Bart D. Ehrman's Blog, page 352

Being Consistently Critical (in the good sense)

I know that by now I’m supposed to be citing Craig Evans’s best arguments that Jesus was probably given a decent burial on the day of his crucifixion by Joseph of Arimathea, rather than being left hanging on the cross for a few days in accordance with standard Roman practice. But I’ve realized that before I get to the first of these arguments, I have to say something about how historians need to use their ancient sources. The short answer to that question is that they need to use them … ginge...

Discovered Crucifixion Nails

I have mentioned a couple of times that at the end of this thread I will be discussing the two arguments that Craig Evans marshals that strike me as interesting and to be taken seriously. These are (1) the general claims in a couple of passages of Josephus and (2) the discovery of the skeletal remains of a crucified victim. Even though these are, in my opinion, good arguments, I will explain why I do not find them persuasive. Up till now I have been dealing with the arguments that Craig advan...

Pilate the Intransigent

To make the best sense of this post it is important to keep in mind what I said in the previous one.

In his response to my views of in How Jesus Became God – that Jesus most likely was not given a decent burial on the day of his crucifixion by Joseph of Arimathea – Craig Evans has maintained, among other things, that Pilate was not the kind of governor who would ignore Jewish sensitivities. For Craig, Pilate started his rule by making a big mistake of bringing into Jerusalem the Roman standard...

Did Pilate “Learn His Lesson”?

I think there is almost no historical figure that Craig and I disagree on more than the Roman governor of Judea at the time of Jesus’ death, Pontius Pilate. I see him as a cruel, vicious, hard-headed, insensitive, and brutal ruler; Craig portrays him as an efficient but wise and rather sensitive aristocrat who could learn from his lessons and who would go out of his way not to offend Jewish sensibilities. A lot hangs on which view (if either) is right, since it was Pilate – we agree on this!...

Did Pontius Pilate Respect Jewish Sensitivities?

When I was in high school I was active on the debate team, and really loved it. We were pretty good, although I was nowhere near being the best on the team. My colleague and another fellow on the team ended up debating together in college and won the national championship as sophomores. These guys were terrific.

One of the decisions we constantly had to make when arguing the negative side of a resolution was how to go about attacking the claims of the affirmative side. There were two general a...

Discrepancies That Pay Rich Dividends

This will be the last post in the hiatus I have been taking from responding to Craig Evans’s critique of my view of Jesus’ burial. I had thought this hiatus would be one, maybe two posts; but as often happens on this blog, once I get going on something I realize that I have to say more — or else what little I have to say will not make much sense. So my couple of posts have turned into four, all on the question of whether the historical-critical approach that I take to the Gospels is “trashing...

Why the Critical View of the Gospels Matters Theologically/Religiously

In my two previous posts I’ve been trying to explain that the historical-critical view of the Gospels, in which they are recognized not always to represent historically accurate information about Jesus, is not necessarily a view that “trashes” them. Instead, it is a view that tries to understand what they really are instead of insisting that they are something else. Accepting them for what they are is surely a good thing; making them into something they are not can’t be good.

In this post I wa...

Ancient Forerunners of Modern Gospel Critics

In my previous post I argued that critical scholars who insist that the Gospels are not historically accurate accounts of what happened in the life of Jesus – even though they do contain some historically accurate information, which needs to be carefully and cautiously ferretted out of their narratives – are not trashing the Gospels. They are trashing unfounded fundamentalist assumptions about the Gospels. In this post I’d like to argue that this view — that the Gospels are not sacrosanct-his...

Why Are You Trashing the Gospels?

I am going to take a break for three or four days from my response to Craig Evans’s critique of my view of Jesus’ burial. There are more things that I need to say – and I have not yet gotten to what I think are his two best arguments. But my sense is that some people are getting a little tired of a steady dose of posts on the burial stories, so… I’m going to break to deal with something else of more general interest.

I have had several people respond to my argument that Jesus was not really bu...

Did Roman Laws Require Decent Burials?

In my previous post I tried to show why Craig’s argument that Roman governors on (widely!) isolated occasions showed clemency to prisoners (those not sentenced to death) has no relevance to the question of whether Jesus, condemned to crucifixion for treason against the Roman state, would have been allowed a decent burial, contrary to Roman practice. The “clemency” argument – even in the sources that Craig himself cites, only seems to show that in cases that were completely unlike that of Jesu...