He writes:
I’ve been discussing a number of topics with my brother who is an atheist. In particular he has asked me about a number of events that should be in the historical record such as the census that required Mary, Joseph, and Jesus go to Bethlehem to be accounted, the earthquake and three-hour darkness at the Passion. Do you know of any place where I can get some information about theses events?
Also, I was making a Lewis-esque argument concerning the truth of the Gospel. I argued that the Apostles had nothing to gain from inventing the Gospel, since all they received from it was stonings, beatings, and crucifixion. However, he pointed out that early Mormons and Joseph Smith were persecuted as well. I don’t really know much about the history of Mormonism to make a good comparison. So, do you know of any good resources I could use in this case?
There is actually good reason to say that Luke’s account of the census squares pretty well with the history we know. There is also good reason to say that the “Jesus never existed and the whole gospel account is fiction” school of New Atheist criticism is remarkably addicted to the notion that 21st Century atheists are 2000 years smarter than those stupid ancients. It is a thesis believable only to people who worship rather than use the intellect. As I pointed out in the Gospel According to Steve Martin:
Comedian Steve Martin used to do a routine in which he smiled broadly with that distinct smile of his and said, “Remember a couple of years back when the earth (wry pause)... exploded? Remember how they built that giant space ark and loaded all of humanity into it, but the government decided not to tell the stupid people what was going on so that they wouldn’t panic…..” The light of understanding would then break across his face as he surveyed the faces of the audience and he would quickly backtrack saying, “Oooooooh! Uh….. Never mind!”
I can’t help but think of that as I read [John Dominic] Crossan’s take on Luke. We are being asked to believe that the gospels are works of cunning fiction by people laboring under some huge need to bring others under the spell of their delusion of a Risen Christ. Part of their messianic delusion requires them to link the Nazarene carpenter with King David by portraying him as born in “the city of David”, Bethlehem. And so they do what to get Jesus there in time for his birth and debut as the Son of David?
Well, a lot of options are open to the creative gospel writer whose only goal is to write a tall tale. You could just say that Mary’s grandmother took sick and she went to visit her. You could claim that Joseph bought a plot of land and didn’t want to leave Mary behind while he went to inspect it. You could cook up an angelic visitation commanding the Holy Family to go to Bethlehem and wait for their son to be born. Any of these stories have the tremendous advantage of being extremely hard to refute decades after the event. And since you’ve already stuffed your gospel full of miracles, what’s one more angel?
But no, according to Crossan, Luke tells the equivalent of Martin’s space ark story: “Remember, a few decades back when the entire world was enrolled for taxation?” He invites, not just somebody to refute it, but everybody in his entire audience. That’s an awfully strange thing to do if the enrollment never happened and an awfully odd way to establish the bona fides of your main character.
In fact, of course, both the gospels and Acts are chockablock with historical details that make it clear we are not looking at fictional characters or myth, but actual human beings. Some of those characters are attested in extrabiblical sources, both literary and archeological. Pilate is one. Annas and Caiaphas are two more. Sergius Paulus (whom Paul converted) was another. So is Erastus (another disciple of Paul’s). Another interesting connection is Alexander and Rufus, whom Paul greets at the end of Romans and whom Mark notes were the sons of Simon of Cyrene, who carried Jesus’ cross. In fact, an impartial reading of the gospel makes it very clear that the New Testament records all sorts of details which are inexplicable as “myth” but perfectly explainable as the memories of people who were either present at the events recounted or very close to those who were. People say, “But the gospels were written decades later!” So what? Nobody finds it incredible if somebody writes a memoir about the Carter Administration, yet the synoptic gospels are separated from their subject by a span of time roughly comparable to our distance in time from the Age of Disco. John is probably separated from his subject by a distance in time roughly corresponding to our distance from Eisenhower. Impossible to have accurate memories of Elvis or the Mickey Mouse club? Bah! My mother can tell me details about what she was doing on a Canadian farm in the 1930s.
Speaking of which, Luke’s birth narrative, for instance, bears all the earmarks of testimony from the only possible source of the information: the Blessed Virgin Mary. And, as we are coming to discover, it squares well with the available information we have from other sources. Here’s Michael Barber, Scripture scholar:
Luke’s Account
What about Luke? The issues here revolve around Luke 2:1-2: “In those days a decree went out from Caesar Augustus that all the world should be enrolled. This was the first enrollment, when Quirinius was governor of Syria.” Three major problems emerge: identifying the year of Herod’s death, determining the nature of Augustus’ “enrollment,” and the chronology of Quirinius.
Herod’s death. This is important because we know Jesus was born during Herod’s reign―therefore, obviously, before his death. Most scholars today date his death to 4 B.C. His death was linked to a lunar eclipse—and since one occurred during March of 4 B.C. this year has been recognized as a perfect candidate. However, a growing number of scholars are recognizing problems with that view. Many are now looking at an eclipse that occurred in 1 B.C. (See John Pratt, “Yet Another Eclipse for Herod,” in Planetarian 19/4 (1990): 8-14). In fact, this would fit in well with the witness from the earliest Christians, who believed that Jesus was born between 3 and 2 B.C.
Caesar’s enrollment. Many people have dismissed this element as unhistorical since such enrollments have been seen as occurring for tax purposes and Herod, as king, would have collected his own taxes. Yet, many have argued that there may be another rationale behind the enrollment. Josephus recounts that Judea was required to take an oath of loyalty to Caesar during the end of Herod’s reign (Antiquities XVII. 41–45). Archeological evidence confirms it was taken in other places around 3 B.C. In fact, Orosius (5th cent) says Augustus required all to be enrolled with an oath. This oath apparently was established not long before 2 B.C., when Augustus came to be called “first of all men.”
Quirinius’ census. Quirinius’ role is the most difficult detail. Some scholars assert that Luke has made a mistake. We know that Quirinius became governor later and took a census in 6 A.D. Has Luke made a mistake. Why would Luke associate him with an earlier enrollment.
Luke’s language here may be significant. In describing Quirinius, Luke uses the same term he uses for Pontius Pilate, a regional procurator, in 3:1, hegemon. Pilate was not a governor, but a regional authority. Perhaps Luke is indicating that Quirinius had some role as administrator prior to his appointment as governor. Justin Martyr testimony concurs with this as he records that Quirinius was procurator in Judea at this time (First Apology, 34).
In fact, Luke tells us that this was the “first” enrollment—implying he knows about a later one. He apparently mentions it in Acts 5:37.
For more information on the timing of the birth of Christ and the census, I strongly urge you to check out the Ignatius Study Bible, which has a fascinating discussion.
As to such things as the earthquake or the darkness at noon, I wonder why anyone imagines that there would be secular records of these common events? Today, somewhere on earth, there were any number of earth tremors. Can you tell me about each one? How about a tremor forty years ago? Why suppose that anybody outside the Christian community would have noted such a quake at the moment of Jesus’ death? There is, in fact, acknowledgement of the darkness at noon by a couple of ancient pagan sources, but it’s not a slam dunk that they are themselves relying on non-Christian sources for that. They might just as easily be saying “Granted there was a darkness at noon as the Christians say. But it was just a natural eclipse”. And it may well have been natural for all we know. If not an eclipse, it may have been a storm. Or it may have been a miracle witnessed only locally (as for instance the Dancing Sun at Fatima was only visible locally). 70,000 people witnessed the Miracle of the Sun at Fatima. And yet outside the locality, life went on as normal. That was in the relatively media-heavy early 20th century. In the first century, there was no media. How much of an impact would such an event make? I see no particular reason for it to have any impact outside the Christian community, which alone was able to correlate them with the really central event: the death of Jesus.
We have to remember that mere “occurrences” don’t become events until they have meaning for us. We hear, for instance, that some shrine in, say, Iraq gets blown up by a suicide bomber and think, “More violence in the mideast” but then get on with our day. We read about a storm someplace or a quake here or there and then almost immediately forget about it. That’s normal. It is only when something “coordinates” these events and makes them part of an Important Memory that we start to speak of them as Significant. So for the early Church it was Death of Jesus + Quake + Darkness that made the Quake and Darkness memorable. No death of Jesus and the quake and darkness would have been unnoticed (as quakes and ominous dark skies—which are happening somewhere on earth right now—go unnoticed by people who are not involved in them, and even by people who are involved if the quake is not too severe). Here in Seattle we had a quake on Ash Wednesday 2001 that was memorable to us, but give it forty years and how many people in, say, Kansas City will be able to say from memory, “There was a quake in Seattle on Ash Wednesday 2001.” Subtract a media and a scientific interest in recording quakes (something the ancient world distinctly lacked) and the lack of any contemporary record of the quake becomes perfectly understandable. I remember the quake and associate it with Ash Wednesday because I think a quake was a particularly appropriate start for Ash Wednesday. But most of my secular Seattle neighbors had no idea it was Ash Wednesday. So I will not be surprised at all if, in a generation, people have only the dimmest memory of it as “that quake when I was a kid” and people not from the immediate area have no knowledge of it at all.
What *is* notable is that the pagan sources who discuss the darkness at noon (like every ancient source Christian, Jewish and pagan) take for granted that Jesus was a real historical figure and not a myth. In this, the ancients demonstrate vastly more common sense than postmoderns who are unsure Jesus existed—and infinitely more common sense than the current cottage industry of historical illiterates who are sure he didn’t exist. I chalk up the “Jesus never existed” school of thought to the temporary fad about the Da Vinci Code and the current trendiness of our sophisticates (who have often not even read the gospels) explaining them as “myth”. I imagine that within a few years even the silliest of the New Atheists will have to grudgingly admit what all real historians already know: that at the very least, any person of modest common sense must acknowledge that Jesus of Nazareth existed and was crucified by Pontius Pilate somewhere around 30 AD. There’s lots more historical data than that once people stop subjecting the gospels to a hermeutic of suspicion reserved solely for these documents and not applied to any other ancient document. But that will do for a start.
The main thing is this: There’s no particular reason for Jesus to be attested much by extrabiblical sources contemporary with him any more than there is reason for Socrates to be noticed by Ezra and Nehemiah, Meso-American records or the Buddha. Jesus doesn’t start to impinge on Greco-Roman consciousness till a couple of decades after his execution. One Roman historian notes riots in Rome over “Chrestus” and that, because of them, Claudius expelled the “Jews” (Romans couldn’t tell the difference between Jews and Christians). That’s also mentioned in Acts. Some time later, Nero finds Christians a useful scapegoat and kills Peter and Paul (whose relics are still venerated at Rome) along with a bunch of other Christians. Now and then, Jesus gets a mention from guys like Pliny. But really, why should Romans care any more about him than the New York Times is likely to run a front page story about a cab driver killed in an accident in Bucharest? In antiquity, the norm is that the local community who cares about the rabbi, swami, guru, philosopher, hero or thinker is going to be the one that preserves his memory. Nobody organizes Socrates Seminars to complain that the only witnesses we have to the existence of Socrates are the sinister lying conspiratorial Athenians Plato and Aristophanes. Nobody issues “Aha!” announcements that the Platonic Socrates and the Aristophanic Socrates are very different characters (since Aristophanes includes him in this comedy in order to make fun of him, while Plato records him in order to revere his memory). Nobody complains that since Socrates is never mentioned in contemporary Roman, Egyptian, or Jewish literature, it is impossible for him to have existed or for us to know anything about him. This sort of absurd treatment of historical evidence is only reserved for Jesus of Nazareth. In the case of any other figure from antiquity, four accounts deriving from contemporary witnesses or those close to witnesses, all telling almost the identical story (and in the case of the synoptic gospels, doing it in almost identical language at times) would make a historian drool. You don’t get that sort of documentation very often in ancient sources. But what would be, for scholars of Socrates, a feature, is, for determined skeptics about Jesus, a bug. People quibble about minor differences of detail between the gospels and overlook the gigantic commonalities between the witnesses. It’s like people poring over the variety of testimony from witnesses to the assassination of JFK and concluding that these differences prove Kennedy never existed, rather than sensibly concluding that something rather than nothing happened—and that the something is pretty much what all the witness agree happened. Of all the things affirmed, not just by the eyewitnesses who died for their their testimony, but by even his ancient enemies both Jewish and pagan, nobody ever suggested he did not exist. Only the folly of the New Atheism could embrace that whopper.
As to the comparison with Mormonism, there are three problems:
First, Joseph Smith is the sole witness to the claims he makes. Everybody else is a true believer, but does not themselves claim to have seen Moroni or the rest of it. In the case of Christ, there are over five hundred eyewitnesses. That’s a lot of opportunity for somebody to crack under threat of torture or murder and spill the beans on how the whole thing was (as it had to be if false) a lie and a fraud. Nobody ever did.
Second, where is the St. Paul of Mormonism? He’s a very anomalous figure and hard to explain apart from an encounter with the Risen Christ.
Finally, the apostles didn’t just die martyr’s deaths, they lived martyr’s lives. Joseph Smith, in comparison, grew in wealth and power (not to mention that manly dream of multiple wives) right up until he went down (guns blazing) in a gunfight with the mob that came to get him. One looks in vain for the traces of the apostolic martyrs hacking away at their persecutors with swords. Indeed, the gospels actually record (again and again) the embarrassing vignette of Peter whacking off Malchus’ ear in order to make clear that this sort of thing was Conduct Unbecoming an Apostle.
It’s one thing to die as a sucker for a lie told by Joseph Smith (as some Mormons did). It’s quite another thing to die for a lie told by oneself (as the apostles did if the Resurrection is false). Joseph Smith, blasting away at his enemies, shows us how liars die. The apostles, going with dignity to a variety of awful deaths, show us how honest men die.
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This was an extremely well thought out and interesting article. I think you really nailed it. As for those who believe the “Neo-Atheists”, I’ll just say I will believe men who were willing to die for what they believed and wrote, than those who are willing to get paid for what they believe and write.
Steve Smith: There is a rather large hole in that argument. If we are to believe a proposition just because a number of people are prepared to die for it, then wouldn’t Islam also be true? They have no shortage of martyrs, many of their young people will gladly die for an express ticket to paradise.
Mark Shea, thanks for sharing your thoughts, I really appreciate you beautiful article.
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Paul Hannah, I think you didn´t get the point on the difference between how liars die and how honest men die.
Mark, every time I read one of your longer pieces like this—I finish it astonished at how well you form the argument and then proceed to put the issues firmly to rest. A very thorough and well thought out article, thank you very much.
A couple of bits of trivia: If I remember correctly, the miracle of the sun at Fatima was witnessed by people a good many miles from the event (the number 70 miles sticks in my mind. May have been 20.)
The sighting of the Crab Nebula in (1054 AD) was recorded by the Chinese and the American Indians, but Europe seems to have missed it. Lastly, Muhammad was a historic person and, though no human seems to have witness his being told by Gabriel that “we’ve” got it wrong, 11 centuries of people have certainly accepted it, too often by force.
I dated an atheist in college. I remember him questioning the existence of Jesus. I was flabbergasted. “Do you believe Julius Caesar existed?” He did. “Then how can you question the existence of Jesus? I mean, I get that you don’t think he is God, but he did live. He did die. There are extra-biblical references to him and his followers you know.”
That relationship didn’t last long, but I remember coming away with the shocking knowledge that there could be such ignorance on the part of people who pride themselves on their superior knowledge. Sadly, I’m not as surprised when I come across it today.
Dear Paul Hannah, there is a big difference between Christian martyrs and Islam martyrs ( if you can call what the Islams do martyrdom). The word martyr means one who chooses to suffer death rather than denounce religious principles, or one who makes great sacrifices or suffer much in order to futher a belief, cause, or principle. The early Christians martyrs, as with Christian martyrs down through the ages, were tortured and murdered for their faith in Jesus. The Islam martyr ties a bomb to themselves, go to a public place a set it off. What they do is commit suicide and try and murder as many people as they can in the process. As I said that is a big difference from Christian martyrdom.
I recall two quotes after reading this (well-written) article;
1) John 6:66 (666 hehe… ya gotta love that)
2) For those who believe, no proof is necessary - For those who don’t believe, no proof is possible
If Mormons are “suckers” how can anyone support Romney for President?
Their is definitely a double standard in the level of proof that some atheists apply when it comes to Jesus. They require far, far more documentation that he existed than any other person attested to in the historical record. In one of the most ridiculous online debates I ever had with one, they claimed that Jesus did not exist, and that there was no proof he existed since it was impossible that he could have died and rose from the dead; in other words, by his standards unless he could prove he was God, I could not prove Jesus even existed.
Enjoyed this very much. I would also add how Jesus was prefigured in the OT. Imagine how hard it would have been for the Gospel writers to find a man who fit all the prophecy but wasn’t really who He said He was.
I believe that Jesus was born around 3 BC because of the mathematical and spiritual coherence of how his death at 33 yrs old in 30 AD lines up with the destruction of the temple in 70 AD, 40 years later. Can’t ignore the symbolism of the Jews being given 40 yrs to prepare for the ending of the Old Covenant and acceptance of the New.
To me the strongest evidence that Jesus existed is the fact that the ancient Jewish written traditions all attest to his existence. If he had never existed they simply would have said, “Jesus who?”
Citizens of the modern bureaucratic state often assume that ancient states had the same interest in minute record-keeping as your common bureaucrat. Why didn’t they record this or that? Because they didn’t record much at all. And what they did record shows up mainly in personal letters and the like. Further, what we have is not even a random sample, from which one might infer to a population, but rather what statisticians call a “chunk.” The documents that survive were not sampled in the statistical sense, but “just happened” to survive “mice and mold and fire.” How many times were these cities sacked and burned in the intervening centuries in civil wars, in barbarian invasions, in wars with Persia? The wonder is that anything at all survived. The oldest copy of the Annals of Tacitus (M1) dates to the IX cent.—way to go, Dark Ages!—but it was lost until the XVI cent., when it was rediscovered and printed. How many other books never got recopied at all? Or whose copies perished fortuitously.
Paul Hannah, I’ve thought about the Islamic martyr parallel as well. I would argue that the biggest difference is the radical jihadist muslims of today who die for their beliefs are doing so 1400 years after Muhammad walked the earth. The suicidal taliban members of today never met Muhammad or saw him perform any miracles as proof of his divinity (Muhammad performed no miracles anyway). It’s quite different in the Christian case. All of the apostles were close followers of Jesus, knew him very well, and were around to experience all of the miraculous deeds Jesus did to show his divinity. The apostles had seen Jesus heal people, walk on water, raised from the dead, etc. and so they were willing to die for what they knew to be true from personal experience. It wasn’t just something they believed whole heartedly like todays taliban. Another point worth noting is that martyrdom for radical muslims means dying in battle for your beliefs (with a heavenly reward of 72 virgins, a heck of a motivation) while Christian martyrdom is being killed for not denouncing your beliefs.
Not that it really changes what you said, but Xenophon also writes a good bit about Socrates, very favorably.
I am struggling to see the distinction between Christian martyrs and Muslim martyrs. This is what they choose to call themselves, this is how they are referred to by their co-religionists. Yes, the ones we know of kill themselves and hope to kill others, but I am confident if someone were to torture them, they would die rather than give up their place in paradise.
BTW The 72 virgins motivation is not in the Koran but in some other holy book. Muslims I know have never heard of the pledge.
As for Muhammmed not performing miracles, he was supposed to have split the moon in half and fly around on a winged horse. And there is as much evidence for that as for Jesus’ party tricks.
Further, I would have thought that if dead people would start coming out of their graves and wanderring around at least one Roman historian would have his interest piqued.
There is no difference between Christian martyrs and Muslim ones insofar as they die for what the believe. The question is, is there good reason to believe what they believe: a matter you are contriving to ignore by ignoring the difference between Mohammed and the apostles.
You may have thought that a Roman historian would be interested in tales of resurrection from the armpit of the Empire, but that just shows how little you know about Roman historians and what they thought important. It was not the doings of Jewish sectarians quarreling about their religion. And, of course, as Ye Olde Statistician points out, even if there were some Roman historian taking an interest in the odd tales coming out of the Levant, there’s no particular guarantee such a document would survive. However, the documentation that *does* survive (and the community that produced it), not to mention the anti-christian lit of Jews and pagan from antiquity make it abundantly clear that, at the bare minimum, Jesus of Nazareth existed and was crucified under Pontius Pilate somewhere around 30 AD. Can you at least agree to that or do you take seriously the historical illiterates of the “Jesus never existed” school?
Mark Shea I suspect the side you fall on whether one or the other religion has a good reason to believe depends a great deal on where you were born and to what parents.
I am not totally convinced of the historicity of Jesus. But I accept it is possible. The lack of contemporary eye witness accounts must trouble some Christians at least. Further the similarity of the Jesus narrative and those of other religious figures must raise a couple of doubts as to the truth of the claim.
I find some of the stories hard to swallow as well. As an amateur astronomer I also balk at the star of Bethlehem story, the reasons are complex but if you ask I’ll post my them.
I am suprised my last post made it as when I hit Post, the screen froze and my PC rebooted. Maybe your god didn’t like what I wrote?
And you’d be wrong. I was not raised in a particularly Christian household. We never went to Church, I was not baptised and I had no contact with the gospel beyond A Charlie Brown Christmas, the occasional viewing of the Robe and some born agains I knew (and avoided) in high school. There are contemporary eyewitness accounts. They are called the gospels. The lack of other contemporary accounts is explained in the article. You might just as well be troubled by lack of contemporary accounts of Julius Caesar in chinese literature. Jesus bears very little similarity to other religious figures. His moral teaching is, with a few improvements a reiteration of Jewish teaching from Moses and the prophets. He is not much like the Buddha, except that they agree that human desires are disordered. He is not like Confucius because Confuciu has no interest in theism. He is like subsequent Christian sectarians in that they get all their ideas from Him. He vaguely resembles some myths, but not really all that much. What makes him stick out is that all other great religious leaders and prophets claim, at best, to be servants of God or the gods. Jesus claims to be God. And he does so, not in cloud cuckoo land, but in Judea during the tenure of Pontius Pilate, who dispatched him for being a nuisance. The claim to be God and Messiah is what got him nailed to the cross and it’s the only new thing he has to say almost. By every canon of historical inquiry used for any other historical figure, Jesus of Nazareth is obviously established as a real human being who was really put to death circa 30 AD. Even his mortal enemies grant that. Trying to dispense with him as imaginary opens up a massive number of problems that make no sense.
As to the Star of Bethlehem, there’s rather a lot of good evidence for it. Go here and see.
I am struggling to see the distinction between Christian martyrs and Muslim
martyrs. This is what they choose to call themselves, this is how they are
referred to by their co-religionists.
Actually, their term is in Arabic. We translate it as “martyr” but it isn’t the same category of thought. If you like I can ask someone who knows first hand. Case in point: When the Orestes has Ammonius tortured to death, Bishop Cyril called Ammonius a “martyr.” But the other Christians told him, dude, he was tortured to death because he threw a rock and hit the imperial prefect. Duh? You just don’t do that in the Empire. Ammonius died for his assault and battery, not for his faith. In Islam, Ammonius would be a martyr.
+ + +
Greek Historiography
They preferred eyewitness testimony: “the living word.” You could cross-examine, look him in the eye, etc. Words on a page could be misconstrued, and you can’t ask for clarification.
Consequently, most Greek bioi were not written down until the eyewitnesses were beginning to die off. Then they went to those who were “there from the beginning.” That’s why when Porphyry wrote the Life of Plotinus, he did not use himself as the chief source, but Amelius, who had been the first of Plotinus’ twelve disciples. This is marked by Amelius being the first mentioned and the last mentioned in the book, and the first mentioned whenever any group of followers is named. (Apply this convention to Mark, and Peter shows up as first, last, and first of a group.)
The gospels were written closer in time to the events they narrate than most other ancient lives. Check out Herodotus, Thucydides, Plutarch, etc.
The thing to remember about the remote past is that it was not well-documented to begin with, and a lot of even important people (from the literate upper class’ POV) don’t show up much. Hannibal, for example, was supposedly documented by Livy; but the books of Livy’s history covering Hannibal has been lost; so most of what we know of him was written well after the fact. Further: there ate no Carthaginian records of Hannibal at all!!!! Why? There are no Carthaginian records, period. The Romans razed Carthage and sowed the ground with salt. Guess what they did to Jerusalem after the bar Kochbar revolt?
Even closer to home, there can be problems. Ask me about Roland some time.
We should also consider the certain reality that from Jesus’ time (as well as all ancient epochs) we have less than a fraction of 1% of the confirming documentation we so take for granted when examining history of recent centuries.
The world-renowned library at Alexandria was destroyed centuries ago. In fact, recent rioting and burning in Egypt’s installment of the Arab Spring wiped out another last vestige of written documentation from antiquity - a well-known resource lost forever, as if there was a lot to begin with.
Mark’s explanation makes sense - more than those weak sputterings by the atheist set who insist on holding early Christian writings to standards of modern newsgathering institutions and historical societies (and we know they can’t be trusted too often, either, given their surrender to their own agendas).
Please, no more “explaining” the darkness at the crucifixion as the result of a natural eclipse of the sun! The sun is eclipsed at new moon. The passover comes on the 14th day of the Jewish month, which starts with the first sighting of the crescent moon at sunset (a day or two after new). Therefore, passover and the crucifixion come near a full moon. There was no natural eclipse of the sun that became meaningful to the disciples.
Fair enough. I’m not arguing that happened. Merely noting that this was an explanation popular with a couple of ancient pagans (who knew nothing about how eclipses happened). The darkness may have been a natural or supernatural phenomenon. We don’t know.
Why was my post to greg von taken off. Can’t I respond to other commentors?
The fact that someone does not think Jesus is god does not make them athiest. Jewish people are not athiest.
The New American Bible translates Luke 23:44-45 as: “It was now about noonz and darkness came over the whole land until three in the afternoon *because of an eclipse of the sun*.”
So even if it’s a ridiculous “explanation”, you could say it’s “scriptural.”
I’d love to know how that explanation got in there. No other translations say that. They just say that the sun was darkened, or something else. (See http://bible.cc/luke/23-45.htm ) More translation rubbish for us to scrub off?
@ Greg Von—this is what Jewish tradition teaches—God told Israel – DON’T WORSHIP ANY ENTITY ASIDE FROM ME. He repeated this message and emphasized it in many ways. Now Christian theologians comes along and want you to believe that God really does want you to worship an entity that you see as separate from God on the basis of the theologian’s inferences from the very book which emphasizes the prohibition against idolatry.
Mark 12: 29-30
29 Jesus replied, ‘This is the first: Listen, Israel, the Lord our God is the one, only Lord,
30 and you must love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind and with all your strength.
This one still puzzles me.
Larry:
Why? And just for clarity’s sake, are you Jewish? It helps to know where you are coming from.
Mark Shea: I’m catholic. Why what?
Why does that passage puzzle you?
one gives up one’s own life and the other gives up others’ lives… which one is a true Martyr?
@Bill Jones. You realize the gospels are the contemporaneous accounts of Jesus, right? Read John 19:35, for example. Also, there was no evidence outside religious tradition that Pontius Pilate ever existed until the discovery of the Pilot Stone in 1961.
“There are no contemporaneous accounts of Jesus. With all the “miracles” and the crucifixion, you would have thought that someone would have actually recorded something at the same time that the events were happening.”
Oh, I’m sure some of the apostles and followers of Jesus wrote some notes; those were later memorized and wrote into the Gospels. So yes, there are contemporaneous accounts by the witnesses.
Look: Emperor Augustus conquered northern Spain and ordered his historians to write it, probably with copies in many cities in the Empire: “The Cantabrian Wars”. Well, we have not any copy, nor quote nor citation… And all the power of the Empire was helping this book to survive! It was not enough: every city in the Mediterranean has been completeley burned by wars or fires at least TWICE since first century. Nearly ALL tends to disappear, unless many copies in many different places are done.
Another bit to think: according to ancient Hebrew records, King Herod never existed. The Talmud and all other ancient traditions and texts never mention Herod, even if he was the one who re-built the Temple of Jerusalem. And only 6 years ago we found his tomb!!! Herod the King… we know him because of Josephus… not any other jew author (and he was not a simple preacher and countryside miracle man).
Also, there is only one source about history of first century left: Josephus. He speaks of other (enemy) historians, but nothing is left of them… Why do we have Josephus writings? Because of Christians!!! (Not because of Jews nor Romans). Christians made copies and more copies of Josephus, because he mentioned Christ.
So perhaps The Jerusalem Postius and the Galilee Gazeeterius wrote lots and lots about Jesus… but they kept no copies in the thousand wars after that. But Christians copied the gospels once and again… so we have contemporary data.
Also, think about Spanish explorer Alvar Nuñez Cabeza de Vaca: he explored half USA in the 16th century. He explains his journeys in his book “Naufragios”. He tells that he prayed on indians and many were healed. He tells about indian sorcery, too. How many American citizen know him now? Only a few historians (and we, Spanish people). How many contemporany witness tell about him? Mainly himself.
Even you, the American Empire, are not really interested in your great men and facts of the past (such as Cabeza de Vaca) and only we (Spanish) remember him. In the same way, Romans were not really interested in Jew preachers, even if healing sicknesses. Only Jews were.
(Anyway, Tertulian in 200 a.C writes that Pilatus sent a file to Tiberius about Jesus and asks pagans in Rome to look for it in their archives, as is Tertulian himself knew the file was there).
@Mark-We believe in a triune God. Clearly Christ is telling the people there is only one God. And again repeated thru 34. The Jewish people there at the time believed in the the relationship between God and the burning bush or between God and the cloud. To them it was medium God used, it did not make the three entities a triune God to them. So when Jesus says there is only one God, they would agree.
Bruce: there was no evidence outside religious tradition that Pontius Pilate ever existed until the discovery of the Pilot Stone in 1961.
ergo abolendo rumori Nero subdidit reos et quaesitissimis poenis adfecit, quos per flagitia invisos vulgus Chrestianos appellabat. auctor nominis eius Christus Tibero imperitante per procuratorem Pontium Pilatum supplicio adfectus erat; repressaque in praesens exitiablilis superstitio rursum erumpebat, non modo per Iudaeam, originem eius mali, sed per urbem etiam, quo cuncta undique atrocia aut pudenda confluunt celebranturque.
—P. Cornelius Tacitus, Annales, L. XVI, (M.1)
+ + +
@Larry: Now Christian theologians comes along and want you to believe that God really does want you to worship an entity that you see as separate from God
Where do you get “separate”? Is Mark Shea the father “separate” from Mark Shea the son? (Or from Mark Shea the husband? In fact, Mark the father is consubstantial with Mark the son!) If God knows himself, then he is both subject and object of knowing. To know is to “conceive.” Since God is purely actual without potency, he is complete as both Knower and as Known, and therefore wholly a person in both. (i.e., There is nothing in the Father that is not in the Son, and vice versa.) Because God is one, he is the “only-conceived” or “only-begotten” (a poke in the Greek eye who used that term to mean the “universe.”) We conceive things in “words.” The only-begotten is therefore the Word (by which God spoke the universe into being, e.g., “let there be light,” “let the earth bring forth…,” etc. Thus, “through whom all things were made.”
After speaking the universe into being, incarnating as a single human being in that universe if a piece of cake. But it is no more a separate being from God than would be my hand if I dipped it into a pond. To the fishes, this strange new thing in their fishy world may seem separate from the great gray Shadow that looms above their surface and strew fish food in abundance; but it really isn’t.
Since Catholicism does not make an idol of a book, it is of no account that much of this is arrived at through reason. Unlike some, we do not denigrate the work of the intellect.
Hope this helps.
@Mark: The New American Bible translates Luke 23:44-45 as: “It was now about noon and darkness came over the whole land until three in the afternoon *because of an eclipse of the sun*.”
So even if it’s a ridiculous “explanation”, you could say it’s “scriptural.”
I’d love to know how that explanation got in there. No other translations say that. They just say that the sun was darkened, or something else. (See http://bible.cc/luke/23-45.htm ) More translation rubbish for us to scrub off?
Right. There is only one God. And he is a Trinity of persons. But only one God. I’m not sure what the bush and the cloud have to do with that. Nobody says they are God. But yes, Jesus (and we and the Jews) affirm that there is only one God. That’s the first line of the Creed. What the Christian revelation does is, if you will, supply more information about, if you will, what the “structure” of God is. Jesus in short, affirms the ancient revelation that there is one God, but he also says “I and the Father are one”. Here, FWIW, is a little piece I wrote about the Trinity some time back.
@Larry. Jesus also told his disciples to go out and baptize all nations in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. All one God in three Persons. Pretty straightforward, I think.
This. This this this! Thank you. That is all.
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“Further, I would have thought that if dead people would start coming out of their graves and wanderring around at least one Roman historian would have his interest piqued.”
It’s terribly inconvenient not to have a Roman historian around when things of personal significance happen. This is why I carry one around in a wagon wherever I go (it’s a shame they do not come pocket-size). ;)
Actually, now that I think about it, they’ve probably been all but supplanted by Facebook and Twitter.
@Mark—The confusing part is the scribe tells Jesus that he is correct, the is only one god, in the Jewish teaching, not the triune teaching. Jesus seeing how wisely the scribe had spoken tells him that he is not far from the kingdom of God. He did not correct him.
Raymond Brown, SS in the New Jerome Biblical Commentary at 43:29: There are historical problems in v 1-3. Quininius was governor of Syria in AD 6-7 and during the reign of Herod…who ruled from 37-4BC; there is no extra-Lucan evidence that under Casesar Augustus a worldwide census occurred or the people were required to register in their ancestral towns.Fr. Brown reiterates this in AN INTROCUCTION TO THE NEW TESTAMENT, p 233. Also THE CATHOLIC STUDY BIBLE at p 425: Historically, there was no worldwide census under Quirinius. In AD6 the Romans tok over administration of Judea and took a census at that time. Residents of Galilee, however, which was still ruled by one of Herod’s sons would not be obligated to return to an ancestral village in Judea.
Mary, did you read the article? Mark clearly addresses the use of the word “hegemon” to describe Quininus and Pilate both. Since Pilate was not governor, this suggests that the word could have multiple meanings and may not have meant the period where Q was governor at all, but in a previous posting.
this is amazing
General comment:
Edw. Gibbon, of Decline and Fall fame, was bothered very much by the lack of contemporary documentation of the ‘darkness at noon’. He was a careful historian and a believer, and had faith in the general historicity of the Bible. (He was at various times a Roman Catholic and an Anglican, so he wasn’t an “inerrancy” believer, if that’s the right word.)
IOW one who lets his belief stand or fall on the Darkness probably will be stumbled. Myself, I don’t understand the gap, either, but I’m familiar enough with explanations of it- some cited here- to go on with my Christian life.
Paul Hannah writes:
“I also balk at the star of Bethlehem story”
As well you should. First, it should rightly be called ‘Star of Jerusalem’.
Mt 2: “Now when Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judaea in the days of Herod the king, behold, there came wise men from the east to Jerusalem, Saying, Where is he that is born King of the Jews? for we have seen his star in the east, and are come to worship him.”
These guys were professionals; they would not have followed a such a star to the wrong city, even if only five miles apart. “the star, which they saw in the east, went before them, till it came and stood over where the young child was”, remember?
And, do you know of any “stars” that behave thus? Comets move in strange ways, but of course you know they aren’t as agile as they seem in comparison to other objects.
And, if it was “his” [Jesus’] star, how could it have led the astrologers to Jesus’ archenemy?
No doubt you’ve seen the ‘planetary alignment’ theories, and have rejected them for the same reason I do: These guys knew the difference between the movements of a star and a conjunction of two or three “wanderers”.
I am interested in your own reasons, even if “complex”.
Another general comment, on “martyrdom”.
Strong’s G3140 - martyre?
1) to be a witness, to bear witness, i.e. to affirm that one has seen or heard or experienced something, or that he knows it because taught by divine revelation or inspiration
a) to give (not to keep back) testimony
b) to utter honourable testimony, give a good report
c) conjure, implore
Vine’s entry is longer (more citations) but with the same meanings: no death required.
Example: Mt 24:14 “And this gospel of the kingdom shall be PREACHED in all the world FOR A WITNESS unto all nations; and then shall the end come.”
The meaning associated with ‘death at the hand of an unbeliever’ is a much later one. No one who knows the history of the Crusades e.g., or the [European] Thirty Years’ War will believe that Christendom has any high moral ground to take over Islam. Holy wars are not scriptural, except for this one: “For they are the spirits of devils, working miracles, [which] go forth unto the kings of the earth and of the whole world, to gather them to the battle of that great day of God Almighty ... And he gathered them together into a place called in the Hebrew tongue Armageddon.” Rev 16:14,16
Notice THAT one is begun and directed by “God Almighty”.
Todd C writes:
“@Larry. Jesus also told his disciples to go out and baptize all nations in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. All one God in three Persons. Pretty straightforward, I think.”
No, not so much. “name of”; so I ask, “What name?” Father is Jehovah (ASV; alt. Yahweh, JB). Son is Jesus, the Messiah (‘sent one’). Holy Spirit is ... umm, Well, just what IS the name of this person?
Or, if one name for one [tripartite] God, why are we given two? Exactly the wrong number.
Also, the plain English breakdown shows us not a “theological mystery”, but a sentence in the imperative form, commanding his disciples [students] to go make other students of the things he taught them: his Father’s kingdom and their place in it. (Mt 28:19,20 together read, “Going therefore, teach all nations: baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost. Teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you. And behold I am with you all days, even to the consummation of the world.” Douay)
Mt 28 is not a ‘Trinity proof’; you’re more likely to find that at 1 John 5:7,8. But only in the Douay, not in the Jerusalem or any other modern version.
Ye Olde Statistician writes ... a great deal of commonsense and truth. (on Friday, Jan 13, 2012 3:10 PM)
In contrast to the skimpiness of mss. of the “classics” we can note that bible scholarship has benefited greatly from recent discoveries. Not just the Dead Sea Scrolls, but from stela and other non-biblical finds that document biblical characters and events.
An illustration: We send our kids to school hoping they’ll be taught something about the great Shakespeare. Are we aware that there must have been two quite different versions of King Lear? We know this because the surviving ‘single’ versions- some printed coeval with the man himself- show such evidence. From time to time some scholar tries to reconstruct the two from the various ones, without permanent acceptance. Now Shakespeare is about as old as the KJV (James I succeeded Elizabeth), just 400 years of imperfect recording of one who was a legend in his own time. (And Shakespeare wrote in Modern English.) Yet in the last century and a half the Bible has become more accurate, not less.
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