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Ehrman’s point would be well taken. But Jesus was crucified in Jerusalem, in the land of Israel, where very different political and religious factors were in play.
What is important in the Flaccus passage for the matter at hand is that this sorry incident demonstrates that it was in fact Roman practice, under various circumstances, to permit bodies of the crucified to be taken down and be buried.
We actually have evidence that Roman justice not only allowed for the executed to be buried, but it even encouraged it in some instances.
In light of what we read here and in light of what we find in other sources, it is simply erroneous to assert that the Romans did not permit the burial of the executed, including the crucified. Bodies were in fact released to those who requested them.
Josephus applies this point specifically to crucifixion when he says, in reference to the rebels who had seized control of Jerusalem in 66 CE and killed some of the hated ruling priests: “They actually went so far in their impiety as to cast out their dead bodies without burial, although the Jews are so careful about burial rites [peri tas taphas], that even malefactors who have been sentenced to crucifixion are taken down and buried before sunset” (Jewish War 4.317, italics added). Those “sentenced to crucifixion” in the time of Josephus were people crucified by the Romans (and not by Jewish
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None of this law would make any sense if executed criminals were not in fact buried. There would have been no need to set aside tombs for executed criminals. There would simply be no remains to transfer from a “wretched place” to an “honored place.”
Josephus makes it clear that Annas the younger committed two breaches of policy and law: he convened the Sanhedrin, which was a breach of policy, and he executed James and “certain others” (probably also Christians), which was a breach of law, for only the Roman governor possessed the power of capital punishment, something Roman authority took very seriously.21 Josephus notes that the “fair-minded” of Jerusalem urged King Agrippa to order Annas “to desist from any further such actions.” Reference to “any further such actions” may imply that Annas was planning a major pogrom against the
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The evidence shows that the Jewish priestly aristocracy and the Jewish Council (or Sanhedrin) could condemn someone to death but could not carry out capital punishment (unless there was a serious infraction within the temple precincts themselves). Only the Roman authority held capital authority.
The discovery in 1968 of an ossuary (ossuary no. 4 in Tomb I, at Giv‘at ha-Mivtar) of a Jewish man named Yehohanan, who had obviously been crucified, provides archaeological evidence and insight into how Jesus himself may have been crucified. The ossuary and its contents date to the late 20s CE, that is during the administration of Pilate, the very Roman governor who condemned Jesus to the cross.
crurifragium, the breaking of a victim’s bones to hasten his death.
In all likelihood, the ossuary and skeletal remains of the last Hasmonean prince have been discovered.
had the iron nail, with its fish-hooked sharp end that made extraction impossible, not remained imbedded in Yehohanan’s right heel, I doubt anyone would have thought that the poor man had been crucified.26 Of all the human skeletons that have been recovered from tombs in and around Jerusalem (and other locations in Israel), we simply do not know how many had been executed, by whatever means.
One year after death it was customary to gather the bones and place them in a bone niche or in an ossuary.
It is against this legal and cultural backdrop that the story of Joseph of Arimathea should be understood. Because the Jewish Council (or Sanhedrin) delivered Jesus to the Roman authorities for execution, it was incumbent upon it to arrange for proper burial (as in m. Sanhedrin 6:5, cited above). This task fell to Joseph of Arimathea, a member of the council. The gospel narratives are completely in step with Jewish practice, which Roman authorities during peacetime respected.
archaeology. This is why Jodi Magness, a Jewish archaeologist who serves on the faculty of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, is able to say that the “Gospel accounts of Jesus’ burial are largely consistent with the archaeological evidence. Although archaeology does not prove there was a follower of Jesus named Joseph of Arimathea or that Pontius Pilate granted his request for Jesus’ body, the Gospel accounts describing Jesus’ removal from the cross and burial are consistent with archaeological evidence and with Jewish law.”
In my view the tradition of the women as first discoverers of the empty is a strong piece of evidence in favor of the historicity of the empty tomb, if not the reality of the resurrection also.
But I do have my doubts. Jews of late antiquity who believed in resurrection spoke of the body being raised up. The scriptural basis for this expectation centered on Ezekiel’s vision of the bones regaining flesh and life (Ezekiel 37) and, especially, Isa 26:19 and Dan 12:2.
I find it difficult to explain Paul’s proclamation of Jesus as resurrected, had the followers of Jesus spoken only of a spiritual resurrection and had the body of Jesus remained dead and decomposing in a tomb.
at the resurrection that Jesus becomes elevated to the right hand of God. These visions of the risen Jesus — in which some of the earliest disciples really thought they saw Jesus — Ehrman acknowledges as historical fact,
Overall, we will see in the course of this chapter that the evidence does not enable us to plot a gradual development in the early Christians’ view of Jesus.
need to begin by reordering this list of Gospels, because — as almost every biblical scholar acknowledges — Mark’s gospel was written first. There is a bit more controversy about which came next, Matthew or Luke, but my impression is that most scholars probably favor the order Mark–Matthew–Luke (especially those who think that Luke used Matthew’s gospel — conversely, hardly anyone thinks that Matthew used Luke).
would suggest that the natural sense of these sayings is that they imply that Jesus has come from somewhere to accomplish his mission.
prophet or a messiah in the Old Testament or Jewish tradition never sums up his life’s work this way.
the more positive side, there are various kinds of reverence offered to Jesus in Matthew, Mark, and Luke. Some of these exceed the bounds of esteem for a mere human being, and as we will soon see, such reverence cannot be regarded simply as worship of a secondtier god. This is especially apparent in Luke, because he considers it inappropriate to give reverential prostration to mere human beings. (Other authors may well use the term more liberally than Luke.) The Greek word for this reverential prostration is proskynēsis, a kind of technical term. This was the reverence that in 327 BCE,
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How, one might ask, can one do this when no literature exists from between 30 – 50 CE, the period at the beginning? Ehrman’s answer — and that of many other biblical scholars — is that within the final texts of the New Testament writings as they stand, one can detect traces of these earlier views.
There is a good sporting chance that this might be an early Christian creed.
that have been incorporated by a later author if that formula expresses an idea that is either inconsistent with, or at least unparalleled in, the author’s other writings. So in this case, one of the indicators that Rom 1:3 – 4 is not originally Pauline is evident from the presence of “ideas that are not found anywhere else in Paul,” and that “this earlier tradition has a different view of Christ than the one that Paul explicates elsewhere in his surviving writings.”
“Any logic which relies on a conjecture is itself a conjecture.”
Ramah is near Bethlehem, and Jacob’s wife Rachel is one of the mothers — sometimes the mother25 — of Israel as a whole. Overall, the oracle in Jeremiah is cited in Matthew because of its suggestive similarities with the circumstances surrounding Jesus’ birth, rather than because it is a straightforward prediction of the slaughter of the innocents.
adoptionist formula is in the climax of Peter’s Pentecost sermon: Therefore let all Israel be assured of this: God has made this Jesus, whom you crucified, both Lord and Messiah. Strictly speaking, this statement cannot be taken as adoptionistic in the normal sense. Romans 1:3 – 4 and Acts 13:32 – 33 are concerned with sonship,
The reason for this charge (or, conversely, an anxiety among some conservatives that it really is the case) is that there are exaltation passages in the New Testament that do assign real roles that Jesus takes on at his exaltation. His activity in the course of his earthly ministry is different from his activity when seated at the right hand of God in glory.
Jesus “becoming” Lord of the church seems a good example of a Cambridge change.
But again, as in the case of the giving of the Spirit, one could say much the same about God (the Father): when people pray “thy kingdom come, thy will be done,” they pray not for God to change, but for the world to change.
This is what it means that Jesus at the resurrection becomes Son of God in power, and Lord and Christ in a new sense. He is “Son of God in power,” in stark contrast to his physical condition in his earthly ministry, which culminated in his death, “even death on a cross”
Even he doesn’t find the New Testament texts themselves obeying the rules. Not just in Paul do exaltation and incarnational Christologies sit cheerfully together. The same is found in Hebrews and John, as Ehrman admits.
Third, as scholars in this field know full well, central to first-century Jewish faith in God is the Shema, a set of Pentateuchal texts likely repeated twice daily in prayer by most Jews.40 It is the closest thing Second Temple Judaism had to a creed, and it remains central to the monotheistic convictions of Jews and Christians alike.
The essential element in what I have called Jewish monotheism, the element that makes it a kind of monotheism, is not the denial of the existence of other “gods,” but an understanding of the uniqueness of YHWH that puts him in a class of his own, a wholly different class from any other heavenly or supernatural beings, even if they are called “gods.” I call this YHWH’s transcendent uniqueness.
As I pointed out earlier, Ehrman ignores the Shema altogether, which is enough to make whatever he says about Jewish monotheism almost redundant.
Mary Healy argues, for Paul, knowledge can be expressed as relationship.33 To understand this better, ask yourself how we know theological truth. It tends to involve ticking the right set of boxes next to a set of propositions (i.e., sentences on a page). For Paul, theological truth involved a living relationship with God and Jesus. If this was missing, so was the truth.
In other words, and this is where the rubber hits the road, “the way Second Temple Judaism understood God as unique, through the God-relation pattern, was used, by Paul, to express the pattern of data concerning the Christ-relation.”
Fourth, and I want this point to sink in, Ehrman’s questionable exegesis of Phil 2:6 – 11 is the only extended engagement with Paul’s letters in his entire book!
Fifth, Ehrman does not do the work of a historian in other ways. He does not, for example, consider Paul’s way of knowing. Nor does he examine the way Paul expressed his faith in God. He makes general points about monotheism, as we saw, and then imports his dubious conclusions onto Paul.
Using these terms as a historian, he of course is not endorsing the implication that what is called “orthodox” is true or that what is called “heretical” is not true. These are simply convenient terms historians adopt when speaking of what became, in fact, the majority view and what became any number of minority or rejected views.
What we find is that this majority in the early church held to the twin “paradoxical” affirmations: first, that Jesus is God and that he is man; second, that Jesus is God and that this somehow does not jeopardize the confession that there is only one God.
(in fact, the docetists began to be active before the entire New Testament was written and are specifically refuted in 1 and 2 John).
Origen of Alexandria, with little doubt, possessed the most encyclopedic “biblical” mind of anyone in his day, and he provided the church with an astounding treasure of biblical scholarship. But his theological experimentation was most unsuccessful precisely when it ventured to sail beyond Scripture’s teaching, with speculation on the preexistence of the soul, and eternal worlds. The church historian Henry Chadwick famously alluded to one of Longfellow’s poems when thinking of the work of Origen.12 There was a little girl, And she had a little curl Right in the middle of her forehead. When she
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You could perhaps say that it was not until the Arian and semi-Arian debates of the fourth century that one really gets a sophisticated and plausible alternative attempt at interpreting all the biblical evidence. At many points the Arian and semi-Arian positions seemed to meet the biblical requirements and seemed to align with the spiritual practice of many Christians. But in the end each position was judged to have failed to attribute to Christ the fullness of deity that Colossians says dwelt in Christ.
Despite that minor clarification, we may still sense the irony Ehrman wants us to sense: how far Christianity has come, to turn from believing in a man who became God, to believing in a God who became man! And then even to turn against those who continued to maintain the original (or second-to-original) Christology, a view of Jesus as adopted by God and exalted to divine status at his resurrection
Irenaeus, our earliest source for the teaching of the Ebionites, says that they believed Jesus was the offspring of Joseph and Mary by natural generation and says nothing about them holding that Jesus was ever elevated to divine status
It is one thing to speculate that the majority of Christians perhaps could not have articulated a clear statement of trinitarian theology; it is quite another to assert that they therefore had specifically a modalist understanding of God.
