Saturday, June 18, 2005

The Empty Tomb on XTALK

I thought I'd take a break from inputting grades to respond to some of the talk on XTALK about the Empty Tomb. Loren Rossen argues:

"Visions without the empty tomb do not account for a resurrection belief; Tom Wright has hammered this point home repeatedly."

The reason Wright has to keep repeating this is because it is a faulty argument refuted by the reality of believer behavior. Elvis is dead and buried, but fans still see him. Rossen himself acknowledges the way belief denies reality in his remarks on Carrier's piece:

Carrier goes on to make interesting analogies to the rumor of theft reported in Mt 28:15, suggesting that Matthew blames the rumor on conspiracy ("the Jews' desire to conceal the truth") in the same way that the Heaven's Gate cult claimed the proof against their imminent spacecraft to be the conspiratal work of an earth traitor. And just as Matthew accuses Jews of paying off guards, the survivors of Jonestown accused the government of fabricating evidence and paying off forensic doctors to fabricate evidence which made them look bad. This is perhaps more plausible than many of the pious would today be comfortable acknowledging.
Repetition is one way that bad arguments like Wright's seem acceptable.

Meanwhile, inspired by the Empty Tomb, Lee Edgar Tyler writes on Price:

I recently re-read Price's article "

It is, I must say, a pretty sorry excuse for argumentation. And I am predisposed toward his conclusions, at least most of them. When a person purporting to support objective scholarship indulges in such polemics, he does more harm than good to all sides of the debate. I could go on, but I think the essay (which begins with a comparison of the Christ of evangelical Christians to the comic book character Superboy) speaks for itself. Or not.

This is, I must say, a pretty sorry excuse for argumentation. When a person purporting to support objective scholarship indulges in such polemics, he does more harm than good. I think Tyler's rhetorical polemics here speaks for themselves: Price is less interested in the comparison of Superboy to Jesus than in comparing the efforts of Superboy to vindicate his own legend to the efforts of modern apologists to save the Jesus of myth:

I remember a particular Superboy comic book in which the Boy of Steel somehow discovers that in the future, he is thought to be as mythical as Peter Pan and Santa Claus. Indignant at this turn of events, he flies at faster than light speed and enters the future to set the record straight. He does a few super-deeds and vindicates himself, then comes home. So Superboy winds up having the last laugh --or does he?

Of course, it is only fiction! The people in the future were quite right! Superboy is just as mythical as Santa Claus and Peter Pan.

This seems to me a close parallel to the efforts of Christian apologists to vindicate as sober history the story of a supernatural savior who was born of a virgin, healed the sick, raised the dead, changed water into wine, walked on water, rose from the grave and ascended bodily into the sky.

I used to think, when I myself was a Christian apologist, a defender of the evangelical faith, that I had done a pretty respectable job of vindicating that story as history. I brought to bear a variety of arguments I now recognize to be fallacious, such as the supposed closeness of the gospels to the events they record, their ostensibly use of eyewitness testimony, etc. Now, in retrospect, I judge that my efforts were about as effective in the end as Superboy's! When all is said and done, he remains a fiction.[emphasis mine]
In any case, it's a sad rhetorical trick to invite others to agree that someone must be a bad arguer by appealing to their sense of indignation that someone would dare to compare Superboy to their particular Sacred Character from the Past.




Wednesday, June 15, 2005

The Empty Tomb

Of course, as soon as I note that my posting will slacken, I must immediately post...

Pursuant to my review, Loren Rossen has a totally different take on the book on XTALK. Enjoy!

It's Finals Week...

I'll be in absentia for the next few days as I take care of the administrative side of teaching....man, I hate it when my work interferes with my hobby. In the meantime, enjoy some beautiful central Taiwan scenery







Sunday, June 12, 2005

Book Review: The Empty Tomb

The Empty Tomb: Jesus Beyond The Grave
by Robert M. Price (Editor), Jeffery Jay Lowder (Editor) 545 pages
Publisher: Prometheus Books (April 5, 2005)

The Empty Tomb is a collection of 15 essays by skeptical scholars on the historicity of the Empty Tomb and the Resurrection. Some two-thirds of the essays have been published in the past several years, but there are also several new works, including Richard Carrier's brilliant 100-page essay that spans the middle of the book, and completely redeems whatever weaknesses the volume may have.

The book is aimed squarely at the arguments of Christian apologists, a notion that sat very uncomfortably with the critic from Publisher's Weekly on Amazon.com, who obviously lacked both the knowledge and the patience to deal with the diversity of approaches in the book, and did not seemed to understand it at all, a fact which apparently bred resentment rather than admiration. The essays fall more or less into two groups, a set of a half dozen essays on philosophy and methodology, and another group that focuses strongly on the texts themselves, and the evidence they offer, as well as their historical and social context. The work is accessible to layman who are willing to make the effort to interact with the often complex and detailed theoretical, methodological, and evidential aspects of it.

The volume begins with three essays that explore the Resurrection from the historical and theological point of view. Robert Cavin's essay asks whether there is sufficient historical evidence to establish the resurrection of Jesus. Cavin's essay is actually an exploration of what it means to ask this question, breaking out the underlying assumptions of what "the Resurrection" means in great detail.

This is followed by Michael Martin's essay on Bayes' Theorem and the Resurrection as initially improbable. Martin explains things very clearly, and the essay is not difficult to follow. Martin makes a clever move in arguing that not only is the initial probability of the Resurrection low on the assumptions of naturalism, it is also low even if we allow supernatural events. Theodore M. Drange rounds out the opening section with a discussion of Christian theology and the Resurrection. This short essay is a response to the claims of the 19th century theologian Charles Hodge, demolishing them point by point.

The fourth article, Robert Price's article on the famous passage in 1 Cor 15 as an interpolation, begins a section that focuses on the textual evidence for the resurrection, and on early Christian history.

By far the best article in the collection is the next one, Richard Carrier's long essay on the spiritual body of Christ and the legend of the empty tomb. From the title and opening lines one might expect a dull discussion of the theology of risen bodies, but Carrier develops his theme with great fecundity, drawing evidence from ever farther afield and offering numerous insights into the gospel texts. In addition to solid methodological and textual viewpoints, Carrier's work is always full of insightful tidbits, and this one is no exception. Like me, the reader no doubt kick himself when he realizes how many times he has read Plutarch's Life of Romulus yet never spotted the parallel to the arrest scene in the Garden of Gethsemane. In addition to rapier thrusts like that into the heart of the Jesus legend, Carrier also bludgeons it with Orphic and other parallels. Unlike many who present evidence from the so-called history of religions school, Carrier is restrained in his presentation, and entirely free of the kind of triumphalism that has plagued adherents of that school of Jesus-critique. This is one essay that is destined to become a classic.

If Carrier is the brilliant Rommel, ranging across his enemy's flanks at will and unimpeded, Peter Kirby, the writer of the next piece, complements him perfectly as the competent, sturdy NCO who must direct the small-unit battles. Kirby's piece is a detailed review of the evidence from the Gospel texts, showing how it is most likely they are fictive constructions. Kirby's workmanlike piece is buttressed by copious references to a wide variety of scholarship, and should become a key source for anyone writing on this topic.

Jeffery Jay Lowder then follows with a demolition of William Lane Craig's writing on the Empty Tomb. The more-style-than-substance arguments of Craig, a well-known debater and Christian apologist, are ruthlessly exposed by Lowder in this piece.

"Taming the Tehom" is Evan Fales deconstruction of the Matthean version of the Resurrection account. Fales reads Matthew in light of both the Jonah story, other Bible legends, and myths and stories from across the Ancient Near East.

A short essay by Richard Carrier then discusses the plausibility of the theft of the body. This is also a response to apologist William Craig. Carrier shows that far from being history, Matthew's story is constructed off of Daniel 6. This piece, though only a few pages, is written in Carrier's clear and insightful style and is well worth a look.

Carrier follows this with another information-packed discussion of Jesus' burial in light of Jewish law. In this essay, a version of which was posted to Internet Infidels a while back, Carrier's review not only shows how fiction is the more plausible option for the origin of the story, but also locates the 'three-day" motif within the prescriptions of Jewish law.

Duncan and Derrett propose a model for the origin of the Resurrection story in their next piece, oddly entitled "Financial Aspects of the Resurrection." They argue that the story of the Resurrection and Ascension was invented because of the benefits it brought to the disciples and the new religion.

Robert Price's piece on William Craig's apologetics follows. This piece, highly polemical, is also very enjoyable. Price's essay dissects the underlying apologetic motives that drive 'scholarship' on the empty tomb and the Resurrection, showing how apologetics continues to inform, and distort, scholarly work on the topic.

Keith Parsons closes the long section on the nuts and bolts of New Testament texts, history, and related scholarship behind with an essay that argues that hallucinations could account for the post-Resurrection appearances of Jesus. Parsons shows that apologists' objections to this theory are uninformed and poorly-argued.

Michael Martin is up next with a response to Swinburne's absurd argument that it is highly probable that Jesus was God incarnate and really was Resurrected from the dead. Martin, like Swinburne a professional philosopher, shows that Swinburne's claim is incoherent on almost every level.

Evan Fales then finishes with a philosophical look at Alvin Plantinga, reformed epistemology, and Biblical scholarship. Despite its formidable title, the piece is an accessible study of how a major Christian philosopher goes about attempting to discredit modern Bible scholarship so that he can continue clinging to beliefs that have been shown to be wrong by modern scholarship. Fales steers surehandedly through a difficult thicket of philosophical and methodological troubles.

The essays in this volume are all of very high quality and there is something here for readers of every taste. Skeptics in search of ammunition will find a plentiful supply. This idea of themed essays around topics of interest to skeptical views of early Christian history has great potential, and I look forward to further compilations of this nature from Price and Lowder.

Friday, June 10, 2005

Bart Ehrman on Da Vinci Code

Bible & Interpretation had a pointer to Bart Ehrman's interview on Beliefnet about the Da Vinci Code. Interesting opening comment from the always clear Dr. Ehrman:

The difficulty I had reading through "The Da Vinci Code" with that in mind was that most of the descriptions of ancient documents, in fact, are not factual—they’re part of his fiction. But people reading the book aren't equipped to separate the fact from the fiction.

But Dr. E! That's true of the Bible too.....people are no more equipped to pare fact from fiction in that set of texts than in the Da Vinci Code.....it's interesting to see the level of effort scholars are putting into responding to a piece of modern fiction about the Bible. One wonders why so much energy is expended on setting people straight on the Da Vinci Code, but so much less on outreach to the public on the nature of the Biblical texts themselves, and on separating fact from fiction in those texts. I interact with lay Christians every day on this topic, and it is simply astounding how little people know about them. Perhaps if scholars had put more energy into educating people originally, they wouldn't have to spend so much time setting the record straight on the Da Vinci Code.....

Which reminds me. If you haven't put your articles on the Internet, NT scholars, it is never too late!

Thursday, June 09, 2005

What Really Killed Jesus? Mark 15 Redux

XTALK, the historical Jesus and early Christianity discussion group, has been discussing a recent article in the Jerusalem Post....Jim West originally posted the link:

>A clot on the lung, not blood loss.
>
> the JP has the story
>
>

> Jim

KILMON: Normally crucifixion was a long agonizing death, often taking days and prolongation by offering liquid was part of the process. That Jesus died within a few hours while those crucified with him required crurifragium is certainly indicative of some acute pathology resulting from the severity of Jesus' "special handling." A pulmonary embolism is, of course, very likely. My opinion, however, leans toward hemothorax caused by the intense concussive assault of the flagrum.

The Crucifixion scene of Jesus is a Markan fiction, a composition tinkered with by the other presenters of the writer's brilliant story. The idea that one could derive such detailed medical knowledge from the fictional construction of the writer of Mark is absurd.

Let's take a look again at the structure of the Crucifixion (blogged earlier here). The Crucifixion scene, as the writer originally presented it, begins, as all Markan structures do, with a scene change.

And they led him out to crucify him. And they compelled a passer-by, Simon of Cyre'ne, who was coming in from the country, the father of Alexander and Rufus, to carry his cross. And they brought him to the place called Gol'gotha (which means the place of a skull).(RSV)

This is the A bracket of a very large structure. Its complement is Mk 15:40-1.

There were also women looking on from afar, among whom were Mary Mag'dalene, and Mary the mother of James the younger and of Joses, and Salo'me, who, when he was in Galilee, followed him, and ministered to him; and also many other women who came up with him to Jerusalem.

At first glance these do not appear related. Let's break out the parallels:

A: And they led him out to crucify him. And they compelled a passer-by, Simon of Cyre'ne.... the father of Alexander and Rufus,
A': There were also women looking on from afar, among whom were Mary Mag'dalene, and Mary the mother of James the younger and of Joses, and Salo'me,

Here three men oppose three women, and a father of two sons opposes a mother of two sons.

A: who was coming in from the country,
A': when he was in Galilee,

Here
country is opposed to Galilee. Simon functions as another double of Jesus, coming in from the country to Jerusalem.

A: to carry his cross.
A': followed him, and ministered to him;

Basically, whoever wants to follow Jesus should take up his cross, and the parallel is perfect here.

A: And they brought him to the place called Gol'gotha (which means the place of a skull).
A': and also many other women who came up with him to Jerusalem.


Golgotha opposes Jerusalem. The writer of Mark does not make Golgotha a hill, though that can be deduced from the meaning of the word. If one thinks of Golgotha as a mount of some kind, we have the common ANE theme of the Cosmic Mountain opposing the City of Zion. But that is probably pushing it too far.

Now we have our A and A' brackets.


A....And they led him out to crucify him. And they compelled a passer-by, Simon of Cyre'ne, who was coming in from the country, the father of Alexander and Rufus, to carry his cross.And they brought him to the place called Gol'gotha (which means the place of a skull).

A'
...There were also women looking on from afar, among whom were Mary Mag'dalene, and Mary the mother of James the younger and of Joses, and Salo'me, who, when he was in Galilee, followed him, and ministered to him; and also many other women who came up with him to Jerusalem.

The B and B' brackets are similarly constructed of opposing elements. While the A-A' set consists of personal names that are most probably fictional, the elements in B-B' appear to be fictions created out of the OT.

B And they offered him wine mingled with myrrh; but he did not take it. And they crucified him, and divided his garments among them, casting lots for them, to decide what each should take

B' And some of the bystanders hearing it said, "Behold, he is calling Eli'jah."And one ran and, filling a sponge full of vinegar, put it on a reed and gave it to him to drink, saying, "Wait, let us see whether Eli'jah will come to take him down." And Jesus uttered a loud cry, and breathed his last. And the curtain of the temple was torn in two, from top to bottom. And when the centurion, who stood facing him, saw that he thus breathed his last, he said, "Truly this man was the Son of God!"

These two brackets roll in ABCD and roll out DCBA. They actually pair off like this.

And they offered him wine mingled with myrrh; but he did not take it.
And some of the bystanders hearing it said, "Behold, he is calling Eli'jah."And one ran and, filling a sponge full of vinegar, put it on a reed and gave it to him to drink, saying, "Wait, let us see whether Eli'jah will come to take him down."

And they crucified him,
And Jesus uttered a loud cry, and breathed his last.

and divided his garments among them, casting lots for them, to decide what each should take
And the curtain of the temple was torn in two, from top to bottom.

[verse missing, probably resembled Matthew 27:36. See previous blog entry on this]
And when the centurion, who stood facing him, saw that he thus breathed his last, he said, "Truly this man was the Son of God!"
Nothing can be deduced from these details, medically or historically, because the writer has drawn them from the OT.

Our structure now looks like this:

A....And they led him out to crucify him. And they compelled a passer-by, Simon of Cyre'ne, who was coming in from the country, the father of Alexander and Rufus, to carry his cross.And they brought him to the place called Gol'gotha (which means the place of a skull).

.....B..A...And they offered him wine mingled with myrrh; but he did not take it.
..........B...And they crucified him,
..........C...and divided his garments among them, casting lots for them, to decide what each should take
..........D...[
then they sat down and kept watch over him there]

.....B'.A.. And some of the bystanders hearing it said, "Behold, he is calling Eli'jah."And one ran and, filling a sponge full of vinegar, put it on a reed and gave it to him to drink, saying, "Wait, let us see whether Eli'jah will come to take him down."
..........B...And Jesus uttered a loud cry, and breathed his last.
..........C...And the curtain of the temple was torn in two, from top to bottom.
..........D...And when the centurion, who stood facing him, saw that he thus breathed his last, he said, "Truly this man was the Son of God!"

A'...There were also women looking on from afar, among whom were Mary Mag'dalene, and Mary the mother of James the younger and of Joses, and Salo'me, who, when he was in Galilee, followed him, and ministered to him; and also many other women who came up with him to Jerusalem.

The next two brackets (for the rules for forming brackets, see the excursus at the end of Chapter 1 of my Commentary on Mark)

...............C...And it was the third hour, when they crucified him.

...............C'..And at the ninth hour Jesus cried with a loud voice, "E'lo-i, E'lo-i, la'ma sabach-tha'ni?" which means, "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?"

The oppositions are strongly thematic. Our accumulating structure looks like this now:

A....And they led him out to crucify him. And they compelled a passer-by, Simon of Cyre'ne, who was coming in from the country, the father of Alexander and Rufus, to carry his cross.And they brought him to the place called Gol'gotha (which means the place of a skull).

.....B..A...And they offered him wine mingled with myrrh; but he did not take it.
..........B...And they crucified him,
..........C...and divided his garments among them, casting lots for them, to decide what each should take
..........D...[
then they sat down and kept watch over him there]

...............C...And it was the third hour, when they crucified him.

...............C'..And at the ninth hour Jesus cried with a loud voice, "E'lo-i, E'lo-i, la'ma sabach-tha'ni?" which means, "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?"

.....B'.A.. And some of the bystanders hearing it said, "Behold, he is calling Eli'jah."And one ran and, filling a sponge full of vinegar, put it on a reed and gave it to him to drink, saying, "Wait, let us see whether Eli'jah will come to take him down."
..........B...And Jesus uttered a loud cry, and breathed his last.
..........C...And the curtain of the temple was torn in two, from top to bottom.
..........D...And when the centurion, who stood facing him, saw that he thus breathed his last, he said, "Truly this man was the Son of God!"

A'...There were also women looking on from afar, among whom were Mary Mag'dalene, and Mary the mother of James the younger and of Joses, and Salo'me, who, when he was in Galilee, followed him, and ministered to him; and also many other women who came up with him to Jerusalem.

The next set of brackets is also related, but not as clearly as the last pair.

..................D...And the inscription of the charge against him read, "The King of the Jews."

..................D'..And when the sixth hour had come, there was darkness over the whole land until the ninth hour.

Here first men acknowledge Jesus King, and then the Heavens acknowledge his royal/divine nature.


A....And they led him out to crucify him. And they compelled a passer-by, Simon of Cyre'ne, who was coming in from the country, the father of Alexander and Rufus, to carry his cross.And they brought him to the place called Gol'gotha (which means the place of a skull).
.....B..A...And they offered him wine mingled with myrrh; but he did not take it.
..........B...And they crucified him,
..........C...and divided his garments among them, casting lots for them, to decide what each should take
..........D...[
then they sat down and kept watch over him there]

...............C...And it was the third hour, when they crucified him.

....................D...And the inscription of the charge against him read, "The King of the Jews."

....................D'..And when the sixth hour had come, there was darkness over the whole land until the ninth hour.

...............C'..And at the ninth hour Jesus cried with a loud voice, "E'lo-i, E'lo-i, la'ma sabach-tha'ni?" which means, "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?"

.....B'.A.. And some of the bystanders hearing it said, "Behold, he is calling Eli'jah."And one ran and, filling a sponge full of vinegar, put it on a reed and gave it to him to drink, saying, "Wait, let us see whether Eli'jah will come to take him down."
..........B...And Jesus uttered a loud cry, and breathed his last.
..........C...And the curtain of the temple was torn in two, from top to bottom.
..........D...And when the centurion, who stood facing him, saw that he thus breathed his last, he said, "Truly this man was the Son of God!"

A'...There were also women looking on from afar, among whom were Mary Mag'dalene, and Mary the mother of James the younger and of Joses, and Salo'me, who, when he was in Galilee, followed him, and ministered to him; and also many other women who came up with him to Jerusalem.

Like many Markan structures, this one has a very complex twinned center with an ABBA structure, a common one. It was studying this one that enabled me to grasp the rules dictating how the writer had structured each scene in his Gospel. The center consists of paired oppositions that are easy to grasp:

......................E...A And with him they crucified two robbers, one on his right and one on his left.

................................B And those who passed by derided him, wagging their heads, and saying, "Aha! You who would destroy the temple and build it in three days, save yourself, and come down from the cross!"

......................E'.......B So also the chief priests mocked him to one another with the scribes, saying, "He saved others; he cannot save himself. Let the Christ, the King of Israel, come down now from the cross, that we may see and believe."
...........................A Those who were crucified with him also reviled him.

The A brackets refer to the thieves, the B brackets to others who mocked him. Here again the details are drawn from the Psalms and elsewhere in the OT. The complete structure looks like this:


A....And they led him out to crucify him. And they compelled a passer-by, Simon of Cyre'ne, who was coming in from the country, the father of Alexander and Rufus, to carry his cross.And they brought him to the place called Gol'gotha (which means the place of a skull).

.....B..A...And they offered him wine mingled with myrrh; but he did not take it.
..........B...And they crucified him,
..........C...and divided his garments among them, casting lots for them, to decide what each should take
..........D...[
then they sat down and kept watch over him there]

...............C...And it was the third hour, when they crucified him.

....................D...And the inscription of the charge against him read, "The King of the Jews."

.........................E...A. And with him they crucified two robbers, one on his right and one on his left.

...................................B And those who passed by derided him, wagging their heads, and saying, "Aha! You who would destroy the temple and build it in three days, save yourself, and come down from the cross!"

.........................E'.......B So also the chief priests mocked him to one another with the scribes, saying, "He saved others; he cannot save himself. Let the Christ, the King of Israel, come down now from the cross, that we may see and believe."
...........................A. Those who were crucified with him also reviled him.

....................D'..And when the sixth hour had come, there was darkness over the whole land until the ninth hour.

...............C'..And at the ninth hour Jesus cried with a loud voice, "E'lo-i, E'lo-i, la'ma sabach-tha'ni?" which means, "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?"

.....B'.A.. And some of the bystanders hearing it said, "Behold, he is calling Eli'jah."And one ran and, filling a sponge full of vinegar, put it on a reed and gave it to him to drink, saying, "Wait, let us see whether Eli'jah will come to take him down."
..........B...And Jesus uttered a loud cry, and breathed his last.
..........C...And the curtain of the temple was torn in two, from top to bottom.
..........D...And when the centurion, who stood facing him, saw that he thus breathed his last, he said, "Truly this man was the Son of God!"

A'...There were also women looking on from afar, among whom were Mary Mag'dalene, and Mary the mother of James the younger and of Joses, and Salo'me, who, when he was in Galilee, followed him, and ministered to him; and also many other women who came up with him to Jerusalem.

There can be no question that this is fiction. Its structure is clearly contrived, and the origin of its details lies in the Old Testament. Any claim that anything like medical or historical accuracy can be deduced from this structure is indefensible.

Wednesday, June 08, 2005

Mark and Q, Part 3 (reblogged due to technical difficulties)

...if these coincidences were explained by the Markan knowledge of Q. At first sight the similar divergences of Matthew and Luke from Mark give reason to believe that Mark is not their only common source. The deviations from Mark are then explained by means of Q. But, as soon as Q is reconstructed, one should conclude that it was also Mark's source. So far as I see, this result simply contradicts the premise, which should consequently lead to a re-evaluation of the premise. That is to say, if Mark used Q as a source, Q can no longer be reconstructed only on the basis of Matthew and Luke"(Dunderberg 1995, p502).
I have decided that the AntiQues are correct and there is no Q. Basically, I've come to the conclusion that Mark is Q, so to speak: it was Mark's use/invention of chreia that inspired Matthew to go out and get even more. And then Luke copied Matthew....

This is the third post of a series that attempts to show that the Ba'al-zebub reference in Mark 3 provides evidence that Mark is the original author of this passage. I previously blogged on the Beelzebub reference in Mark 3, which apparently contains at least one Markan theme. I would now like to identify another stylistic feature of Markan usage that appears in all three Synoptic gospels that strongly suggests that the originator of the Ba'al-Zebub story is in fact the writer of Mark. In the blog entry on Markan Interreferences I pointed out a feature of the writer: he tends to cite passages in one place that he parallels elsewhere in the Gospel. Here in Mark 3:20-30 is a good example of that.


Recall that the term "Be-el'zebul" occurs only once in the Old Testament, in 2 Kings 1. The complete sequence of 2 Kings 1:1-8 runs:

1: After Ahab's death, Moab rebelled against Israel. 2: Now Ahaziah had fallen through the lattice of his upper room in Samaria and injured himself. So he sent messengers, saying to them, "Go and consult Baal-Zebub, the god of Ekron, to see if I will recover from this injury." 3: But the angel of the LORD said to Elijah the Tishbite, "Go up and meet the messengers of the king of Samaria and ask them, 'Is it because there is no God in Israel that you are going off to consult Baal-Zebub, the god of Ekron?' 4: Therefore this is what the LORD says: 'You will not leave the bed you are lying on. You will certainly die!' " So Elijah went. 5: When the messengers returned to the king, he asked them, "Why have you come back?" 6: "A man came to meet us," they replied. "And he said to us, 'Go back to the king who sent you and tell him, "This is what the LORD says: Is it because there is no God in Israel that you are sending men to consult Baal-Zebub, the god of Ekron? Therefore you will not leave the bed you are lying on. You will certainly die!" 7: The king asked them, "What kind of man was it who came to meet you and told you this?" 8: They replied, "He was a man with a garment of hair and with a leather belt around his waist." The king said, "That was Elijah the Tishbite." (NIV)


There are numerous mentions of demons Old Testament, some more than once, in addition to the Jewish apocryphal literature such as 1 Enoch and texts like The Testament of Solomon. Why pick this one? The mention of Ba'al-Zebub is a like a flare launched out of the Old Testament to attract the reader back to 2 Kings (although in the LXX of Kings the name is slightly different). There are reader will discover that the writer of Mark has paralleled this passage twice before in his Gospel. First, in Mk 1:1-8, he uses it to describe John the Baptist:

2 Kings 1:8
8: They replied, "He was a man with a garment of hair and with a leather belt around his waist." The king said, "That was Elijah the Tishbite." (NIV)

Mark 1:6
6: Now John was clothed with camel's hair, and had a leather girdle around his waist, and ate locusts and wild honey.


Next, in the conflict story of Mk 2:1-12, the writer offers us a version of the death of King Ahaziah (Price 2000). The paralytic is lowered through the roof, while the King falls through a lattice. The paralytic is healed because he has faith in Jesus, while the King dies because he does not have faith in God. The writer is using the story in 2 Kings to comment on the story he is writing, a splendid example of his hypertextual skills. The mention of Ba'al-Zebub is there to make sure that we do what generations of readers have done, go back to 2 Kings and see what it says there, and then reflect back on the story of the writer of Mark. Note that in 2 Kings 1:8, it is the King himself who identifies Elijah. The writer of Mark probably wants the reader to go back and complete the quotation and thus find out who John is.

In sum, Mk 3:22 presents us with a textbook example of a Markan interreference, a stylistic feature that is a creation of the hand of Mark. That has certain implications for the Mark-Q overlaps.

Both of these passages, Mark 3:20-3:30 (Beelzebub Controversy) and Mark 2:1-12 (Healing of the Paralytic) are preserved in the Gospels of Matthew and Luke, who got them from Mark. Matthew dropped the sequence about being the paralytic being lowered through the roof.

According to Fledderman (2001), the writer of Mark derived this from Q, based on the facts that (1) the material shared with Q is in the same order; (2) the Markan version has features derived from Q; and (3), the rhetorical question "How can Satan cast out Satan?" is derived from elements in the Q controversy; and, (4) the author of Mark combined two Q sayings. Fledderman notes three additional facts: that Mark's version is shorter, that the parts are scattered all over Q, and that there are no parts of Mark's text without a Q counterpart. Fledderman also observes that the Markan elements are scattered all over Q, and that there are no parts that do not have a Q counterpart. "Everything in Mark comes from Q" he tersely concludes (p27). Fledderman also claims that the charge that Jesus is possessed by Ba'al-Zebub comes from the claim in Q that John was possessed of a demon.

Let's examine these from the point of view of the typical behavior of the author of Mark. As the last shall be first, let's start with the claim that the writer of Mark derived his idea of Jesus' demon possession from Q. The Q-text Matt 11:18 (Luke 7:33) says:

16: “To what can I compare this generation? They are like children sitting in the marketplaces and calling out to others: 17: “ ‘We played the flute for you,
and you did not dance; we sang a dirge
and you did not mourn.’
18: For John came neither eating nor drinking, and they say, ‘He has a demon.’ 19: The Son of Man came eating and drinking, and they say, ‘Here is a glutton and a drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and “sinners.” ’ But wisdom is proved right by her actions.”


Fledderman is claiming essentially that the writer of Mark saw this in a text that was later used by Matthew and Luke, and copied it over to Jesus. Recall that the Christology of the writer of Mark is Adoptionist. Let's envision two scenarios:


1. The writer of Mark needs a story to explain that the family was upset by their child's sudden imagining that he is the Adopted Son of God (see commentary on Mk 3:20-30 for further comments). He invents a story about people claiming that Ba'al-Zebub is possessing Jesus, selecting that particular demon out of the many in the Jewish literature and tradition of antiquity in the usual Markan style referring back to passages he has already paralleled. Further, the writer enjoys hiding ironic truths in errors of indentification by the characters, especially Jesus' opponents, in his gospel -- Jesus is in fact possessed, but by God, not by a demon. Later on Matthew picks up the story from Mark. Matthew's Christology is "higher" -- he thinks Jesus is God's Son from the beginning, so there can be no hint that Jesus is possessed by a demon. Therefore he transfers the demon to John, who after all is only a human and in any case a rival of Jesus. Not having any particular reason to prefer Ba'al-Zebub over other demons, Matthew does away with the name -- he has also eliminated the parallel to 2 Kings 1 in his story about the paralytic -- and simply refers to an unnamed "demon." Always willing to play Salieri to Mark's Mozart, Matthew thus eliminates the dancing Markan irony in favor of lurching Matthean didacticism.
2. The writer of Q invents or preserves a story about people claiming John is possessed by a demon (why?). Matthew incorporates it into his Gospel. Meanwhile the writer of Mark discovers Q. Ignoring the rich vein of material in Q so much like the other sayings he preserves, he zeroes in on this offhand remark about John and realizes he can use it for his story about Jesus' family. What a coincidence, eh? He can even use the name 'Ba'al-Zebub' which by happy chance can refer back to two earlier episodes in the Gospel. What luck! And even better, Jesus possessed by a demon is richly ironic, given the writer's Adoptionist Christology.


In case 1, the inclusion of Ba'al-Zebub is the result of the writer of Mark's careful craftsmanship. In case 2, it is the result of a lucky discovery in Q.

The remaining items do not constitute an argument either for or against Markan dependence on Q. The fact that Markan elements are scattered all over Q, and that there are no parts that do not have a Q counterpart, is explainable in a more parimonious fashion through Matthew's dependence on Mark. One need only glance at the passage above to note that Matthew has yoked a charge of being a glutton, derived ultimately from Mk 2:13-17 and before that, perhaps from Galatians, to the charge that John has a demon from Q. No matter which way we opt, for Markan priority and no Q, or Q priority and Markan dependence on Q, we are still stuck with an author taking passages from all over sources and sticking them together to make new passages. "Scattered material" cannot be an argument against anything.

The remaining arguments of Fledderman are explainable under either interpretive framework. If the material shared with Q is in the same order, surely that reflects Matthean dependence on Mark, which we already know is a fact. If the Markan version has features derived from Q that can hardly be surprising, since Matthew copied Mark. This same fact also explains how the rhetorical question "How can Satan cast out Satan?" is derived from elements in the Q controversy. One might note that on p25 Fledderman states: "If we examine Mark's version of the Beelzebub controversy, we note a conscious design that bears Mark's imprint." I couldn't agree more.

A further problem with Fledderman's thesis is that "Beelzebub" pops up in all three versions of the controversy. Matthew, Mark, and Luke all have it:

The problem is plain. On Fledderman's thesis, Matthew and Luke derived these sequences from Q rather than from Mark. But if that is the case, what is Q doing with "Beelzebub" in it? In the Gospel of Mark "Beelzebub" fits into a rich system of allusions to the OT arranged by the writer of Mark, and is a Markan stylistic feature (interreference) like approximately a dozen similar features elsewhere in the Gospel. These allusions were not incorporated into Matthew (Matthew drops the story of the paralytic being lowered through the roof), so what is the name "Beelzebub" doing in Matthew? Any of several demons or an unnamed demon will do just as well. Unless it came to Matthew through Mark, there is no reason for it to be there at all. The word "Beelzebub" is a finger that points directly to the writer of Mark, and to Markan creativity in the heart of Q.

Friday, June 03, 2005

Book Review: Atwill, Caesar's Messiah

Caesar's Messiah : The Roman Conspiracy to Invent Jesus
by Joseph Atwill. 256 pages Ulysses Press (April 15, 2005),

The last few years have seen the publication of three books arguing that the Jesus story is really the story of a Roman Emperor. These include Jesus was Caesar: On the Julian origin of Christianity, an Investigative Report, by Francesco Carotta, and Gary Courtney's Et tu, Judas? Then Fall Jesus!, both of which argue that that the Jesus story is based on the story of Julius Caesar, and Joseph Atwill's Caesar's Messiah, which makes the case that the Jesus story is the story of Titus. Of these, Caesar's Messiah is by far the best. While Carotta's work virtually ignores modern New Testament scholarship, Atwill is cognizant of it, though he does not locate his narrative within the scholarly paradigms. Caesar’s Messiah reads the texts closely, has a fresh perspective, and many original insights. The result is a book that is informative and challenging, and will repay even those readers who reject his main thesis.

Atwill's main thesis is actually a combination of several ideas. First, he argues that the stories of Jesus in the New Testament are actually stories of Titus' campaign through Galilee and the destruction of Jerusalem and its Temple. In this reading, the Gospels are clever satires created by the Flavian Emperors and their supporters. They thus function on the surface as religious tales, but the underlying story is actually a huge in-joke. Second, he argues that Josephus and the New Testament are essentially two sides of the same coin, one written in intimate relationship to the other. For example, discussing the sequence with the demoniac in Gadara/Gergasa, Atwill writes:

"The reason that the New Testament’s demoniac of Gadara can be seen as a satire on Josephus’ “tyrant” John and the battle at Gadara is simply because the two stories follow the same plot outline. In other words, the characters and events that can be seen as parallel occur in the same sequence. And it all occurs near Gadara. The satirical version in the New Testament tells the same story that Josephus does but, as is often the case with satire, the characters have different names."(p65)

In addition to the idea of satire and the close relationship between the NT and Josephus, this passage highlights another important theme of Atwill's: the importance of name switching among these texts. Discussing the famous passage about Jesus in Josephus, Atwill writes, citing Josephus himself:

"To solve the puzzle the reader must simply do as Decius Mundus recommends in the following chapter and 'value not this business of names.'"(p217)

The importance of this work lies in the originality of its reading of Josephus against the New Testament. Here Atwill's work resembles that of Cliff Carrington and other exegetes who have come to the conclusion that there is something highly suspicious about the way the two bodies of work are related. Atwill's strength is that not only has he pushed this line of insight farther than anyone else, he has constructed a full-fledged model to explain why this relationship exists. Hence, a good alternate title for this work might well have been There's Something Funky about the New Testament and Josephus.

After reviewing the history of the day, and exploring the links between the Flavians and early Christianity, Atwill lays out his thesis at the end of Chapter 2:

"The Gospels were designed to become apparent as satire as soon as they were read in conjunction with War of the Jews. In fact, the four Gospels and War of the Jews were created as a unified piece of literature whose characters and stories interact. Their interaction gives many of Jesus’ sayings a comical meaning and also creates a series of puzzles whose solutions reveal the real identities of the New Testament’s characters. Understanding the New Testament’s comic level reveals, for example, that the Apostles Simon and John were cruel lampoons of Simon and John, the leaders of the Jewish rebellion."(p36)

Atwill concludes this chapter with a discussion of Mark 1 and Mark 5 and parallels to Titus’ first battle on the shores of the Sea of Galilee.

Chapter 3 gives us Atwill’s discussion of the strange tale of Cannibal Mary. For readers who have read Josephus many times, Atwill’s claim that she represents a parody of Christianity will come as a shock. Yet it is hard to see a woman named Mary who kills and eats her son in the manner of a Passover sacrifice as anything but a satire on the tale of Jesus as told in the Gospels. Atwill observes that the words in her mouth were placed there by Josephus, and if read as a satire on Christianity, they take on a new and portentous meaning:

“As to the war with the Romans, if they preserve our lives, we must be slaves. This famine also will destroy us, even before that slavery comes upon us. Yet are these seditious rogues more terrible than both the other. Come on; be thou my food, and be thou a fury to these seditious varlets, and a by-word to the world, which is all that is now wanting to complete the calamities of us Jews.”(Whiston translation, cited on p46)

Why should anyone roasting and eating their own child expect it to be a “by-word to the world” and a fury to the “seditious varlets,” the Jewish rebels? As Atwill points out, if this scene were in a piece of modern literature, it would instantly be seen by everyone as a parody of Christianity. Nor is Atwill the first scholar to have had this insight into the passage, for Honora H. Chapman noted parallels between the 'Cannibal Mary passage' in Josephus and the symbolic Passover Lamb of the Gospels in her SBL seminar paper 'A Myth for the World', Early Christian Reception of Infanticide and Cannibalism in Josephus' Bellum Judaicum' (2000).

Over the next few chapters Atwill then attempts to sort out the problem of who Jesus really was and solve the problem of the Empty Tomb. His thesis is that the Gospels were essentially written together, and thus, must be read together. Hence, he reads the Empty Tomb tale as four versions of the same tale, in parts, distributed across the various gospels:

“My analysis revealed that these four versions were intended to be read as a single story. This combined story is divided into two halves. One half consists of the visits to the tomb described in the Gospel of John. The other consists of the visits to the tomb described in the other three Gospels. In the combined story the individuals described in the Gospel of John meet the individuals described in the other three Gospels and, in their emotional state, the different groups mistake one another for angels. This comedy of errors causes the visitors to the empty tomb to mistakenly believe that their Messiah has risen from the dead.”(p129)

The next few chapters cover the authors of the New Testament and how the tale was constructed. Then comes perhaps the most fascinating chapter in the work, his discussion of the Testamonium Flavianum (TF). Atwill’s reading of this and its surrounding passages as a complex satire is perhaps the most revolutionary insight in the work. Unlike his allegorical reading of the New Testament, which is easy for the reader to swat away, Atwill’s analysis of the TF and its companion passages will be impossible to ignore. Not only does his reading make sense of this section of the work, it is supported by strong linguistic and thematic links that will be difficult to refute. This chapter alone makes the book worth the price of admission.

But if a fresh and compelling look at the TF were not enough, Atwill offers in Chapter 13 a very interesting argument that Josephus has adjusted the dates of important events in his works to make them conform to the prophecies in Daniel.

Caesar’s Messiah closes with a discussion of the Apostles and the Maccabees, and other parallels between the New Testament and events in Titus’ campaign in Palestine prior to the destruction of Jerusalem. The coincidence of dates and names has also been noted by other authors, most recently in Jay Raskin’s piece in the Journal of Higher Criticism on the Maccabees and early Christianity.

Atwill’s prose is spare, even grim, and the book is refreshingly free of the silly attacks on New Testament scholars for being fools and scoundrels that tend to populate works of authors with out-of-the-mainstream ideas. Atwill usually is able to strike a sturdy posture that enables him to explain why no one has made all the connections he has (though a surprising amount of scholars have stumbled across pieces of the puzzle) without sounding triumphalist. My own view is that this work, intended for a lay audience, would have been even better had it presented some of the scholarly support for Atwill’s specific claims (a companion volume aimed at scholars due out soon). There are some regrettable moments, such as the statistical analysis of the parallels on p224 that reads like something out of Erich Von Daniken, and the mistaken attribution of a quote on p296 to Jesus rather than to John the Baptist. Overall, the work is clearly structured and very accessible.

I doubt that the central thesis of Caesar’s Messiah will find many takers; nor, ultimately, was this reader convinced. But many of the book’s insights commend themselves to thoughtful reconstruction and deconstruction. Well worth the price of admission, both lay readers and scholars will be able to find something in Caesar’s Messiah to challenge, to entertain, or simply to get the old gray matter back to pumping iron.