stance is unclear, and seems out of context in this book. But I guess, the point is its OK to be a follower of Jesus and support war. That's very murky water to wade through.

And then we get to a conclusion that walks away from evidence-based reasoning to anecdote and emotional reasoning. You can know Jesus 'in your heart'. AOE knows Jesus 'in her heart' and no amount of actual evidence can dispute that.

In the end, this is a book that doesn't adequately address the question posed in the title. It starts off addressing a post-modern view of 'truth' and ends up defending the views of the bible against modern beliefs about sex and violence. But what it never does along the way is provide sufficient evidence to conclude that the bible is actually trustworthy. Anecdotes don't prove anything, even emotive ones presented in a confident and positive manner.

"But is it Real?" comes at the Christian faith from a different angle. The aim here is to dispel the claims that Christianity is a 'delusion' or is simply one of many religions, and no more or less valid than the others. From the outset we're in even more anecdotal territory than we were with the other book. Actual evidence is very scarce here. The objective seems to be to counter every anti-Christian claim or quote with an equal and opposite pro-Christian claim or quote. These effectively cancel each other out, rather than providing any pro-Christian evidence.

Chapter 1 tries very hard to prove that 'Christian experience' is radically different from the 'experience' found in Buddhism and Islam. Probably true. Its notable that the experience of Hinduism, Hare Krishna, Mormonism, or other 'heretical' Christian sects is not considered here. Those alternative religions do have personal and relational deities, yet are not considered. Apparently Christianity is qualitatively different from all other religions in that it alone has a 'personal relationship' with the divine. But this is not really explained or defined here. The fact that talking of Christian faith in 'personal relationship' terms is a modern innovation is certainly never discussed. This terminology would have been meaningless to the average Christian believer even a couple of centuries ago, it only really came in with the spread of Pentecostalism in the early 20th Century. Again, as with all apologetics, the aim of this book seems to be to reassure the Christian reader that their faith is reasonable and justifiable.

Then we enter Dawkins / Hitchens / Harris territory and counter the claims that God is a delusion. This is done using lots of quotes and anecdotes but no real issues or evidence are really presented. I've read better responses to the 'new atheists', this one just dips its toe in the debate. Next she takes on the 'religion is a crutch' idea and challenges Freud. Once again in a fairly superficial manner. She makes claims that if real, Christianity is not (just) a crutch, but doesn't really manage to demonstrate that it is real.

When discussing the plurality of religions she makes an odd argument against the oft-asserted statement that your religion is largely a product of where you were born. She seems to assume that this objection to faith is actually in favour of all religions being equally valid paths to God when, in fact, it is almost always used as an argument that all religions are equally invalid - that is, that they are all false.

The chapter on suffering and evil is the first in the book to actually engage with its subject, and is not just a bunch of anecdotes and counter-quotes. Her main point seems to be that you can't use moral reasoning to decide the God question, because moral laws entail a moral law giver, so by posing the very question in moral terms you are excluding the possibility that there is no God. This is a strong argument, but it has flaws. For a start, she simply assumes that if there is a moral law that there must be a moral lawgiver who must be God. I'm afraid I get a bit suspicious of strings of 'must be' type deductions, they almost always lead to a house of cards situation. The claim that there must be a lawgiver because there is a law is pretty much the same as the claim that there must be a creator because there is a creation. The way we form the question frequently seems to entail an answer, but the creator/creation question is still very much open to debate, and so is the law/lawgiver question.

What she never does here (much like many other debates on this issue) is actually demonstrate that there is an absolute moral law. If moral 'law' is merely relative, not absolute, then it isn't really a law at all, more like a trait, an emergent property of a system. And emergent properties of systems don't need lawgivers. Thankfully she doesn't play the "torturing babies for fun" card, which seems to be the only moral absolute anyone can agree on in such debates, but rather than actually try and demonstrate that there are moral absolutes, she goes off on a comparative-religion tangent and tries to show that Christianity is morally superior to other religions. Maybe it is, but this still comes a long way short of answering the question on the cover...

The book then asks why Christians are so bad at being Christians. Because they are. The point seems to be that if there is really a transforming friendship with God, then Christians should be increasingly better at being Christians than they generally are. I have to say that her attempts to explain this one away are the least convincing bit of the book, there's not a good case to be made here.

The subject of hell comes up next and here AOE reveals her true worldview. While the title of the book is "But is it real?" here she shows that she thinks that reality = the teaching of Jesus, with no need for extra proof beyond that:

"Such discussions of hell illustrate the importance of basing one's beliefs on truth and reality rather than on personal preference. If eternal life is at stake, isn't it at least worth examining the claims and teachings of Jesus and making up our minds properly about their veracity, rather than drifting along with society's laissez-faire attitude, hoping it will all pan out in the end?" (p. 90)

Well, yes, but this begs the question of truth and reality - she never presents any evidence or even sound philosophical argument for the reality (or otherwise) of hell. She never demonstrates that the teachings of Jesus relate to a real hell. Indeed, she never at any point in this book gives any evidence or arguments that the words recorded in the bible are actually an accurate account of the words of Jesus. She merely assumes that (a) there was a historical Jesus, (b) that he was the Son of God, (c) that his words are accurately recorded in the gospels, and (d) that his words paint an accurate picture of truth and reality. All four of these assumptions are questionable, yet these questions are never considered. So this chapter fails in its intent, as the 'truth and reality' of hell is never demonstrated, only assumed. Is it real? I don't know. But given the lack of evidence, and good philosophical arguments against it, it would seem reasonable to doubt the existence of hell. She ends the chapter explaining the standard evangelical thinking of what Jesus achieved by dying on the cross, all of which implicitly assumes that the book of Romans is an inspired document. Something else she never demonstrates or even considers to be a question.

Then the word 'fundamentalism' is discussed and skirted around. But there's not much of interest in here. In the penultimate chapter she more or less drops the facade and reveals who this book is really aimed at - people who 'used to believe' but have drifted away from Christianity. Here she considers a few backsliding (a word she doesn't use) stories and explains why such people are being inconsistent and should really come back to faith. In the end she says this:

"...the most important reason to consider returning: Christianity is true and real. Everything else flows from this: If Jesus was who he claimed to be, if he rose from the dead and really does save us from our sins, if he is personally knowable today, then it would be madness to reject him."

Absolutely! I agree totally and wholeheartedly.

IF all that is real and true, then it would be madness to reject Jesus. But IS all that real and true? This book doesn't give enough evidence to decide that question, and never considers some of the main issues, such as do the gospels contain honest and accurate historical reportage or not? She goes on to agree with me:

"If these things are not true and real, it is right to ignore his claims as irrelevant.
        The crucial questions to settle then are: On what grounds have I rejected Christianity? Are these grounds substantial or circumstantial? Shouldn't I examine my presuppositions as well as the evidence for Christ before rejecting something so important out of hand?"

I agree with all of this. But think that she should also consider her presuppositions. Everything in here assumes the gospels are, well, gospel truth.

In the penultimate chapter she lists (in bullet point form) the claims of Christianity that we need to make a decision on. Here's my paraphrase of them:

1. Jesus really did die on the cross. 
2. Jesus was buried in Joseph of Arimathea's tomb.
3. The disciples were disheartened following his death.
4. The testimony of women is crucial; nobody would make this stuff up.
5. The tomb was empty; this is "universally" acknowledged.
6. The preaching in Acts is inexplicable if there was no resurrection.
7. The disciples were transformed.
8. Loads of people including sceptics, opponents and 500 at the same time saw the resurrected Jesus.
9. The resurrection of a single man, not at the end of the age, is unprecedented in Jewish thought.

Let's pose the 'But is it real?' question at these claims... All of these claims rely entirely on the four gospel accounts, one of Paul's letters, and the book of Acts. There are no non-biblical sources to support any of these. All non-biblical sources reveal that Christians believed (some of) these things a couple of generations after the alleged resurrection, they give us no access to the actual event, if it happened. For example, the transformation of the disciples from point 3 to point 7 is all part of the gospel story and has dramatic effect; this doesn't make it true. Indeed, it actually suggests that it might be a literary invention to make a stronger story - this is how fiction works.

Most of these individual claims can be (and have been) rebutted with equal and opposite arguments. What the case for the reality of these claims has to do is demonstrate that the gospels are accurate history books, not fictions. This is something this book never even attempts to do. So in the final analysis the answer to the question 'But is it Real?' has to be 'we don't know...'

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I think I'll not read any more apologetics for a while. There really is noting new under the sun, and nothing particularly compelling in anything I've read. But there may be a couple more posts looking at other apologetics books, as I've read some that I haven't commented on yet...