From Yahweh to Judas Iscariot

NO, YOU ARE quite right, there is probably nothing directly connecting these two, but you know me, always trying to think of catchy titles... By it, I am simply wanting to whet some appetites for those who find Divine Names and Titles a little tedious and enjoy zooming in some more juicy Bible character details. Indeed, examining important characters in their context and according to the believing community's memory, I see as important in developing my theological understanding. That is why my mini-series on John the Baptist was so illuminating to me, especially when I began to see his largely unrecognised contribution to the successful spread of Christianity and even to Trinity development.

Judas is, of course, practically synonymous with the word "traitor" and is an intriguing character even without speaking of his demise. However, when we read that despite his apparent evilness and demon-possessed-ness he still must have felt wretched enough to commit suicide, the story just seems to be begging investigation. The upcoming series is prompted also by a Youtube debate I recently watched between New Testament scholars Bart Ehrman and Craig Evans. It's a few years old now, but their agreement that "horizontal reading" of the gospels is an important practice in establishing the reliability and meaning of the accounts' history (or histories) and I am sure will help me with some unresolved questions for me on Judas Iscariot, son of Simon Iscariot (John 6:71). I have briefly discussed Judas' death on this blog here back in December 2015.

For those who are interested in my research into Adonai and Yahweh translation into the Greek, the good news is I'm far from over with that too and am almost ready to post some results on Yahweh translation for the whole Pentateuch (yep, that's another 2000 Yahweh occurrences categorised and put into Greek cases for you, free of charge!) For you folks, you'll know what I mean but maybe you'll be surprised to hear if I say it's even more anarthrous than we expected.

Back soon!

Response to Unblievable! debate this week on mystery religions

On this week's show of Unbelievable, Justin Brierley held a difficult debate between Richard Carrier vs David Marshall. Quite frankly, I don't think Brierley will be uniting these two again. Here was my response:

Having just finished listening to this episode, I have to agree with Carrier's summary of the apologist vs scholar. The flying sparks were quite frankly off-putting to the actual arguments being made (I am still unclear as to what the grounds are for peripheral or central features of mystery religions, although why not follow up Carrier's invitation to check out his book?)

I agree with Carrier that Marshall - from what I could make out in this debate - does not seem to have properly engaged and his personal history with Carrier seemed to favour what quite frankly seemed like embarrassing blunders (e.g. fables of Aesop). Remember, his book his based on Carrier's, he should know it really, really well. He really doesn't seem to. Sorry Marshall, you didn't sell it to me and I am in theory on your side. But presenting one side of the debate with too much emotion and not enough research I found embarrassing.

Thanks Justin for the usual excellent hosting in a difficult interview.

UPDATE: Got a reply from David Marshall!

How can you make such a claim about a 300 page book chock full of evidence, by listening to a few minutes of Carrier's on-air attacks? Sorry, but you are being gullible. Carrier simply fails to understand my argument, or what it is based upon. And I tried to be polite, but his notion of scholarship is badly defective. See point 6, in particular:

http://christthetao.blogspot.c...

Back to me: I am not going to get drawn into a debate with David Marshall on this, he's way too loose with his tongue and life is too short.

A new (very small additional) argument for a Triune Divinity from canonicity

...The second part that is overlooked is early Christianity. Did the early christians think that Jesus was Fully Divine, where that means that Jesus has all the Divine attributes? No they didn't. It's a matter of record that leading mainstream theologians taught that Jesus was not eternal, Jesus does not know as much as the Father, Jesus doesn't have the same kind of power, Jesus isn't good in the same way - his goodness depends on the goodness of God, whereas God has his goodness independently. Who am I talking about? Mainstream theologians in the 100s, and in the 200s and even into the 300s. When they came to a text like: "The Father is greater than I", they just said: yes, see: "greater". They didn't say greater with respect to his human nature but equally great with respect to his divine nature". And when he said he didn't know the day or the hour, they said "yes, only God is omniscient". Jesus isn't omniscient, he says he doesn't know something, you don't want to say he's a liar, right? You just don't find most early Christians saying that Jesus is fully divine. You see them saying things that go very clearly against that. Even after they're speculating about the pre-existent logos, the logos is divine, even after they're calling Jesus "our God", they'll turn right around and say the one True God is the Father, and only he is eternal, only he is perfect in knowledge and so on. And as we have just looked at, this claim that Jesus is fully divine is fully loaded with problematic speculations; it always was.

- Dale Tuggy, 2016, http://trinities.org/blog/podcast-145-tis-mystery-immortal-dies/ at ‘Tis Mystery all - 21st Century Reformation Theological Conference 30/04/2016

For me, originally a die-hard exegesis fan (and the die-hard is not dead yet), this argument is very significant. In my paper Trinitarian Interpretations, I argued that if we are right about the early church Fathers not believing that God was Triune, then we have a problem. One of the solutions I considered, which I have never heard argued, is that the inspired 1st century authors were so inspired that they were literally centuries ahead of their subsequent interpreters. Most people prefer to argue that the earlier (Ehrman would call them "proto-orthodox") theologians, were roughly right, but they were less refined or something like that.

I think there are quite a few theologians who believe the conciliar Christologies are basically on track and that this perspective simply takes a very long time to work out (and it is not finished yet, and its various interpretations today are multiple and mutually-incompatible). That might mean that non-triune things are said in the Scriptures, which, if all are to be considered true on a deep level, that you end up with something looking like a form of Trinitarianism. But God set the whole thing up for a huge debate from an obscure beginning in order for it to stand somehow (because it didn't come easily; paradoxically because it was not as blazingly obvious as evangelical apologists like to assume and argue today). That's an argument I'd be more open to: but I think I have another option still. These beliefs about the Triune God began around about the same time the canon was sealed, so to speak. It could be argued that the wrestling and debating going on with regard to canonicity are not independent of the christological wrestling. Had the canon been clearer earlier, then maybe the Triune God perspective would have emerged earlier too. The same church that decided these are the books, is the church that said, this is our Christ.

My position might be considered to drift. It isn't, or hasn't much. I still firmly believe given the lack of clarity and the supreme position of the Scriptures, the close proximity of the church Fathers in terms of chronological interpretive distance, that we have to allow for greater breadth and tolerance and welcome differing views of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. For me, the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit remain central to church life, individual faith and the advancing Kingdom of God. And that has always been the case for me.

This is where the Biblical Unitarian communities, I think, also need to be careful. They can be so sceptical of a whiff of a "divine" Christ, that it could be harder for them (I speculate) to worship Jesus, even if they knew it was to the glory of God the Father, as explicitly stated in Philippians 2.

Let the debate roll on!

Debating the eye-witness testimony behind the gospels

There is a great weekly podcast waiting for you here at Unbelievable! I love this show because it confronts different perspectives on the Christian faith, which encourages honest and personal thinking. When I heard who was on this week's show, I was pretty excited. Actually as you listen through (as I did 4 times!), you can detect some weaknesses I think to both perspectives. Here is my response that I also sent in to the show host.

Dear Justin - thanks for a cracking show.

Read (or rather listened to) Bart's book myself. Absolutely no mention about his previous issues with the state of the "original" text. It's like he abandoned his first baby.

Throughout, both scholars seem to presume that Mark is the first gospel. Is it not a rather large, if not enormous, assumption to assume that the earliest surviving gospel is the first written account? Some scholars like Hurtado have commented on how surprisingly "bookish" early Christianity was.

On Mark, Bart could have made his case stronger than he did: "what we have is a collection of stories" - it is a lot more than a collection of stories! It is a crafted theological and christological piece, therefore not constructed in a way Peter himself would have presented it.

Ehrman's rebuttal to the frequency of Peter references did not seem strong - he pointed to stories of other heroes. But Jesus is the hero, and Peter is certainly not a hero in Mark.

"Historians are very reluctant to interrupt their stories with explanation" - seems to go totally against John's story-telling. Does he not helpfully provide little comments to explain Judaism to his non-Jewish recipients?

Ehrman: "I think it's the best case that can be made but I don't find it at all convincing"! The epitome of a sceptic.

Why should we presume that people thought the sources were directly from apostles: "It's a question of date". Gospel of Thomas was written much later, so different expectations as to historicity. Bart seemed correct here to demand more evidence - Richard really didn't seem to have anything substantial to back up his distinction between living-memory ("oral history") and oral-tradition (vulnerable to Chinese-whispers effect).

On gospel-naming. Early 2nd century writers do not quote the sources for the Jesus sayings they quote. I didn't find Bauckham convincing on the it had to be called something, which seems to pre-suppose that an anonymous document could never truly have been anonymous regardless of its place of use. Could it not be argued that if based on the "first" anonymous gospel, the gospels we know as Luke and Matthew (I place Matthew as late as John), could hardly have claimed less anonymity than their obvious source. 

I wonder if everyone noticed just how many classic Christian assumptions Bauckham is willing to de-bunk on authorship while hanging onto direct apostolic input? Matthew? No. John? No. Revelation? No, not even the same author as John's gospel. 2 Peter? No. I don't know where he stands on the disputed pauline epistles and other books, but it seems like the list is quite long for a conservative scholar. Ehrman doesn't jump on this.

There is a deep disagreement about who can write Greek from Jerusalem - it needs a third opinion.

I have written to Ehrman on this issue of authorship. If authentic-yet-autonomous gospels suddenly needed naming, why Matthew and John? A stronger argument to my mind is that no apocryphal work had arisen - yet - under these names. This could (should?) have been an argument for Bauckham - why would no apocryphal work have arisen under those names during all that time? Perhaps their early authority and apostolic association with those characters meant the names were not for sale.

"Everyone knows that Peter and Paul didn't write gospels". Did they? Bart suddenly ascribes considerable literary knowledge to the Christian community around the Med that seems to go in a totally opposite direction to the story-telling picture he provides. For me, both situations are improbable and we have yet to have a decent narrative to describe:
• Why these four names
• Why the earlier 2nd century authors don't reference the author
• Why there are no references to the mysterious-yet "anonymous" gospels in early church history prior to Irenaeus.

Both authors' reconstructions require them to disagree with some of their favourite early authors.
• Baukham on Papias on Matthew writing in Hebrew
• Ehrman on Justin Martyr (I think on Peter).

We have little from these first two centuries really, and reconstructions assisted by future archaeological finds, still have such a long way to go. It is unfortunate, perhaps, that in the context of debate and the pressure on authors to provide such comprehensive narratives, that this simple and humbling reality is not more clearly staked out.

There you go - a somewhat critical response to both!
Can't wait for part 2!

John B

Reflection and debate, a time to talk and a time to listen

One gift I feel certain God has not given me is debate. I can quickly feel insecure by an opposing view and can withhold helpful information to the "challenger". Yet I can also bore people for a long time if there is a willing and neutral ear! Yet true exchange can lead to much progress.

Here are a couple of links that you should find helpful in preparing yourself for fruitful exchange:

Dustin Smith
https://dustinmartyr.wordpress.com/2014/07/01/does-anyone-ever-admit-to-proof-texting-a-call-for-humble-dialogue/

Dale Tuggy says:
Did you know that God has even given us the means to argue against him?
But we use our ability as a "weapon of self-exaltation"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P9egQVqPuWU