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Are The Accounts Of Jesus’s Ascension Contradictory?

Bart Ehrman says that the author of Luke can’t seem to get the story of the Ascension of Jesus right. In his Gospel, Luke says that Jesus ascended into heaven the day of his resurrection. In The Acts of the Apostles, Jesus hung around for 40 days before leaving his disciples. Dr. Ehrman writes in his blog:

“In Luke 24 (you can read it for yourself and see) Jesus rises from the dead, on that day meets with his disciples, and then, again that day, he ascends to heaven from the town of Bethany. But when you read Acts 1, written by the same author, you find that Jesus did not ascend on that day or that place. Jesus instead spends forty days with his disciples proving to them that he had been raised from the dead (it’s not clear why he would have to prove it! Let alone do so for forty days!), and only then – forty days after his resurrection – does he ascend. And here he ascends not from Bethany but Jerusalem. Luke tells the same story twice, and in two radically different ways. Historical accuracy does not appear to be his major concern.”

Luke And Compression

But there’s a problem here. Luke doesn’t say Jesus’ ascension took place on the same day as the resurrection. There are no indicators of time in the account of the stories. What Luke is doing is using a literary device called compression, which is a standard rhetorical method for the reporting of the time. Compression is taking a longer storyline and putting it into a brief form.

As philosopher Tim McGrew points out, other ancient historians have used this device, including Sallust, Lucian, Cicero, and Quintillian. (Historiae, Vera Historia 56-57, De Orateore 3.27.104-105, Institutio Oratoria 8.4)

Luke uses this technique elsewhere. Paul tells us he went to Arabia for three years after his conversion. Let’s read Galatians 1:16-20:

“I was pleased to reveal his Son to me, in order that I might preach him among the Gentiles, I did not immediately consult with anyone; nor did I go up to Jerusalem to those who were apostles before me, but I went away into Arabia, and returned again to Damascus. Then after three years, I went up to Jerusalem to visit Cephas and remained with him for fifteen days. But I saw none of the other apostles except James the Lord’s brother. (In what I am writing to you, before God, I do not lie!)”

But if we read Acts 9:23-26 at face value, it seems like Paul goes directly into Jerusalem:

“When many days had passed, the Jews plotted to kill him, but their plot became known to Saul. They were watching the gates day and night in order to kill him, but his disciples took him by night and let him down through an opening in the wall, lowering him in a basket. And when he had come to Jerusalem, he attempted to join the disciples. And they were all afraid of him, for they did not believe that he was a disciple.

But this isn’t a contradiction. Just how long of a period is ‘many days’? If we’re only reading Acts, it doesn’t necessarily feel like a 3-year period, although it certainly could be. (See 1 Kings 2:38-39) So what about the journey to Arabia? Luke doesn’t mention it, but that doesn’t necessarily contradict Paul’s story in Galatians. This trip may have happened within Luke’s ‘many days’ in Acts 9:23, and Luke omits it.

This is an example of Luke taking related events where he omits time as well as some of the details. If we aren’t reading carefully we can assume they’re totally complete.

Luke also leaves a 4-year gap between Acts 12 and 13, and he also omits Jesus’ family trip to Egypt that we find in Matthew. Luke isn’t claiming to give a total account of Jesus’ life. That’s not how ancient biography works.

Compression And Other Gospel Writers

Moreover, Luke wasn’t the only Gospel writer to use such a technique. Matthew used compression in the story of the centurion’s servant. He omits all remarks of the Jewish elders and the centurion’s friends who served as go-betweens in Luke’s account.

He compresses the story by leaving out these extra people and stages of the narrative. (Compare Matthew 8:5-13 with Luke 7:10) Some have tried to say this is a contradiction, but they just don’t understand compression.

Likewise, Matthew 9:18-26 compresses the story of the healing of Jairus’ daughter. Mark gives us a much longer version of the story with two different stages of development. In the first stage, Jairus’ daughter was sick to the point of death. In the second stage, the messengers come and tell Jairus that his little girl just died.

Matthew gets to the point — the daughter dies, and Jesus raises her back to life. Matthew takes 176 words (at least in our English Bible) for what Mark takes 481 words to tell us. Ehrman has tried to complain that these accounts are also irreconcilable but they’re not when we understand that Matthew is telescoping the events.

But What About The Location Of The Ascension?

But Bart isn’t done. Remember that in the above quote, he also said Luke gets confused with the location of the ascension. But let’s look at the text for ourselves rather than accept Ehrman’s portrayal of it.

Here’s Luke 24:50-51:

“And he led them out as far as Bethany, and lifting up his hands he blessed them. While he blessed them, he parted from them and was carried up into heaven.”

And here’s Acts 1:12:

“Then they returned to Jerusalem from the mount called Olivet, which is near Jerusalem, a Sabbath day’s journey away.”

Let’s take a look at a map:

Um…where exactly is the contradiction here? It at least feels like Dr. Ehrman is looking for trouble where there is none.

Does Luke Contradict Matthew? Go To Galilee Or Stay In Jerusalem?

But Dr. Ehrman has one more parting shot. In his book, Jesus, Interrupted he says that Matthew and Luke disagree regarding the ascension.

In Matthew’s version, the disciples are told to go to Galilee to meet Jesus, and they immediately do so. He appears to them there and gives them their final instruction. But in Luke, the disciples are not told to go to Galilee. They are told that Jesus had foretold his resurrection while he was in Galilee (during his public ministry). And they never leave Jerusalem—in the southern part of Israel, a different region from Galilee, in the north. On the day of the resurrection Jesus appears to two disciples on the “road to Emmaus” (24:13–35); later that day these disciples tell the others what they have seen, and Jesus appears to all of them (24:36–49), and then Jesus takes them to Bethany on the outskirts of Jerusalem 1s gives them their instructions and ascends to heaven. In Luke’s next volume, Acts, we’re told that the disciples are in fact explicitly told by Jesus after his resurrection not to leave Jerusalem (Acts 1:4), but to stay there until they receive the Holy Spirit on the Day of Pentecost, fifty days after Passover. After giving his instructions, Jesus then ascends to heaven. The disciples do stay in Jerusalem until the Holy Spirit comes (Acts 2). And so the discrepancy: If Matthew is right, that the disciples immediately go to Galilee and see Jesus ascend from there, how can Luke be right that the disciples stay in Jerusalem the whole time, see Jesus ascend from there, and stay on until the day of Pentecost?

p. 49

The problem here is Matthew never says Jesus ascends right then and there. Read the text for yourself:

“Then the eleven disciples went to Galilee, to the mountain where Jesus had told them to go. When they saw him, they worshiped him; but some doubted. Then Jesus came to them and said, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.”

Matthew 28:17-20

Bart simply assumes that the ascension happens here because this is where Matthew concludes his Gospel, but the ascension actually isn’t actually in the passage.

Furthermore, Dr. Ehrman also assumes that Jesus commanded his apostles to “stay in the city of Jerusalem until you have been clothed with power from on high” on the same day that he rose. We all know that commonly the four evangelists jumped around from story to story without always giving the actual time or precise order of when things were done or taught. Luke leaves out the post-resurrection appearances in Galilee mentioned by Matthew, but he never says Jesus remained only in Jerusalem from the day he rose until his ascension. Ehrman seems to think that every telling of every event should include every important detail about it. But why should we assume that?

Remember that Luke is compressing the story. While we have clear time indications (Luke 24:1, 13, 21, 29, 33) that the first 43 verses took place on the day of Christ’s resurrection, the sayings found in Luke 24:44-49 could have taken place at any time during the five weeks that Jesus stuck around in Acts 1:1-12. Luke gives no explicit time indicator when these sayings were made.

Don’t Doubt Luke. Doubt Bart.

Luke, possibly running low out on his scroll, gets down to the nitty-gritty and telescopes his story, perhaps knowing that he’s going to write his sequel very soon.

Far from being a sloppy historian who is only interested in telling us some theological story and not the facts, Luke is using standard rhetorical devices and isn’t at all contradicting himself in the details. Bart speculates elsewhere that this story is so contradictory that the ascension in Luke must be an interpolation by an unthinking scribe, but there’s no reason to go there based on what we’ve seen here.

I think we should be far more skeptical of Bart’s representations of the text than Luke’s Gospel.

Hard Evidence the Book of Acts Was Written by an Eyewitness? A Reply to Bart Ehrman

4. Is the NT True?

By Jonathan Mclatchie

Last week, New Testament scholar Dr. Bart Ehrman published an article at his blog, in which he responded to a reader who had asked him his opinion on a popular approach to arguing for the reliability of the book of Acts. The questioner specifically cites popular apologist Dr. Frank Turek and Acts scholar Dr. Colin Hemer, who have pointed to specific and detailed knowledge demonstrated in the book of Acts that reveal its author to be close up to the facts, well informed and habitually reliable. The questioner noted that “Many of these are insignificant, but others seem to be things ‘only an eyewitness could know,’ like the location of a sailor’s landmark or sea approach to a city.”

Readers who are interested in a presentation of examples of this sort of detailed and specific knowledge shown by Acts may wish to check out this webinar I did with philosopher Dr. Timothy McGrew (which also contains a solid discussion of some of Ehrman’s objections to Acts). This webinar I did with Acts scholar Dr. Craig Keener is also worth checking out. For those more inclined to read written material, I highly recommend Colin Hemer’s book The Book of Acts in the Setting of Hellenistic History, which covers many examples of this. I will also provide a few examples here to give a flavor of the sort of evidence we are talking about. I will list a handful of instances of the titles of local officials that Luke so effortlessly gets right.

Luke gets right the precise designation for the magistrates of the colony at Philippi as στρατηγοὶ (Acts 16:22), following the general term ἄρχοντας in verse 19. Luke also uses the correct term πολιτάρχας of the magistrates in Thessalonica (17:6). He also gets right the term Ἀρεοπαγίτης as the appropriate title for the member of the court in Areopagus (Acts 17:34). He also correctly identifies Gallio as proconsul, resident in Corinth (18:12), an allusion that allows us to date the events to the period of summer of 51 A.D. to the spring of 52 A.D., since that is when Gallio served as proconsul of Achaia. Luke also uses the correct title, γραμματεὺς, for the chief executive magistrate in Ephesus (19:35), found in inscriptions there. Furthermore, when Luke tells us of the riot in Ephesus, he indicates that the city clerk told the crowd that “There are proconsuls” (Acts 19:38). A proconsul is a Roman authority to whom one might take a complaint. Normally, there was only one. So, why does Luke so casually use the plural term (ἀνθύπατοί) here? It turns out that, just at that particular time, there was in fact two as a result of the assassination by poisoning, in the fall of 54 A.D., of the previous proconsul, Silanus (see Tacitus’ Annals 13.1). This, again, is something that would be rather difficult to get right by fluke.

Luke even uses the correct Athenian slang word that the Athenians use of Paul in 17:18, σπερμολόγος (literally, “seed picker”), as well as the term used of the court in 17:19 — Ἄρειον Πάγον, meaning “the hill of Ares”.

Luke also gets right numerous points of geography, sea routes and landmarks. For example, he gets right a natural crossing between correctly named ports (Acts 13:4-5). He names the proper port, Perga, for a ship crossing from Cyprus (13:13). He names the proper port, Attalia, that returning travelers would use (14:25). Luke also correctly names the place of a sailor’s landmark, Samothrace (16:11). He also correctly implies that sea travel was the most convenient means of travelling from Berea to Athens (17:14-15). As I documented in a previous article, Luke even gets the implied location of the island of Cauda correct in Acts 27, despite Ptolemy and Pliny the Elder getting it wrong. And so it goes on and on.

How does Ehrman reply to this argument? He writes,

…I do NOT appreciate Frank Turkey [sic] or Colin Hemer for making the argument, since surely they know better. If they do know better, shame on them for trying to dupe others. If they don’t know better, would someone please tell them to start thinking more clearly?

Unfortunately, in this case as we shall see, it is Bart Ehrman, not Turek or Hemer, who needs to start thinking more clearly. Ehrman asks how we know Acts to be historical reportage rather than legend. He writes,

The traditional answer is that Acts was written by an eyewitness, a person who accompanied Paul on his missionary journeys. The presumption is that if it was written by an eyewitness, then the accounts almost certainly must be historically accurate. I won’t be going into that issue here (of whether eyewitness = accurate), but if you have ever known an eyewitness to an event who got it completely wrong (and if you’re a sentient human being, I bet you have known at least one!) you can immediately see at least one aspect of the problem.

The argument here is actually not that Luke is reliable because he was an eyewitness. Rather, we infer him to be an eyewitness because of, among other things, his demonstrated reliability on so many matters. Luke’s demonstrated meticulousness and detailed accuracy as an historian reveals him to be someone who is close up to the facts, well informed, and habitually reliable. This is best explained by his being an eyewitness. And Luke’s track record of accurate reportage gives us some reason to trust him on matters on which he cannot be directly cross-checked. I discuss some of the reasons why we think Luke was an eyewitness in a previous article, so I will not repeat myself here.

Ehrman notes that,

The reason for thinking Acts was written by an eyewitness is that in four passages in these chapters, the author moves from talking about what “they” (Paul and his companions) were doing to about what “we” were doing. It sounds like he’s including himself in a number of the events as one who was there. The natural conclusion: he was an eyewitness.

This is a simplistic representation of the argument, since there is a lot more to it than that. For a scholarly discussion of why the use of the plural pronoun indicates that the author was an eyewitness, readers may refer to Craig Keener’s commentary on Acts, which covers this in detail. I mentioned in my previous article, for instance, that the “we” pronouns trail off when Paul travels through Philippi, only to reappear in Acts 20 when Paul passes once again through Philippi. This is suggestive that the author had remained behind in Philippi and subsequently re-joined Paul when Paul returned through Philippi.

Returning to the detailed knowledge shown by Acts, Ehrman thinks he has found a flaw in this argument. He writes,

If you can show that the account knows where certain places actually were, and knows details about what were in those places, and landmarks, and so on: doesn’t that show the author must have been with Paul on his journeys? Uh, why would it show *that*?? Wouldn’t it just show that he knew about these locations and what was in them? Wouldn’t you get precisely the same kind of narrative if this was someone who had traveled a good bit himself, or knew others who had, and pieced it all together?

To illustrate this point, Ehrman offers an analogy. He writes,

Suppose in 2000 years someone uncovers a story that describes an event that happened to Professor Bart Ehrman in March 2016. Professor Ehrman taught at the University of North Carolina which was located in a college town named Chapel Hill. That semester he was teaching his course on the New Testament in a large lecture classroom in a building called Hamilton Hall. On the afternoon of March 14, Professor was just leaving his office in Carolina Hall to take the three-minute walk to his classroom, when he heard a massive explosion, and going out of his building he saw that Hamilton Hall had been destroyed in an explosion, killing 172 people. Later investigators discovered that it had been caused by a gas leak.

Now, this future researcher who has uncovered the story decides to look into the archaeological record to see if the account is accurate. He learns that way back then there really was a state called North Carolina, and sees that archaeologists had indeed uncovered a town called Chapel Hill, where there really was a university. More than that, they had excavated the university and had found Carolina Hall and – mirabile dictu – there was an actual map of the campus in the ruins. It turns out one of the major lecture rooms for large classes was a short distance away, within eyesight, in Hamilton Hall. Just as in the story!! Moreover, the records of all the professors from the early 21st century were discovered, and there was a fellow named Bart Ehrman who did indeed teach courses on something called the New Testament, and was teaching one such course in Spring semester, 2016.

BINGO! This story MUST have been written by someone who was a companion of Bart Ehrman who was there to see all these things! How else would he have had all this information about NC, Chapel Hill, the university, Hamilton Hall, Carolina Hall, Bart Ehrman, and a class on the NT that particular semester? And that means Hamilton Hall really was destroyed by an explosion caused by a gas leak, right?

Uh, well, no. Millions of people know about NC, and the existence of Chapel Hill, and that there is a university there. Hundreds of thousands know about both Carolina Hall and Hamilton Hall, and have a general sense of their proximity, and that some fellow named Bart Ehrman teaches NT there. Why would the account of the gas leak-explosion have to be written by someone who was there at the time? Or even someone who knew me? Or someone who observed the event?

Ehrman speaks here as if, in the first century world, the geographical, political, terminological, and other subtle facts that the book of Acts gets right would have been widely and easily known or accessible. However, this is absolutely absurd. The argument for Acts being based on eyewitness testimony is that the book of Acts gets hard things right. Ehrman’s illustration about the University of North Carolina implies a situation where one can easily look up these facts, using modern resources like Google or Wikipedia, and include them in a fictional story. However, in the case of the book of Acts, which was written in a world without the ease of access to information that we enjoy today, Ehrman’s proposed scenario would imply that the author would have had to travel around all of those same places (or at the very least interview people who had been there) and include those very specific facts in an account of historical fiction, a genre that did not even exist at the time. Ehrman’s scenario here is very ad hoc and anachronistic.

A further issue with Ehrman’s statement is his use of the word “must.” None of us are arguing that the evidence proves that Luke was an eyewitness and traveling companion of Paul. We are talking about probabilities, and what best explains the relevant data. It is also not the case that Julius Caesar must have crossed the Rubicon, or that Abraham Lincoln must have emancipated the slaves, though the evidence for those things is very strong.

In Ehrman’s final paragraph, he writes,

I’m not saying that because of this Acts is unreliable historically. I’m saying that if someone wants to argue it is, they need to come up with good arguments instead of completely irrelevant ones. I do understand that if the author had gotten all the geographical information wrong it could be relevant to whether the account was accurate or not; my argument is that getting that kind of information right is not. If Christian apologists don’t see the difference – then I’m afraid I can’t help them.

Now, if all Ehrman meant here is that the correctness of the specific details in Acts doesn’t logically entail the historical truth of the narrative, then I would have to agree (though I do not know anyone who has ever argued that it does). However, Ehrman is here saying something that is much stronger. Here, he is asserting that the arguments in question are “completely irrelevant.” This statement is totally indefensible and is logically impossible, since it cannot simultaneously be relevant if the information is incorrect but completely irrelevant if the information is in fact correct.

We can be charitable here, however, and take him to be speaking colloquially, to mean that the relevance of accurate details in Acts is negligible or not worth speaking of. However, this too is problematic. What is the argument for this? One might conjecture that Ehrman takes it to be part of the background information that Acts is highly realistic fiction, a conclusion he has come to on independent grounds. But how does he arrive independently at this conclusion? In fact, the sort of arguments that Ehrman wields against Acts (such as alleged discrepancies with Paul’s letters) would suggest that it isn’t highly realistic fiction, since on Ehrman’s view Acts is contradicting primary sources for the life of Paul. If the author of Acts went to the trouble of visiting all of the places that he claims Paul travelled to, gathering highly specific information in order to incorporate them into his realistic fictional account of Paul’s travels, why would he also contradict the Pauline epistles, which would have been in wide circulation and therefore much more easily accessible? Ehrman’s standards in regards to those alleged discrepancies are entirely wrong. All of the contradictions Ehrman alleges between Acts and Paul’s letters, as I have documented elsewhere (e.g. see my ongoing series of reviews on this site of Ehrman’s book Jesus, Interrupted) are the result of over-readings, tendentious interpretations, and arguments from silence. The forcefulness that Ehrman ascribes to those, combined with his dismissal of the difficult details Luke gets right concerning geography and other matters as “completely irrelevant” is astounding, and really reveals his unscholarly bias against the New Testament.

To conclude, I do NOT appreciate Bart Ehrman for making the argument, since surely he knows better. If he does know better, shame on him for trying to dupe others. If he doesn’t know better, would someone please tell him to start thinking more clearly? This post by Ehrman represents yet another example of why Ehrman should no longer be taken seriously as a scholarly critic of Christianity, despite his popularity in atheistic and Muslim circles. It is time that Ehrman is called out for his poor scholarship, bad standards, and faulty epistemology. For more on that, I refer you to my ongoing series of reviews at this site of Jesus, Interrupted (part 1, part 2, part 3)

Was Luke Wrong about the Census?

4. Is the NT True?, Jesus Christ

By Ryan Leasure

One of the more challenging texts in the Gospels is Luke’s reference to the census. We read in Luke 2:1-5:

In those days a decree went out from Caesar Augustus that all the world should be registered. This was the first registration when Quirinius was governor of Syria. And all went to be registered, each to his own town. And Joseph also went up from Galilee, from the town of Nazareth to Judea, to the city of David, which was called Bethlehem, because he was of the house and lineage of David, to be registered with Mary, his betrothed, who was with child.

So, why is this text difficult? It’s difficult because Luke places Quirinius’ census at the time of Jesus’ birth prior to King Herod’s death in 4 BC (Mt 2:1; Lk 1:5). Historical records, however, date Quirinius’ Syrian governorship from AD 6-9. This alleged historical discrepancy has led to objections of various kinds. These objections can be summarized into five main points:[1]

Nothing is known of an empire-wide census during Augustus.
No census would require Joseph to travel to Bethlehem.
No census would have happened in Palestine during the reign of King Herod.
Josephus only knows of Quirinius’ census in AD 6.
Quirinius was not the governor of Syria during the time of Jesus’ birth.

Do these five objections prove that Luke was wrong about the census? Let’s consider each of them in turn.

Nothing is known of an empire-wide census during Augustus

This claim simply isn’t true. According to historical records, Augustus instituted at least three censuses.[2] We also know of other cyclical censuses that transpired across in the empire during this time period in places such as Syria, Gaul, and Spain.[3] If this is true, why couldn’t Augustus issue a census in Palestine for taxation purposes?

No Census would Require Joseph to Travel to Bethlehem

This objection assumes that Rome did not allow local regions to operate according to their own customs. We know, however, that Rome often allowed Israel to operate according to their own customs provided they didn’t cause too trouble for the Romans. For example, they were allowed to observe the Sabbath, maintain their temple, and opt-out of activities that violated their Jewish consciences.[4] With this in mind, it seems perfectly reasonable to think that Rome would allow the Jewish people to conduct an ancestral census per their customs (2 Sam 24).

Additionally, Joseph’s journey to Bethlehem coincides with the time period of Herod the Great’s reign. For if this census occurred in AD 6, Joseph never would have left Herod Antipas’ territory (Nazareth) to Archelaus’ territory (Bethlehem). A journey from Nazareth to Bethlehem for registration purposes only makes sense during an era when both towns were part of one jurisdiction. After Herod died, these territories were split up.

No Census would have happened in Palestine during the Reign of King Herod

This claim overexaggerates Herod’s power. After all, Herod was a puppet king for the Romans. Yes, he’s historically referred to as King Herod the Great, but let’s not forget that Caesar could have deposed him at any moment. Herod simply rose to power through some politically calculated moves on his part.

Furthermore, The Romans frequently conducted censuses in vassal kingdoms across the empire.[5] Palestine wouldn’t have been any different.

We also know that after Herod’s death, Roman taxes were slashed by 25% in Samaria under the rule of Archelaus, indicating that regular taxes existed in Palestine during the time of Jesus’ birth.

Josephus only knows of Quirinius’ census in AD 6

Josephus dates the Quirinian census to thirty-seven years after Octavian defeated Mark Antony at Actium in 31 BC. Thirty-seven years later places the census in AD 6.[6] Josephus also tells us that this census caused a significant revolt. Those who deny that a census took place during the birth of Jesus suggest that the AD 6 revolt was due to the fact that Rome had never conducted a census in Palestine such as this. But as has already been discussed, we have good reasons to reject that view.

Others suggest that the revolt occurred because Rome ignored the Jewish customs during the AD 6 census. Meaning, previous censuses were conducted in a way that satisfied the Jewish people. If this hypothesis is true, Josephus would have and no reason to comment on the Luke 2 census since it occurred without controversy. As with most historians, Josephus only writes about “newsworthy” events.

We must also note that just because Luke is the only one who testifies to this earlier census doesn’t mean that it didn’t occur. We have thousands of singularly attested events in ancient literature. Additional sources would certainly give us more confidence that those events occurred, but not having additional sources in no way proves those events didn’t happen. Let’s also bear in mind that Luke has proven himself to be meticulously accurate in his handling of facts that can be checked.[7]

Quirinius was not the Governor of Syria During the Time of Jesus’ Birth

If Jesus was born in 4 BC, and Quirinius wasn’t governor of Syria until AD 6, how can Luke be right about the timing of the census? Three solutions have been offered to this challenging objection.

First, many have suggested that Quirinius served as the Syrian governor twice. In fact, historical data leaves a governorship gap between 4-1 BC. Which means, we don’t know who served as governor of Syria during that time. The challenge with this particular view is that even if Quirinius filled the historical gap, his rule most likely would have come after Herod’s death. Yet this explanation could still work. Censuses were known to take several years. If the census began while Herod still reigned over Judea, the results might not have emerged until Quirinius’ reign so that his name was attached to the census.

Second, others argue that Quirinius was not the governor Syria during the Luke 2 census. Rather, he served in some administrative capacity – perhaps an overseer for the Syrian census. After all, Luke does not use the technical Greek word for “governor” in the text. Rather, he uses a verb which means “to rule, command, or lead.” In other words, Luke indicates that Quirinius was ruling in some kind of leadership capacity during this census. And since a census was a big job, it makes sense that someone would be appointed to oversee the project.

Third, some have proposed a different solution altogether. Instead of arguing from history, many have gone down the textual route by suggesting that the Greek word prote should not be translated “first” but “before.” If this is true, Luke is saying that the census took place before Quirinius was governor of Syria. But without getting too technical, this view is a stretch. It also seems odd for Luke to tell us that this event occurred before someone was governor. Why not tell us who the governor was at the time? Most scholars agree that “first” is the better translation.

Solution

Based on the above discussion, we don’t need to adopt the view that Luke committed a historical blunder on the Luke 2 census. We know that Rome conducted censuses somewhat frequently, and Jewish customs would have required Joseph to return to his native homeland.

Luke also indicates in Luke 2 that this was the “first” census. Meaning, he knew of a later census. And it just so happens he refers to that later census from AD 6 in Acts 5:31 – the one which led to a Jewish revolt.

But how do we reconcile a census during the rule of both Herod and Quirinius? It seems to me that the best explanation is that Quirinius was appointed as administrator of this earlier census. After all, Luke did not indicate that Quirinius was the “governor” of Syria, despite our English translations. He merely indicated that he “ruled” at that time. We know that he later became the official governor of Syria in AD 6. But as is the case with most people in political power, they usually have other positions along the way as they climb their way up the ladder.

While we can’t be historically certain on this hypothesis, we don’t need adopt the view that Luke made a mistake.

Notes

[1] Darrell Bock, Luke 1:1-9:50. Baker Exegetical Commentary on the New Testament (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1994), 903.

[2] Tacitus, Annals 1.11; Dio Cassius, Roman History 53.30.2

[3] Bock, Luke 1:1-9:50. 904.

[4] Josephus, Antiquities. 14.10.6, 20.

[5] Hoehner, H. W., Chronological Aspects of the Life of Christ cites 16 examples. Tacitus, Annals 2.42; 6.41

[6] Josephus, Antiquities. 17.13.5; 18.1.1.

[7] See Colin Hemer, The Book of Acts in the Setting of Hellenistic History.

Do the Genealogies of Jesus Contradict?

Jesus Christ, Theology and Christian Apologetics

By Ry Leasure

If you’ve read through the gospels, you’ve probably noticed that they share much in common. In some places, the wording is exactly the same. In other places, they’re so different it looks like they might contradict. These similarities and differences are often dubbed the synoptic problem. The word synoptic means “to see together.” The synoptic problem has led scholars to ask, why are there similarities in the gospels? And also, why are there differences?

The prevailing theory amongst scholars is that the similarities in the synoptic gospels (Matthew, Mark, and Luke) can be explained by the authors’ use of the same sources. Most believe Mark wrote his gospel first, and that both Matthew and Luke used Mark to compile their gospels. They’ve reached this conclusion because roughly 90% of Mark is found in Matthew, and about 60% is contained in Luke. Additionally, both Matthew and Luke shared another common source known as a “Q” – taken from the German word Quelle, meaning “source.” This sayings source explains Matthew and Luke’s common material not found in Mark. And then, both Matthew and Luke had their separate individual sources – sometimes referred to as M and L – which explains their own unique material. Luke’s prologue gives us a bit of a sneak peek into this process (Lk. 1:1-4).

In sum, these different sources explain both the similarities as well as the differences. Some, however, have tripped up over the differences. In fact, many go so far as to suggest that the gospels contradict one another. One such example is found in Jesus’ genealogies, to which we now turn our attention.

Jesus’ Genealogies

Only Matthew and Luke contain Jesus’ genealogy. And one side-by-side comparison reveals that the genealogies are radically different. So much so, that skeptics believe they’re irreconcilable. I’ve listed the genealogies from Matthew 1:1-18 and Luke 3:23-38 below for your convenience. Take a quick look at them so you can better understand the skeptic’s complaint:

At first glance, one glaring difference exists – Luke’s genealogy is much longer than Matthew’s. The reason? Luke traces Jesus’ genealogy all the way back to Adam while Matthew stops at Abraham. In both genealogies, the line from Abraham to David is roughly the same. But once we move past David, the genealogies diverge. Matthew traces Jesus’ genealogy through David’s son Solomon, while Luke traces the line through David’s son Nathan. Also, notice that Joseph has a different father in each account – Jacob in Matthew, Heli in Luke. How can we reconcile these differences? Lest we be tempted to think this is anything new, the church has dealt with this issue for almost two thousand years. And throughout that time, three different explanations have been given to explain the differences.

Option 1: Joseph vs. Mary’s Genealogy

One of the more popular explanations for the differences is to suggest that Matthew traces Joseph’s genealogy while Luke traces Mary’s. If this is true, the difference in genealogies makes sense. Think about your own genealogy for a moment. If you were to trace your father’s line and your mother’s line, you would get radically different family trees. Your father’s father and your mother’s father have different names. In Jesus’ case, his father’s father is Jacob while his mother’s father is Heli.

The reason some take this approach is because Matthew focuses his attention on Joseph in the birth narratives while Luke focuses more on Mary. In Luke, he describes Gabriel’s conversation with Mary, Mary’s Magnificat, and Mary’s visit to her cousin Elizabeth. Moreover, even though Luke doesn’t mention Mary in the genealogy, he couches Jesus’ sonship to Joseph by saying “as it was supposed” (Lk. 3:23). Each of these clues indicates that Luke didn’t intend to give us Joseph’s ancestry but Mary’s.

Option 2: Royal vs. Biological Genealogy

Another explanation for the differences is that Matthew traces Jesus’ royal line with an emphasis on his Messianic claim to the throne while Luke traces Jesus’ biological line. According to this view, Matthew gives us several clues to suggest that he’s giving us a theological genealogy with an emphasis on King David, not a strict biological line.

For starters, Matthew begins the genealogy by stating, “The book of the genealogy of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham” (Mt. 1:1). It’s well-known that Matthew writes to a primarily Jewish-Christian audience who would have understood the expectation that the Messiah would come through the line of David (2 Sam. 7:12-16; Isa. 9:6-7; 11:1-5; Jer. 23:5-6). Therefore, from the outset, he tips off his readers to where he’s going with this genealogy.

Second, the mention of “Christ” alongside the name of Jesus in verse 1 also indicates Matthew’s intentions. While many may think of “Christ” as Jesus’ last name, it’s actually a title. It’s the Greek title for the Messiah. So, when Matthew prefaces his genealogy by stating that it’s the genealogy of Jesus Christ, he’s giving further evidence to his readers that his intention is to demonstrate that Jesus comes in the kingly line of David.

A third indicator that Matthew isn’t giving us a biological line but a royal one is his breakdown of the genealogy into groups of fourteen. In verse 17 we read, “So all the generations from Abraham to David were fourteen generations, and from David to the deportation to Babylon fourteen generations, and from the deportation to Babylon to the Christ fourteen generations.”

A couple of points are worth noting here. Biblical scholars agree that the refrain “father of” or “son of” in genealogies don’t necessarily mean one generation after the next. Often times, genealogies will skip several generations. The language simply means that one is the ancestor of the next person in the line. Another point worth noting is the significance of the number fourteen and the Hebrew concept of Gematria. Gematria was the practice of ascribing a numerical number to a Hebrew letter – the first letter of the Hebrew alphabet (Aleph) has the numeral value of one and so on. Interestingly, the numerical value of David is fourteen. D(4) V(6) D(4) – 4 + 6 + 4 = 14.

It’s as if Matthew has a giant neon sign flashing “Son of David!” Luke doesn’t use any of these literary devices. He simply records the biological line of Jesus. And while Americans may be unfamiliar with the concept of royal lines, our British friends know that the line doesn’t always pass down neatly from father to son. In fact, the current queen of England inherited the throne from her father who inherited it from his brother. And the next king will probably be the queen’s grandson. All that to say, the royal line often diverges from the biological line.

Option 3: Levirate Marriage

A third explanation for the differences is the use of Levirate marriage. Levirate marriage is detailed in Deuteronomy 25:5-10 and states that if a married man dies without a male heir, his brother or closest relative must marry and seek to propagate with the widow in order to carry on the name of his deceased brother. This practice explains the Sadducees’ question to Jesus about which man would be a woman’s husband in heaven after going through seven brothers who all died (Mt. 22:24-28).

On this theory, something like the following scenario plays out: Jacob (Joseph’s father in Matthew’s genealogy) died before producing a male heir with his wife. Then, in order to fulfill the Levirate laws, Heli (a close relative of Jacob’s), marries Jacob’s widow and then conceives with his new wife which brings about Joseph. If this type of scenario played out, Joseph would be the legal son of Jacob and the biological son of Heli. Then Matthew traces Jacob’s line backwards to Abraham while Luke traces Heli’s line back to Adam. Scholars have listed several of these scenarios where something like this happened.

What’s the Best Explanation?

As I consider the three options, one of the options seems the least tenable. And that is option 1. While many have employed this option to explain the differences, Luke specifically states Joseph as the next person in Jesus’ genealogy, not Mary. He couches this relationship by stating “as it was supposed” because of his knowledge of the virgin birth. More than that, ancient Jewish genealogies always passed through the male’s line, not the female’s. Luke would have understood Jesus as Joseph’s adopted son.

This leaves options 2 and 3 as viable explanations, and my personal opinion is that a combination of the two best explains the differences in genealogies. Matthew clearly isn’t trying to give us a strict chronology with how he groups the names into lists of fourteen. Moreover, by tracing the line through king Solomon instead of Nathan like Luke, Matthew seeks to emphasize the royal nature of Jesus’ line. The levirate marriages could also help explain why different names exist in the genealogy as well.

In the end, we can’t be entirely certain which option is right. But one thing is for certain: we have viable explanations for why the genealogies are different in Matthew and Luke.

Is Bart Ehrman Right When He Says That Acts Contradicts Paul’s Letters?

4. Is the NT True?, Theology and Christian Apologetics

By Erik Manning

Agnostic New Testament scholar Bart Ehrman says, “the book of Acts in the New Testament contains historically unreliable information about the life and teachings of Paul.” In his book, Jesus, Interrupted Dr. Ehrman provides five examples of contradictions that exist between Paul’s letters and Acts.

Ehrman writes, “These are just a few of the discrepancies that one can find when one reads Acts horizontally against Paul’s letters. Many more can be discovered. What they show is that Acts cannot be relied upon for completely accurate detail when it describes the mission of the early apostles such as Paul.”

Since these contradictions are the five he handpicked for his book, he must feel like they’re some of the best. If the strongest examples aren’t even really contradictions, then that gives us a good reason to doubt Ehrman, not Luke.

After Paul’s Conversion, Did He Go Directly To Jerusalem To Confer With Those Who Were Apostles Set Before Him?

Leading off, Ehrman quotes Galatians 1:16-20: “I was pleased to reveal his Son to me, in order that I might preach him among the Gentiles, I did not immediately consult with anyone; nor did I go up to Jerusalem to those who were apostles before me, but I went away into Arabia, and returned again to Damascus. Then after three years, I went up to Jerusalem to visit Cephas and remained with him for fifteen days. But I saw none of the other apostles except James, the Lord’s brother. (In what I am writing to you, before God, I do not lie!)”

Ehrman then writes: “This emphatic statement that Paul is not lying should give us pause. He is completely clear. He did not consult with others after his conversion, did not see any of the apostles for three years, and even then, he did not see any except Cephas (Peter) and Jesus’ brother James. This makes the account found in the book of Acts very interesting indeed. For according to Acts 9, immediately after Paul converted he spent some time in Damascus “with the disciples”, and when he left the city, he headed directly to Jerusalem, where he met with the apostles of Jesus (Acts 9:19-30). On all counts, Acts seems to be at odds with Paul. Did he spend time with other Christians immediately (Acts) or not (Paul)?“

Let’s read Acts 9:23-25 thoughtfully for ourselves before we take a scholar’s word for it.

“When many days had passed, the Jews plotted to kill him, but their plot became known to Saul. They were watching the gates day and night in order to kill him, but his disciples took him by night and let him down through an opening in the wall, lowering him in a basket.“

Just how long of a period is ‘many days’? Looking elsewhere, we read that many days can be as long as 3 years! Take a look at 1 Kings 2:38-39: “And Shimei said to the king, “What you say is good; as my lord the king has said, so will your servant do.” So Shimei lived in Jerusalem many days. But it happened at the end of three years that two of Shimei’s servants ran away to Achish, son of Maacah, king of Gath…

So what about the journey to Arabia? Luke doesn’t mention it, but that doesn’t necessarily contradict Paul’s story in Galatians. This trip may have happened within Luke’s ‘many days’ in Acts 9:23, and Luke either didn’t know about it or didn’t mention it.

But let’s think about this for a moment. If Acts was written by someone with no access to the story of Paul’s conversion, why did he place it on the way to Damascus of all places? Damascus doesn’t even feature prominently in the rest of Acts.

But if Luke is using Galatians, he wouldn’t have put Damascus into his story while leaving out Paul’s trip to Arabia or to the passing of three years. Either Luke is carefully devious to include a small detail like Damascus while being a major blunderer at the same time by leaving out the trip to Arabia. Or, this casual correspondence about Damascus shows that Luke knew about Paul apart from his letter to the Galatians.

Did The Churches In Judea Know Paul?

Regarding Galatians 1:21-22, Ehrman writes: “Here again Paul is quite clear. Sometime after he converted, he went around to various churches in the regions of Syria and Cilicia, but he “was still unknown by sight to the churches of Judea” (Galatians 1:21-22). This has struck some scholars as odd. According to the book of Acts, when Paul was earlier persecuting the churches in Christ, it was specifically the Christian churches in “Judea and Samaria” (Acts 8:1-3; 9:1-2). Why is it that Christians in the churches he had formerly persecuted didn’t know what he looked like? Wasn’t he physically present among them as their enemy earlier? According to Acts, yes, according to Paul, no.”

Acts 8:1-3 shows that Paul was persecuting the Jerusalem church, not the whole region of Judea. Acts 8:1 says that the believers in Jerusalem ‘were scattered throughout the regions of Judea and Samaria.’

They very probably would have told the other Christians they met about Paul’s persecutions. That means the Judean Christians would’ve known Paul by his big, bad reputation but not necessarily by sight. This just isn’t all that hard to think through.

Did Paul Go To Athens Alone?

Here’s Ehrman again: “Luke again appears to have gotten some details wrong. When Paul writes his very first letter to the Thessalonians, he indicates that after he had brought them to faith and started a church among them, he traveled to Athens. But he felt concerned about the fledgling new church and so sent his companion Timothy back to see how the Thessalonians were doing. In other words, Timothy accompanied Paul to Athens and then returned to Thessalonica to help build them up in the faith (1 Thessalonians 3:1–2). The book of Acts, however, is equally clear. There we are told that after Paul established the church in Thessalonica, he and Silas and Timothy founded a church in the city of Boroea; the Christians there then “sent Paul away to the coast, but Silas and Timothy remained behind” (17:14–15). Paul proceeded to send instructions that Silas and Timothy should meet up with him when they could. He traveled to Athens alone and met up with his two companions only after leaving the city for Corinth (17:16–8:5). This is another discrepancy hard to resolve: either Timothy went to Athens with Paul (1 Thessalonians), or not (Acts).”

This so-called contradiction is pretty weak sauce. Let’s read 1 Thessalonians 3:1-2 for ourselves: “Therefore when we could bear it no longer, we were willing to be left behind at Athens alone, and we sent Timothy, our brother and God’s coworker in the gospel of Christ, to establish and exhort you in your faith.”

Paul doesn’t tell us how he arrived in Athens, all these verses say is that Timothy was with him in Athens at some point. It also suggests that Paul was in Athens for some time before he sent Timothy back. That’s why he writes, “when we could bear it no longer.”

Now let’s look at Acts 17:14-15. It reads, “Then the brothers immediately sent Paul off on his way to the sea, but Silas and Timothy remained there. Those who conducted Paul brought him as far as Athens, and after receiving a command for Silas and Timothy to come to him as soon as possible, they departed.”

The Book of Acts clearly reports that a word was sent back telling Timothy to join Paul as quickly as possible. 1 Thessalonians 3 says Timothy was in Athens shortly afterward. Um, where exactly is the contradiction here?

How Many Trips Did Paul Make To Jerusalem?

Here’s Bart again: “According to Paul’s account, [the Jerusalem council] was only the second time he had been to Jerusalem (Galatians 1:18; 2:1). According to Acts, it was his third, prolonged trip there (Acts 9, 11, 15). Once again, it appears that the author of Acts has confused some of Paul’s itinerary – possibly intentionally, for his own purposes.”

Here’s what Paul actually writes in Galatians: “Then after three years, I went up to Jerusalem to visit Cephas and remained with him fifteen days. But I saw none of the other apostles except James, the Lord’s brother.” And here is Galatians 2:1: “Then after fourteen years, I went up again to Jerusalem with Barnabas, taking Titus along with me.”

There’s debate among Pauline scholars about whether or not what’s described in Galatians 2 is the Jerusalem council that we read about in Acts 15. Bart seems to think this is the only possible interpretation. He could very well be correct that it is. But where exactly does Paul say that this was only his second visit?

Acts 11 says that between Paul’s two journeys, he did go to Jerusalem to bring aid to those harmed by the famine. But why would Paul have mentioned this trip to the Galatians? It had nothing to do with him meeting with the apostles about the Gospel message that he was preaching to the Gentiles.

I’m seeing little reason to think that Bart’s claim that Acts is unreliable is correct. But let’s give him one last shot.

Were The Congregations That Paul Established Made Up Of Both Jews And Gentiles?

Here’s Bart one last time: “According to the book of Acts, the answer is a clear yes. When Paul preaches in Thessalonica, Jews in the synagogue come to faith in Christ, as do non-Jewish Greeks (Acts 17:4). Paul indicates just the opposite. When he writes to this church in Thessalonica, he recalls how he converted them to faith in Christ and speaks of how they “turned to God from idols” (1 Thessalonians 1:9). Only pagans worshiped idols.”

Let’s again look at the actual texts in question. Here’s Acts 17:4: “And Paul went in, as was his custom, and on three Sabbath days he reasoned with them from the Scriptures, explaining and proving that it was necessary for the Christ to suffer and to rise from the dead, and saying, “This Jesus, whom I proclaim to you, is the Christ.” And some of them were persuaded and joined Paul and Silas, as did a great many of the devout Greeks and not a few of the leading women.”

And here’s 1 Thessalonians 1:9: “For they themselves report concerning us the kind of reception we had among you, and how you turned to God from idols to serve the living and true God.”

At first, it seems like Ehrman has a point, but there seems to be a bit over-reading going on here. Paul’s audience would understand that the ‘you’ that turned to God from idols is an exaggerated statement. In an epistle written to a group, Paul is referring to one portion of his audience rather than another. Paul tells the Corinthian church that “you are proud.” But he’s not referring to the entire church at Corinth as if they were all celebrating sin within the congregation! (1 Cor. 5:2)

As NT scholar Craig Keener points out, Paul’s letter to the Thessalonians has allusions to ideas that wouldn’t make sense to Gentiles lacking familiarity with Jewish eschatological thought. (1 Thessalonians 4:14-17) Paul also distinguishes believers from Gentiles, whose ways they shouldn’t copy, as if even the Gentile believers understand they’ve switched to a new lifestyle. (1 Thess 4:4-5) These points imply there where at least some Jewish believers in the church who could explain such elements to others.

Plus, when Acts says that Paul reasoned in the synagogues for three weeks, it doesn’t mean that Paul was only there for three weeks. You’ll see why that’s relevant in a moment. In her book Hidden in Plain View, Lydia McGrew points out that there’s a couple of interesting interlocking details in 1 Thessalonians that relate to these texts. In 1 Thessalonians 2:2, Paul says, “but though we had already suffered and been shamefully treated at Philippi, as you know, we had boldness in our God to declare to you the gospel of God in the midst of much conflict.”

We read in Acts 16:19-35 that Paul was mistreated in Philippi. He was beaten and put in jail even though Paul was a Roman citizen and wasn’t given a fair trial. Paul even had the officials from the city come and apologize to him and escort him out. According to Acts, where does Paul go next? Thessalonica. So this was all very fresh to Paul when he arrived there, and you can bet the Thessalonians heard all about it.

So while Luke focuses on the Jewish and God-fearing Greek converts, if he was just copying 1 Thessalonians, he would have made it clear that idol-worshipers were included in their number. And he would have made it more clear that Paul was in town long enough for the Thessalonians to know about his hard work ethic. (1 Thessalonians 2:9) It is interesting to note however that Paul reasoned with the Jews on the Sabbath, so he was probably working in the marketplace for the rest of the week, preaching the Gospel to whoever would have listened. (See Acts 17:17, 18:1-4.) I’m sure this would have included some idol worshipers.

Furthermore, Paul uncharacteristically rails against the Jews in his correspondence: “For you, brothers became imitators of the churches of God in Christ Jesus that are in Judea. For you suffered the same things from your own countrymen as they did from the Jews, who killed both the Lord Jesus and the prophets, and drove us out, and displease God and oppose all mankind by hindering us from speaking to the Gentiles that they might be saved—so as always to fill up the measure of their sins. But wrath has come upon them at last!” (1 Thess 2:14-16)

Elsewhere Paul prays fervently for his unbelieving Jewish kinsmen. (Rom 10:1) So what gives here?

The Thessalonians would have known the answer to this, as Acts 17:5-9 describes that the Jews spread a rumor that Paul was preaching against Caesar. They sparked a riot with the help of ‘the rabble’ and ran him out of town. They then followed Paul into Berea and used the same harmful tactics there. But as we’ve seen, the book of Acts is independent of 1 Thessalonians, but these details dovetail nicely with each other. The Thessalonians wouldn’t need an explanation of Paul’s indignation, they had witnessed his trouble up close, and one of their own — Jason — was dragged into it.

This goes against Bart’s earlier complaint that Luke’s account and Paul’s letters don’t mesh well. They seem to go together just fine being while remaining independent of each other. Luke perfectly explains why Paul would have spoken so strongly against the Jews to the Thessalonians, as well as why he spoke of his mistreatment in Phillipi.

Conclusion

With Bart’s top 5 examples of contradictions between Paul’s letters and the book of Acts, we’ve seen that his negative case simply is unsubstantiated and fails to give us a reason to distrust Luke as some sort of unreliable, blundering historian who is unconcerned with accuracy. In fact, historians acknowledge that Luke gets many nitty-gritty historical details right about Paul’s journeys, as I list out here.

There is a good reason a renowned classicist like EM Blaiklock remarked that “for accuracy of detail, and for the evocation of atmosphere, Luke stands, in fact, with Thucydides. The Acts of the Apostles is not a shoddy product of pious imagining, but a trustworthy record.”

Was Jesus a Jerk? A Response to the Friendly Atheist

Theology and Christian Apologetics

By Erik Manning

A few weeks ago, CNN Tonight host Don Lemon said: “But here’s the thing, Jesus Christ, if that’s who you believe in Jesus Christ, admittedly was not perfect when he was here on the Earth. So why are we deifying the Founders?”

As you can imagine, this caused quite a stir over social media and on the blogs, since the Bible clearly teaches Christ’s sinless perfection. While a few right-wing Christian leaders went a little overboard in their denouncements of Lemon, “The Friendly Atheist” took it as an opportunity to take some jabs at Jesus.

Hemant Mehta, the author of the blog, writes:

“Let’s talk about what Jesus did.

* Jesus once got so angry he flipped over tables and benches.

* Jesus cursed a fig tree because it didn’t have anything to eat — because figs weren’t in season — and then the tree died. Jesus killed a tree because He was hangry.

* Jesus admitted to speaking in parables that were difficult for people to understand… and then got mad when people didn’t understand them.

* Jesus got snippy when people asked Him why He didn’t wash His hands.

* Jesus’ actions led to the deaths of a whole bunch of pigs, angering an entire town.

So… either we have to acknowledge Jesus could be a jerk at times despite whatever other redeeming qualities we want to assign Him. Or, like the conservative Christians are doing, we can pretend Jesus was perfect because our faith requires it… even when the Bible itself has plenty of evidence to the contrary.”

So according to Mehta, Jesus was a jerk. But is he really being fair to the texts?

Jesus the table flipper?

Was Jesus just throwing an unjustified temper tantrum when he cleansed the Temple? To answer that, we need to give a little background. The temple market was established after the Babylonian captivity. JB Lightfoot says “There was always a constant market in the temple in that place, which was called ‘the shops;’ where, every day, was sold wine, salt, oil, and other requisites to sacrifices; as also oxen and sheep in the spacious Court of the Gentiles”

Josephus estimated there would be up to 3 million Jews traveling to Jerusalem for the Passover. Seeing their devotion, the money-changers saw an opportunity to get rich. They made a business of accommodating those who didn’t have the half-shekel temple tax. (See Mt 17:24)

Everyone was expected to pay it, rich or poor, in the month of Adar. So it became necessary to change a shekel into two halves, or exchange foreign money for the Jewish half-shekel. (Money that bore the image of “Divine Caesar”, in some cases) These men made a nice profit by charging a percentage for the exchange. The animals were in the courts to be sold as a sacrifice since people traveling from afar weren’t usually able to bring them.

Jesus was upset that in the Court of the Gentiles, the place where non-Jews were designated to worship, people were being deprived of the opportunity to pray because of greedy, irreverent people and this happened under the watch Jerusalem’s religious leaders. Jesus quotes Isaiah 56:7 that the temple was to be a place of prayer for all nations.

This would be like trying to have worship in the middle of Walmart on a normal Black Friday. The Gentiles were pushed out of participation with the Passover. Matthew previously writes “I say to you that many will come from the east and the west, and will take their places at the feast with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven.” (Mt. 8:11)

This event is called “The Cleansing of the Temple” for good reason. Jesus was purifying the temple from defilement. Nearly 200 years before, Judas Maccabeus cleansed the Temple after it was defiled by Antiochus Epiphanes. By cleaning out the Temple, Jesus is saying that the present Jewish leadership had defiled the Temple in the same way the Greeks did when the sacrificed a pig inside of it. Talk about an act of defiant protest! Shortly afterward, Jesus predicts the destruction of the Temple and the coming judgment upon the nation for their lack of response to Jesus’ Gospel. (Mark 13, Matthew 24)

So to sum up, you have noisy people who care nothing for God there to make an easy buck in the place where Gentiles were to worship, exploiting the poor in the process. Jesus taught that we can’t serve both God and money, and to him, this was both oppression, greed, and idolatry blatantly in his Father’s own house. Jesus said that this was to be a place of prayer, not a den of robbers. (Jeremiah 7:11) He was rightfully ticked off.

Not only that, but there’s not a hint that Jesus harmed any human or any animal. He flipped some tables. He fashioned a whip and gave it a good crack or two, but this would sort of like firing a gun in the air in a crowd. It would clear the people and the animals out in a hurry.

Was Jesus angry when he cursed the fig tree?

So what’s going on with the cursing of the fig tree? Jesus and his audience knew the writings of the prophets. They would’ve picked up on what Jesus was laying down. The Old Testament prophets used fig trees and vineyards to typify spiritual fruitfulness (or a lack thereof). Just see Isaiah 28:4, Jeremiah 24:1-10, Hosea 9:16-17, Micah 7:1. Let’s read Micah 7:1 to illustrate.

Woe is me! For I have become as when the summer fruit has been gathered, as when the grapes have been gleaned: there is no cluster to eat, no first-ripe fig that my soul desires.

Jesus cursing the fig tree was allegorical of judgment on fruitless Israel. How do we know that? Just look at the story. First, Jesus curses the fig tree. Then he cleanses the Temple, itself a symbolic judgment of the religious leaders. Then the disciples come back and notice the tree is withered. Shortly after that in Mark 12:1-12 and Matthew 21:33-46, Jesus tells the parable of the vineyard.

This parable tells of Israel’s unfaithfulness, their rejection of God’s prophets and ultimately God’s Son, and their impending judgment. Sandwiched between this is the cursing of the fig tree.

Now you might think this is me stretching things, but I’m not. Here are just a few examples of God’s prophets acting strangely to drive home a serious point:

The prophet Ahijah ripped his clothes in twelve pieces, symbolizing that God was going to tear the kingdom from Solomon and give Jeroboam 10 of the 12 tribes of Israel. (1 Kings 11:29-31)
Isaiah walked around basically naked for three years to warn the Egyptians and Cushites of impending doom against Assyria. (Isaiah 20:1-6)
Ezekiel publicly cooked his food over cow poop (!), warning Jerusalem of impending judgment and famine. (Ezekiel 4:1-15)
And who could forget God commanding Hosea to marry a prostitute as a symbol of Israel’s unfaithfulness? (Hosea 1:2)

Jesus cursing a fig tree is pretty tame in comparison. You might not like that God commanded his prophets to do weird stuff, but extraordinary incoming judgments call for unusual warnings to get people’s attention. God isn’t willing that any should perish and apparently is willing to go to great lengths to shake up the complacent so they would repent and be saved. Last I checked, a nation is more important than a single tree that lacks a nervous system.

So what about the pigs?

Was Jesus a pig-killer? If this incident with the demoniac and the pigs happened today, I can just imagine the headlines: NAZARETH PASTOR CAUSES DEATH OF 2000 PIGS, PETA LAUNCHES PROTEST. Does this put Jesus in the same category as Michael Vick?

For starters, the demons asked if Jesus was going to torment them now, meaning that their time hadn’t yet come to be judged, so he couldn’t make them just go away. (Mark 5:7) While Jesus is omnipotent, he chose not to fully operate that way as a man. For instance in Mark 6:1-6, we read that Jesus could do no mighty work in Nazareth due to their unbelief. So asking why Jesus didn’t just get rid of the demons is like saying, “why didn’t Jesus get rid of all evil people, evil spirits and every disease and affliction while he was here?”

Not only was Jesus not functioning in full-omnipotence, but he also wasn’t operating in omniscience, either. In the same chapter, he asks, “who touched me?” when the woman with the issue of blood is healed. (Mark 5:31) How can we be sure that Jesus knew what was going to happen to the pigs? That seems unclear.

There’s also nothing in these passages that show that Jesus drove the pigs into the sea and caused them to drown. Satan is the killer, not Jesus. (Jn 8:44) And it doesn’t make a lot of sense to say the demons caused the pigs to commit suicide since they just pleaded with Jesus to use them as their new hosts. One answer that Greg Boyd offers is that the demons just drove the pigs crazy, just the same way that parasites can drive animals crazy and cause them to hurt themselves.

I mean, these demons already drove two men into living naked in tombs, screaming and cutting themselves, and they couldn’t be restrained by chains. This is pretty freaky stuff. If Jesus felt like he had a better option, we can see from his character elsewhere in the Gospels that he would’ve taken it.

What stands out is that after seeing the destructive power of Satan and the delivering power of Jesus, the townspeople ask Jesus to leave. They could see the man now clothed and in his right mind, but they seem to care more about the pigs than the people!

In Matthew 10:31, Jesus says that human lives are worth more than many sparrows, and the same can be said for the pigs. While the man delivered begged to follow Jesus, the townspeople urged him to leave. They valued their unclean livestock more than Jesus and the man.

This shouldn’t need to be said but people are more important than pigs. You see this animals-first attitude in our day with groups like PETA, who’ve said tons of outrageously weird things.

This isn’t a case of Jesus acting carelessly. The man went from cutting himself to testifying throughout the region about what Jesus had done for him. This is an epic battle scene in the spiritual war that was being fought for the souls of people in the city. Don’t miss the deliverance for the pigs.

Was Jesus getting snippy over hand-washing?

There’s a lot more going on here than sanitary issues here, but Mehta conveniently leaves that out. Let’s look at the hand-washing passage in question:

“Then Pharisees and scribes came to Jesus from Jerusalem and said, “Why do your disciples break the tradition of the elders? For they do not wash their hands when they eat.” He answered them, “And why do you break the commandment of God for the sake of your tradition? For God commanded, ‘Honor your father and your mother,’ and, ‘Whoever reviles father or mother must surely die.’ But you say, ‘If anyone tells his father or his mother, “What you would have gained from me is given to God,” he need not honor his father.’ So for the sake of your tradition you have made void the word of God. You hypocrites!” (Matthew 15-1-7)

The concern has little to do with the spread of disease, it’s regarding Jewish laws about uncleanness. If you ate something wrong, you were ritually defiled. These hand-washing traditions of the Pharisees went beyond what the Law actually prescribed — as if accidentally eating something microscopically unclean is sinful.

The Pharisees were constantly criticizing Jesus for healing on the Sabbath. Jesus called them out for their hypocrisy of adding traditions on top of the word of God, which ended up negating the point of the law, which was loving their neighbor ⁠— including their mother and father. He saw people as more important than religious traditions.

I saved this example for last because I find some irony here. Mehta’s blog is chock full of posts dedicated to calling out religious hypocrisy. He should find that Jesus hated phony religious hypocrisy as an admirable trait, not as a character flaw.

Calling Jesus a jerk isn’t a real friendly thing to do, especially when you take a more “friendly” way to look at these texts. I’d argue that it’s probably more of a jerk move to dump a list of gripes against Jesus’ character with no explanation of the context. Contrary to Mehta, we don’t have “plenty of evidence” contrary to the traditional understanding of Jesus’ sinless perfection.

Busting One Of Bart Ehrman’s Favorite Bible Contradictions

Theology and Christian Apologetics

By Erik Manning

Skeptics say that the gospels are riddled with contradictions and therefore are not reliable historical sources. And these same skeptics say that some of these contradictions are downright absurd. For example, agnostic NT scholar Bart Ehrman points out one of his favorite Bible contradictions in his book best-selling book, Jesus, Interrupted.

One of my favorite apparent discrepancies—I read John for years without realizing how strange this one is—comes in Jesus’ “Farewell Discourse,” the last address that Jesus delivers to his disciples, at his last meal with them, which takes up all of chapters 13 to 17 in the Gospel according to John. In John 13:36, Peter says to Jesus, “Lord, where are you going?” A few verses later Thomas says, “Lord, we do not know where you are going” (John 14:5). And then, a few minutes later, at the same meal, Jesus upbraids his disciples, saying, “Now I am going to the one who sent me, yet none of you asks me, ‘Where are you going?’” (John 16:5). Either Jesus had a very short attention span or there is something strange going on with the sources for these chapters, creating an odd kind of disconnect.

Jesus, Interrupted, pp. 9

So there you have it. Either Jesus or John were having a ‘brain fart’. Take your pick.

Did Jesus Or John Have A Painfully Short Attention Span?

If you look at the Bible in a wooden fashion, this contradiction does seem to be absurd on the face of it. So how should we understand this so-called discrepancy?

It seems to me that the writer of John is dealing with the disciples’ immediate reaction to Jesus’ words. The thought of him leaving fills them with sorrow, but if they had asked where he was going and grasped that it was to the Father, they would have recognized it was for Jesus’ advantage and theirs. Just look at the next verse: “But because I have said these things to you, sorrow has filled your heart. Nevertheless, I tell you the truth: it is to your advantage that I go away, for if I do not go away, the Helper will not come to you.” (Jn 16:6-7)

Looking back at the previous times Jesus was questioned that Ehrman points out, Peter had a bit of a bodyguard complex and didn’t want to hear about Jesus taking off by himself. So when he asks the question in John 13:36 about where Jesus is going, he doesn’t get it.

And in John 14:1-5, Jesus talks about going to his Father to prepare places for them. Thomas asks a question, but it’s because he’s not picking up what Jesus is laying down. He doesn’t ask what Jesus means by any of these things. And we know Thomas is a bit slow on the uptake, as we find out later in John’s Gospel. Thomas and Peter were both thinking naturally.

The Disciples’ Silence Became Deafening

We see that Jesus is disrupted with another question in John 14 but isn’t asked another question in John 15. Jesus so far has mentioned his departure, but then in John 15:22-16:4, he talks about persecution headed their way. You know, some heavy stuff. Now their hearts are sorrowful. They fall silent with sadness after being so inquisitive earlier.

It’s at 16:5 that Jesus is saying, “guys…you still don’t get it. You went quiet on me with all these hard sayings of persecution and me leaving. But I’m not leaving you alone. I’m sending the Spirit in my place. Now is the time to be asking questions again, but this time let’s be a little sharper and ditch the gloomy pessimism.”

After this, they interrupt Jesus again twice more in John 16, showing they still don’t understand what he’s talking about. Read John 16:17-19:

So some of his disciples said to one another, “What is this that he says to us, ‘A little while, and you will not see me, and again a little while, and you will see me’; and, ‘because I am going to the Father’?” So they were saying, “What does he mean by ‘a little while’? We do not know what he is talking about.” Jesus knew that they wanted to ask him, so he said to them, “Is this what you are asking yourselves, what I meant by saying, ‘A little while and you will not see me, and again a little while and you will see me’?

The Disciples Finally Get It, But Does Ehrman?

Jesus then answers their questions, and finishes by saying “I came from the Father and have come into the world, and now I am leaving the world and going to the Father.”

The light bulb finally seems to turn on. They quit looking at earthly things and start to see the spiritual realities Jesus is talking about. In John 16:28-30 the disciples exclaim, his disciples said, “Ah, now you are speaking plainly and not using figurative speech! Now we know that you know all things and do not need anyone to question you; this is why we believe that you came from God.” Jesus answered them, “Do you now believe?“

The metaphors are over in their minds. Jesus is now speaking clearly. They fell silent after some heavy sayings from Jesus, but now it’s dawning on them after Jesus prompts them to probe further. This interpretation doesn’t just come from me but is also supported by commentators and exegetes like CK Barrett, RCH Lenski, Craig Blomberg, John Gill, Christian Kuinoel, and Hermann Olshausen.

Only when we leave no room for conversational nuance would we have to conclude Jesus had a mental lapse or that something strange is going on with the writer of John. It seems like Bart’s reading is pretty wooden, and dare I say, fundamentalist. Many of his examples of alleged discrepancies in Jesus, Interrupted that are much more worth investigating and wrestling with. But this isn’t a golden moment for Ehrman here. And unfortunately, there are more bad ones like this. There’s nothing all that strange here.

What Does Paul Say About Homosexuality?

Theology and Christian Apologetics

By Ryan Leasure

In this post, we’re asking the question: What does Paul say about homosexuality? To find out, we need to investigate Romans 1:26-27, 1 Corinthians 6:9-10, and 1 Timothy 1:9-10. Let’s consider each text in turn.

Romans 1:26-27

This passage is probably the most significant biblical text addressing homosexuality. In the broader context, we read that God reveals his wrath from heaven against all ungodliness. Even though people know God exists through natural revelation, they have suppressed the truth and worshipped idols instead. Therefore, God hands them over to their depraved minds. Verses 26-27 give us an example of this depravity:

For this reason, God gave them up to dishonorable passions. For their women exchanged natural relations for those that are contrary to nature (para physin); and the men likewise gave up natural relations with women and were consumed with passion for one another, men committing shameless acts with men and receiving in themselves the due penalty for their error.

So what exactly does Paul condemn here? Matthew Vines, author of God and the Gay Christian notes, “Paul wasn’t condemning the expression of same-sex orientation as opposed to the expression of an opposite-sex orientation. He was condemning excess as opposed to moderation.“¹ Elsewhere he states that Paul “explicitly described the behavior he condemned as lustful. He made no mention of love, fidelity, monogamy, or commitment.”²

That is to say, and Paul doesn’t condemn homosexuality in general. He merely condemns the excesses or abuses that were common in the ancient world. These excesses included pederasty, master/slave rape, or prostitution. If Paul, according to Vines, would have seen examples of committed, monogamous same-sex partners, he would have celebrated them.

In response to Vines, I simply note that nowhere does Paul limit his condemnation to specific types of homosexuality like master/slave relations, pederasty, or prostitution. Rather, he condemns homosexuality in general terms.

If he wanted to condemn pederasty, for example, he could have simply used the Greek word paiderastes. If he meant to condemn a master appeasing his sexual desire with his male slave, then why state that they were “consumed with passion for one another?” Doesn’t that sound like two consenting adults? Furthermore, why mention the women engaging with one another when we have no record of female master/slave or pedophilia relations from the ancient world?

Contrary to Vines, Paul condemns homosexuality in general (not limited to specific abuses) and roots his condemnation in creation itself. This explains why he writes that homosexual activity is an “exchange of natural relations that are “contrary to nature” (para physin in the Greek). Other revisionists (not Vines) take this to mean that some men’s sexual appetites were so insatiable, that they went against their heterosexual nature to have sexual relations with other men. In other words, “going against nature” simply means going against one’s heterosexual orientation. Thus, the text doesn’t condemn those with a homosexual orientation engaging in sexual activity.

But this explanation fails on multiple fronts. Not only do ancient authors repeatedly use the phrase “para physin” to refer to homosexual activity (not going against one’s orientation), Paul goes to great lengths to state that his position is rooted in the creation narrative of Genesis 1-3. In the surrounding context, he uses phrases such as “creation of the world” (1:20), “creator” (1:25), “birds and animals and creeping things” (1:23), “women” and “men” (1:26-27), “image” (1:23), “lie” (1:25), “shame” (1:27), and “death” (1:32). These allusions to the creation narrative indicate that Paul sees homosexuality as an affront to God’s design for marriage as outlined in Genesis 1-2.

Self-professed lesbian Bernadette Brooten writes in her scholarly book Love between Women:

I believe that Paul used the word “exchanged” to indicate that people knew the natural sexual order of the universe and left it behind. . . . I see Paul as condemning all forms of homoeroticism as the unnatural acts of people who had turned away from God.”³

Romans 1:26-27 doesn’t merely condemn excesses. It condemns homosexual activity in general as an affront to God’s design for sexuality.

1 Corinthians 6:9-10 And 1 Timothy 1:9-10

I lump these two together because they are similar in nature.

Or do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived: neither the sexually immoral, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor men who practice homosexuality (malakoi and arsenokoitai), nor thieves, nor the greedy, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God. — 1 Corinthians 6:9-10

Understanding this, that the law is not laid down for the just but for the lawless and disobedient, for the ungodly and sinners, for the unholy and profane, for those who strike their fathers and mothers, for murderers, the sexually immoral, men who practice homosexuality (arsenokoitai), enslavers, liars, perjurers, and whatever else is contrary to sound doctrine. — 1 Timothy 1:9-10

Paul’s use of arsenokoitai is the first known use of this word in the ancient world. It’s a compound word of man (arsen) and bed (koite). The word literally means “bedders of men.” It’s a term that conveys action, which is why the NIV translation of the word “men who have sex with men” is preferable to one like the NASB’s which simply reads “homosexuals.” Scholars are in agreement that Paul coined this term using the Septuagint translation of Leviticus 20:13:

If a man lies with a male (arsenos koiten) as with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination; they shall surely be put to death; their blood is upon them.

This text clearly condemns both partners for participating in homosexual activity. It says that “both of them have committed an abomination.” In the same way, 1 Corinthians 1:9-10 appears to condemn both partners as well. Not only does Paul condemn arsenokoitai (bedders of men), right before that he condemns malakoi (soft ones).

The Greek word malakoi has a broad range of meaning. It can refer to men who have long hair, wear makeup, have a fondness for expensive clothing, gluttons, the lazy who avoid manual labor, or the acceptance of being penetrated by other men. So which of these does Paul condemn here?

It’s noteworthy that the Jewish philosopher Philo twice uses the word malakoi to refer to passive homosexual partners. It’s also noteworthy where Paul places this word in his list of vices. He places it right between moikoi (adulterers) and arsenokoitai. When a word has a broad range of definitions, context usually is the strongest determiner of the author’s meaning. Considering malakoi’s placement in the sentence, it’s likely that Paul’s referring to a passive male partner in homosexual sex. After all, it’s hard to imagine that Paul would say that men who like designer clothing or a good chick flick will not inherit the kingdom of God. He must be referring to something more blatant.

Was There Really No Concept Of Homosexual Orientation In The Ancient World?

As I’ve alluded to numerous times in this blog series, revisionists argue that when the Bible condemns homosexuality, it condemns abuses — not lifelong, monogamous relationships. Revisionists argue that homosexual orientation and committed homosexual relationships were completely foreign in the ancient world. Therefore, the biblical authors didn’t condemn them. But is this an accurate assessment?

Louis Crompton, a gay man and scholar of queer studies states in his book Homosexuality and Civilization:

Some interpreters, seeking to mitigate Paul’s harshness, have read the passage [in Romans 1] as condemning not homosexuals generally but only heterosexual men and women who experimented with homosexuality. According to this interpretation, Paul’s words were not directed at “bona fide” homosexuals in committed relationships. But such a reading, however well-intentioned, seems strained and unhistorical. Nowhere does Paul or any other Jewish writer of this period imply the least acceptance of same-sex relations under any circumstances. The idea that homosexuals might be redeemed by mutual devotion would have been wholly foreign to Paul or any Jew or early Christian.”⁴

In other words, while Crompton supports homosexuality, he says the revisionists’ arguments don’t work. It’s a massive leap in logic to think that Paul would have embraced homosexual relationships if he had only seen good examples of them.

Furthermore, the idea of homosexual orientation wasn’t completely foreign to the ancient world. Thomas K. Hubbard, a non-Christian classical scholar notes in Homosexuality in Greece and Rome:

“Homosexuality in this era may have ceased to be merely another practice of personal pleasure and began to be viewed as an essential and central category of personal identity, exclusive of an antithetical to heterosexual orientation.“⁵

Notice what Hubbard says here. He argues that people in the ancient world experienced homosexual orientation and self-identified as homosexuals.

In Plato’s Symposium, a philosophical text depicting a contest of extemporaneous speeches by notable men, speaks to the reality of homosexual orientation. Consider these excerpts from two of the speeches:⁶

“For they fall in love with boys only at the point when they begin to have in their possession a mind; and this moment approximates the time when they begin to get a beard. For, I think, those who begin from that moment to fall in love with them are prepared to love in the expectation that they will be with them all their life and will share their lives in common.” — Pausanias

In other words, he speaks of a loving, life-long commitment between homosexual partners. Or consider this other speech:

“So of course when he also happens upon that very person who is his half, whether the lover of boys or any other, then they are wonderfully struck with affectionate regard and a sense of kinship and love, almost not wanting to be divided even for a short time. And these are they who continue with one another throughout life. . . . Each desiring to join together and to be fused into a single entity with his beloved and to become one person from two.” — Aristophanes

Here, again, is another example of life-long homosexual commitments. Commenting further on this subject, N. T. Wright argues:⁷

“As a classicist, I have to say that when I read Plato’s Symposium, or when I read the accounts from the early Roman Empire of the practice of homosexuality, then it seems to me they knew just as much about it as we do. In particular, a point which is often missed, they knew a great deal about what people today would regard as longer-term, reasonably stable relations between two people of the same gender. This is not a modern invention; it’s already there in Plato. The idea that in Paul’s day it was always a matter of exploitation of younger men by older men or whatever . . . of course there was plenty of that then, as there is today, but it was by no means the only thing. They knew about the whole range of options there.”

In the end, the revisionist arguments fall short. Nowhere does Paul limit his condemnation to homosexual abuses. Furthermore, we have no reason to believe that Paul was ignorant of homosexual orientation.

Concluding Thoughts

Based on the above evidence, Paul condemns homosexual behavior in general — not just abuses. He condemns both men and women in Romans 1, and both the active and passive partners in 1 Corinthians 6. The revisionist arguments that Paul had no concept of homosexual orientation, and therefore, couldn’t have condemned it lacks historical backing.

Does Paul’s Silence About Jesus Prove That He Didn’t Exist?

Jesus Christ, Theology and Christian Apologetics

By Erik Manning

Over 99% of historical scholarship acknowledges that Jesus was a real person. It doesn’t matter if that scholar is liberal or conservative, or Christian, atheist, agnostic or Jewish. The <1% of historians that believe Jesus is a myth are mostly atheists or agnostics. And it’s only the ‘internet infidel’ crowd that takes their arguments seriously.

One of the arguments that Jesus mythicists will often push is that Paul was mostly silent about the historical Jesus. Here’s GA Wells, one of the minority voices, who writes:

“Paul’s letters have no allusion to the parents of Jesus, let alone to the virgin birth. They never refer to a place of birth…. They give no indication of the time or place of his earthly existence. They do not refer to his trial before a Roman official, nor to Jerusalem as the place of execution. They mention neither John the Baptist, nor Judas, nor Peter’s denial of his master…. These letters also fail to mention any miracles Jesus is supposed to have worked, a particularly striking omission, since, according to the gospels he worked so many.” (The Historical Evidence for Jesus, 22)

And why didn’t Paul quote Jesus’ praise of celibacy in 1 Corinthians 7? Or why not quote the Sermon on the Mount when Paul was teaching the Romans to bless their persecutors to give his message more authority? (Romans 12:14) Or why did Paul say, “we don’t know how to pray as we ought” (Romans 8:26-27) when Jesus taught his followers how to pray in Matthew 6:8-13?

One of those famous internet atheists, Dan Barker, sides with the Wells, writing: “The earliest Christian writings, the letters of Paul, are silent about the man Jesus: Paul, who never met Jesus, fails to mention a single deed or saying of Jesus…and sometimes contradicts what Jesus supposedly said. To Paul, Jesus was a heavenly disembodied Christ figure, not a man of flesh and blood.”

At first glance, the mythicists seem like they have a point. But there are a few problems here.

Arguing From Silence Is Usually A Poor Way To Prove Your Point

For starters, arguing from silence is usually a terrible way to argue. For example, Union General Ulysses S Grant says nothing about the Emancipation Proclamation. The famous explorer Marco Polo traveled to China but never mentions the Great Wall. The archives of Portugal do not allude to the travels of Amerigo Vespucci.

An estimated 16,000-60,000 people died in 79 AD due to the eruption of Mt. Vesuvius. But we only hear about this event in a personal letter of Pliny’s. The relative silence of historians we’d expect to mention these events doesn’t cause scholars to doubt their occurrence.

Regarding arguments from silence, philosopher Tim McGrew writes: “Such arguments from silence are pervasive in New Testament scholarship, but they are tenuous at best….it is a risky business to speculate upon the motives of authors for including or omitting various facts. To create an appearance of inconsistency by this device…is methodologically unsound.” (Blackwell Companion to Natural Theology)

Paul’s Letters Were Occasional

There’s also the fact that most of Paul’s letters were occasional. Paul often wrote to combat error, or to provide specific guidance to churches. So, for example, Paul writes his entire letter to the Galatians to fight the doctrine of the Judaizers. Or there are the specific answers Paul gives about marriage, meat sacrificed to idols, spiritual gifts, and public worship in 1 Corinthians.

And think about it for a minute. If there weren’t some false teachers in Corinth saying there’s no resurrection, the great resurrection teaching in 1 Corinthians 15 would be missing from our Bibles! Jesus’ miracles, parables, virgin birth, arguments with the Pharisees, and so forth weren’t relevant to Paul’s purposes in writing those particular letters.

The Silence Of Paul…About Paul

In his book Did Jesus Exist?, agnostic Biblical scholar Bart Ehrman points out that Paul wasn’t just silent about some historical facts about Jesus, he also didn’t tell us a lot about himself. Like for instance: Who taught Paul? Where did he grow up? What did he do for a living? What did he do during his three years in Arabia or Damascus before meeting with Peter and James in Jerusalem? Or in the following fourteen years? Where did he go? Paul doesn’t tell us in his letters. We only learn about a few of these things from reading Acts.

Wells mentions that we don’t learn about Jesus’ miracles from Paul. But Paul said he had miracles in his ministry, and that was proof he was an apostle. (Romans 15:19, 2 Corinthians 12:12) Does Wells expect us to believe that Paul believed he and the other apostles had miracles, but Jesus didn’t?

The Silence Of Other Early Christians

But we can take it a step further. We have three letters from John, or at least attributed to him. Scholars believe he was writing to combat the proto-gnostics who were saying that sin wasn’t really a thing, and Jesus wasn’t a physical being. (1 John 1:1-3, 8) But the writer of these epistles, who wrote just like the writer of John’s Gospel, (I think they are both written by John, but scholars debate that) doesn’t mention Jesus turning water into wine, healing a man born blind, feeding the 5,000, walking on water or raising Lazarus from the dead. He doesn’t even quote the words of Jesus from that gospel. Why was the writer of 1-3 John silent about these things? Because they didn’t suit his purposes, not because he didn’t think that they happened.

Furthermore, most scholars believe that the author of Luke’s Gospel is the same author of Acts. Acts is Luke’s sequel. But in Acts, Lukes makes little use of the Jesus tradition he’s obviously familiar with. Clearly the lack of references to Jesus’ teachings in Acts doesn’t show that Luke was ignorant about what Jesus taught!

And what about the writings of some of the early church fathers? 1 Clement, Barnabas, and Polycarp’s letters to the Philippians. These letters fail to mention:

Jesus’ temptation in the wilderness.
His parables.
That he healed the sick and cast out demons.
That he was transfigured on the mountain.
That he got into arguments with the Pharisees.
That he cleansed the temple.
That Judas betrayed him.
That Pilate had him crucified.

Do we conclude that these writers didn’t think Jesus existed? No, we don’t. In the case of Polycarp, he quotes Matthew, Mark, and Luke, but these other traditions were not relevant to why he was writing, so he fails to mention them.

Paul’s “Silence” Doesn’t Prove What The Mythicists Claim

Finally, Paul wasn’t silent about the historical Jesus. As I’ve written elsewhere, Paul knows a lot about Jesus. He knows that Jesus was a descendant of David, that he had a mother, a brother named James and other siblings, a disciple named Peter, 12 disciples, that he shared the last supper with his followers, was betrayed, abused, crucified, and he alludes to several of Jesus’ teachings. (Rom 1:3-4, Gal 1:18-19, 1 Cor 9:5, 1 Cor 15:5, 1 Cor 11:22-24, Rom 15:3, 1 Cor 1:23, 1 Cor 7:10-12, 1 Cor 9:14, 11:22-24, 1 Thess 4:15)

But Paul’s main focus was Christ and him crucified. (1 Corinthians 2:2) It is what the cross and resurrection accomplish for the believer is what Paul is obsessed with. He’s interested in unpacking that teaching to the young churches. But his alleged silence isn’t a good argument to think that Jesus didn’t really exist. Bart Ehrman, no friend of traditional Christianity concludes that the so-called silence of Paul is a really bad way to argue, writing:

“What do these silences show? They do not show that these authors did not know about the historical Jesus because they clearly did. If anything, the silences simply show that these traditions about Jesus were not relevant to their purposes…What we can know is that Paul certainly thought that Jesus existed. He had a clear knowledge of important aspects of Jesus’s life—a completely human life, in which he was born as a Jew to a Jewish woman and became a minister to the Jews before they rejected him, leading to his death. He knew some of Jesus’s teachings. And he knew how Jesus died by crucifixion. For whatever reason, that was the most important aspect of Jesus’s life: his death. And Paul could scarcely have thought that Jesus died if he hadn’t lived”. (Did Jesus Exist? p. 145)

While I’ve disagreed with Dr. Ehrman many, many times, I have to offer a hearty amen here.

Don’t the Resurrection Narratives Contradict?

3. Are Miracles Possible?, Theology and Christian Apologetics

By Erik Manning

The apostle Paul said that if Christ hasn’t risen, Christianity is a sham. (1 Corinthians 15:17) Many atheists agree and will happily point to the gospel accounts. Just how seriously should they take the claim of the resurrection? After all, aren’t the accounts riddled with contradictions? How can they possibly be trusted?

Historians don’t normally conclude that just because individual accounts have apparent contradictions that the event in question didn’t occur. But let’s allow that to pass for now. I think the majority of the discrepancies that critics bring up can be easily resolved. Here’s a list of four of the most popular contradictions in the resurrection account that skeptics like to point to.

#1. HOW MANY WOMEN WERE AT THE TOMB OF JESUS?

How many women came to the tomb Easter morning? Was it one, as told in John? Two (Matthew)? Three (Mark)? Or more (Luke)?…

Atheist blogger Bob Seidensticker

LET’S LOOK AT THE TEXTS

“On the first day of the week, Mary Magdalene came to the tomb early, while it was still dark. She saw that the stone had been removed from the tomb.” (John 20:1)

“After the Sabbath, as the first day of the week was dawning, Mary Magdalene and the other Mary went to view the tomb.” (Matthew 28:1)

“When the Sabbath was over, Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James, and Salome bought spices, so that they could go and anoint him.” (Mark 16:1)

“On the first day of the week, very early in the morning, they came to the tomb, bringing the spices they had prepared…Mary Magdalene, Joanna, Mary the mother of James, and the other women with them were telling the apostles these things.” (Luke 24:1,10)

Whoa there! On the face of it, you can see why skeptics would point to these passages to discredit the gospels. It seems like they can’t get their details straight. But are these accounts really so contradictory? Not really.

“NEVER READ ONE BIBLE VERSE”

It’s a bit amusing that Bob thinks that because John said that Mary Magdalene came to the tomb, he’s implying that others were not present. All we need to do is to keep reading to see that isn’t the case at all. In the very next verse, John says: “So she went running to Simon Peter and to the other disciple, the one Jesus loved, and said to them, “They’ve taken the Lord out of the tomb, and we don’t know where they’ve put him!” (John 20:2)

Wait a second. Where did this we come from? In passing, Mary Magdelene’s own words clearly show that there were other women. John reporting this implies that he’s well aware that there were other women at the tomb. No bludgeoning required. As Greg Koukl has famously said, “never read a Bible verse.” You have to keep reading and get the context before making assumptions about the text. Otherwise, it would seem that you’re either looking for a negative verdict or you’re just trying to fleece someone.

THE SKEPTIC’S BAD ASSUMPTIONS

As for the other accounts, why assume that each gospel account is supposed to give us a complete, detailed list of the women? Luke explicitly says that there were others that he didn’t name. In no gospel did it say these were the women who came to the tomb and there was no one else.

There’s no contradiction here unless you bring that assumption to the text. Selecting to name some women is not an automatic denial that there were no others. If I say I went to the store with my wife last night, I’m not automatically excluding the fact that I brought my four kids with me. I just left out a detail. So what?

#2 WAS THE TOMB OPENED OR CLOSED WHEN THE WOMEN ARRIVED?

“Was the stone already rolled away when they arrived at the tomb (Mark, Luke, and John), or explicitly not (Matthew)?”

Bart Ehrman, How Jesus Became God

LET’S LOOK AT THE TEXTS OURSELVES

And they were saying to one another, “Who will roll away the stone for us from the entrance of the tomb?” And looking up, they saw that the stone had been rolled back—it was very large. (Mark 16:3-4)

And they found the stone rolled away from the tomb…(Luke 24:2)

Now on the first day of the week, Mary Magdalene came to the tomb early, while it was still dark, and saw that the stone had been taken away from the tomb. (John 20:1)

So far all Mark, Luke, and John say that the tomb was open when the women found it. Now here’s Matthew’s version:

At the end of the sabbath, as it began to dawn toward the first day of the week, came Mary Magdalene and the other Mary to see the sepulcher. And, behold, there was a great earthquake: for the angel of the Lord descended from heaven, and came and rolled back the stone from the door, and sat upon it. His countenance was like lightning, and his raiment white as snow: And for fear of him the keepers did shake, and became as dead men. (Matthew 28:1-4)

So far it looks like Bart and the critics have a good point.

GETTING A GRIP ON THE GREEK

So what’s going on here? Is Matthew signifying that the women saw the angel coming down and rolling the stone away? If Matthew comes after Mark, then it feels like he’s adding an extra layer of supernatural ad hoc. While it makes the account sound more impressive, we now get this contradiction.

But let’s reconsider what Matthew says. We’re introduced to the passage about the angel by the Greek participle γὰρ (gar). Strong’s Greek Concordance defines it as: “For. A primary participle; properly assigning a reason.” In other words, it exists to explain the earthquake and set of circumstances as the women found them.

As philosopher Tim McGrew points out, “Matthew uses an aorist participle, which could be (and in some versions is) translated with the English past perfect: “… for an angel of the Lord had descended …”

One such translation is Weymouth, who phrases Matthew 28:2 as follows: “But to their amazement, there had been a great earthquake; for an angel of the Lord had descended from Heaven, and had come and rolled back the stone, and was sitting upon it.”

And here’s Young’s Literal Translation, which is about as a word-for-word Greek translation you can get: “and lo, there came a great earthquake, for a messenger of the Lord, having come down out of heaven, having come, did roll away the stone from the door, and was sitting upon it”

So Matthew isn’t claiming that the women saw the angel descend or that they saw the guards get knocked out. It’s not in the text. It seems like the critics are looking for fault here.

OK, BUT WHERE IS MATTHEW GETTING HIS INFO FROM?

But now a question arises. If the women didn’t tell them this story about the stone’s rolling away and the guards falling out, who did? That’s a fair question.

While can’t say for sure, we can venture a safe guess here. In Matthew 28:11-15 we find out that the author had some info about the guards. What happened to them could have come from the same source — perhaps one of the guards themselves.

Matthew 28:2-4 gives us an explanation for the women at the tomb found when they got there. And that is the stone rolled away and no guards. This just isn’t meant to be a description of what the women saw. The stone moved before they got there, and that seems to be what Matthew is communicating when properly read.

#3. DID THE WOMEN AT THE TOMB OF JESUS SEE A MAN AT THE TOMB, TWO MEN, OR TWO ANGELS?

“Did they see a man, did they see two men, or did they see an angel? It depends on which gospel you read.“

Bart Ehrman (The Craig-Ehrman debate)

AGAIN, LET’S LOOK AT THE TEXTS IN QUESTION:

Mark 16:5-6: “And entering the tomb, they saw a young man sitting on the right side, dressed in a white robe, and they were alarmed. And he said to them, …”

Matthew 28:5: “But the angel said to the women…”

Luke 24:4: “While they were perplexed about this, behold, two men stood by them in dazzling apparel…”

John 20:11-13: “But Mary stood weeping outside the tomb, and as she wept, she stooped to look into the tomb. And she saw two angels in white, sitting where the body of Jesus had lain, one at the head and one at the feet.”

So is this a major difference like Bart and other skeptics claim? Nah. Not if you’ve read the rest of the Bible. Angels often appear to humans as men. Let’s look at just a few texts to prove this out:

6 TIMES IN THE BIBLE WHERE ANGELS APPEAR AS MEN

When Abraham was sitting by the oaks of Mamre, “he lifted up his eyes and looked, behold, three men were standing opposite him” (Genesis 18:1-2). These visitors in the very next chapter are called angels. (Genesis 19:1)
Jacob wrestled with the man until daybreak in Genesis 32:22-32. We read in Hosea 12:4 that he wrestled with the Angel of the Lord.
Joshua encountered the “captain of the host of the LORD” who was called “a man” (Joshua 5:13-15).
Here again, we see the same thing in Judges: “And God listened to the voice of Manoah, and the angel of God came again to the woman as she sat in the field. But Manoah her husband was not with her. So the woman ran quickly and told her husband, “Behold, the man who came to me the other day has appeared to me.” (Judges 13:9-10)
Daniel had visionary experiences where he describes his angelic visitor as “one in the likeness of the children of man”. (Daniel 10:16-18)
And finally, Hebrews 13:2 tells us that “Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for thereby some have entertained angels unawares.”

Because of medieval, we picture angels as babies or women with wings on their back floating on white clouds. But if it’s possible to entertain angels unawares as the writer of Hebrews says, then they can look just like a human being.

HOW MANY ANGELS WERE THERE?

This shouldn’t be that hard to figure out. Wherever there are two angels, there is always at least one. That’s just an unfailing principle of math. It’s Matthew and Mark who focus on the one who spoke. They don’t mention the other. But omission itself doesn’t equal denial. There is no account saying that there was one and no other.

I mean, we’ve all experienced this before, haven’t we? I’m thinking of my own life for certain job interviews I had. There were two managers in the room interviewing me for a promotion, but my focus was only on the one who was asking me questions. When talking about the interview later with others, me describing the questions and body language of manager Steve wouldn’t mean that manager Suzy wasn’t also in the room with her head down, taking notes.

#4. THE WOMEN SPREAD THE WORD OF THE EMPTY TOMB (OR DID THEY?)

In the other gospels, women discovered the empty tomb of Jesus and returned to tell the others:

“The women hurried away from the tomb, afraid yet filled with joy, and ran to tell his disciples.” (Matthew 28:8).

“When they came back from the tomb, they told all these things to the Eleven and to all the others” (Luke 24:9).

Mark tells us the women kept it hush-hush:

“Trembling and bewildered, the women went out and fled from the tomb. They said nothing to anyone because they were afraid.” (Mark 16:8)

That’s how the original version of the gospel of Mark ended.

BUT DOESN’T MARK 16 HAVE TWENTY VERSES?

Now some of you might be thinking to yourself: “Whoa. Hold up! Doesn’t Mark 16 have more than 8 verses? What about “Go ye into all the world, and preach the gospel to every creature,” and that strange stuff about drinking poison and handling snakes that we find in the ending of Mark?

Seemingly strange statements aside, I’m not at all here to argue against the inspiration of Mark 16:9-20. But most scholars believe that the original ending of Mark ends at verse 8. Unless you’re reading from the King James Version, most translations alert us to the fact that verses 9-20 are not in the earliest manuscripts. Here’s a sampling:

ESV : [Some of the earliest manuscripts do not include 16:9–20.]

NIV : [The earliest manuscripts and some other ancient witnesses do not have verses 9–20.]

CSB : [Some of the earliest mss conclude with 16:8.]

NLT : [The most ancient manuscripts of Mark conclude with verse 16:8. Later manuscripts add one or both of the following endings.]

These are all fairly conservative versions of the Bible. There’s no liberal conspiracy happening here. You can still believe verses 9-20 are historically reliable and even inspired. But nearly all textual specialists agree that the long ending of Mark wasn’t part of the original text. This gives us an apparent contradiction about what the women said after discovering the empty tomb.

LETTING THE SKEPTICS SPEAK

“One point, in particular, seems to be irreconcilable. In Mark’s account, the women are instructed to tell the disciples to go meet Jesus in Galilee, but out of fear, they don’t say a word to anyone about it.”

Jesus Interrupted. Page 49

Bart wants to create a contradiction by reading Mark as saying they never said a word to anyone. But is this the right reading of the passages?

IS MARK’S GOSPEL INCOMPLETE?

While the general scholarly consensus is that the long ending of Mark wasn’t originally there, what we’re not being told by the skeptics is that there’s debate regarding whether or not Mark meant to end it there or if the original text was cut off or left incomplete.

The late Bruce Metzger was a biblical scholar and longtime Princeton professor. He thought the original ending was cut off. Why did he believe that? Mark has a pattern of making blanket statements before adding an exception. Just take a look:

“He did not let anyone accompany him except Peter, James, and John, James’s brother.” (Mark 5:37)
“Suddenly, looking around, they no longer saw anyone with them except Jesus.” (Mark 9:8)
“As they were coming down the mountain, he ordered them to tell no one what they had seen until the Son of Man had risen from the dead.” (Mark 9:9)
“Why do you call me good?” Jesus asked him. “No one is good except God alone.” (Mark 10:18)
“Now concerning that day or hour no one knows—neither the angels in heaven nor the Son —but only the Father.” (Mark 13:32)

This is a clear pattern in Mark. So how would we expect Mark to continue if Metzger is right and the text is broken off? It would probably look a lot like what we read in Matthew 28:8. Let’s combine the two passages: They said nothing to anyone because they were afraid, but departing quickly from the tomb…, they ran to tell his disciples the news.”

Ehrman did his doctoral dissertation under Metzger, so he has no justification in keeping his audience in the dark.

BUT WHAT IF MARK REALLY INTENDED ON STOPPING AT VERSE 8?

If you read Mark carefully in one sitting, you’ll find a common thread. After Jesus reveals himself in some way, he asks the witnesses to keep it on the down-low.

“Then a man with leprosy came to him and, on his knees, begged him: “If you are willing, you can make me clean.” Moved with compassion, Jesus reached out his hand and touched him. “I am willing,” he told him. “Be made clean.” Immediately leprosy left him, and he was made clean. Then he sternly warned him and sent him away at once, telling him, “See that you say nothing to anyone; but go and show yourself to the priest, and offer what Moses commanded for your cleansing, as a testimony to them.” Yet he went out and began to proclaim it widely and to spread the news, with the result that Jesus could no longer enter a town openly.” (Mark 1:40-45)
“They brought to him a deaf man who had difficulty speaking and begged Jesus to lay his hand on him. So he took him away from the crowd in private. After putting his fingers in the man’s ears and spitting, he touched his tongue. Looking up to heaven, he sighed deeply and said to him, “Ephphatha!” (that is, “Be opened!”). Immediately his ears were opened, his tongue was loosened, and he began to speak clearly. He ordered them to tell no one, but the more he ordered them, the more they proclaimed it.” (Mark 7:32-36)
“But you,” he asked them, “who do you say that I am?” Peter answered him, “You are the Messiah.” And he strictly warned them to tell no one about him.” (Mark 8:29-30)

Reading this, we see that there’s a pattern silence, or requested silence, followed by proclamation. The silence never sticks. The whole punchline of Mark is that Jesus is the Messiah. Why we’d expect this pattern to stop seems silly. Just think about Mark’s Gospel as a whole for a minute:

In the first half of Mark, everyone questions who Jesus is.
In the middle, Jesus questions the disciples’ belief about Him.
The second half tells how Jesus became the Messiah.

Mark is making a point about Jesus’ identity. Many Jews hoped that the Messiah would overthrow the Romans and rule as king, but as we read his gospel, we see that Jesus came to set up a kingdom different than their expectations. He came not to be served but to serve and give his life as a ransom for sin. (Mark 10:45) His kingdom would start small but gradually become great, like a mustard seed. (Mark 4:26-29)

With that in mind, it’s possible that the gospel’s abrupt ending is there to intentionally challenge us to decide if we believe Jesus is the Messiah. Mark could be making the understood assumption that of course, the women eventually said something, that’s why you’re reading about this – but what do you think? Who do you think Jesus is?

THE RESURRECTION ACCOUNTS AREN’T HOPELESSLY CONTRADICTORY

“[T]he sources [regarding Jesus’ resurrection] are hopelessly contradictory, as we can see by doing a detailed comparison of the accounts in the Gospels.”

Bart Ehrman, The Historical Jesus (2000), p. 90

Bart’s claim is a strong one, but we’ve seen from this quick review that this claim just isn’t true. These accounts can all rather easily be reconciled. There are other alleged discrepancies in the accounts, and so this isn’t meant to be an exhaustive rebuttal to every objection that could be made. But in examining a handful of the skeptics’ toughest objections, we’ve seen that the narratives are very far from being hopelessly contradictory. Don’t let the critics ruin your Easter.

Tag Archive for: New Testament

Luke And Compression

Compression And Other Gospel Writers

But What About The Location Of The Ascension?

Does Luke Contradict Matthew? Go To Galilee Or Stay In Jerusalem?

Don’t Doubt Luke. Doubt Bart.

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Josephus only knows of Quirinius’ census in AD 6

Quirinius was not the Governor of Syria During the Time of Jesus’ Birth

Solution

Notes

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Conclusion

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#1. HOW MANY WOMEN WERE AT THE TOMB OF JESUS?

LET’S LOOK AT THE TEXTS

“NEVER READ ONE BIBLE VERSE”

THE SKEPTIC’S BAD ASSUMPTIONS

#2 WAS THE TOMB OPENED OR CLOSED WHEN THE WOMEN ARRIVED?

LET’S LOOK AT THE TEXTS OURSELVES

GETTING A GRIP ON THE GREEK

OK, BUT WHERE IS MATTHEW GETTING HIS INFO FROM?

#3. DID THE WOMEN AT THE TOMB OF JESUS SEE A MAN AT THE TOMB, TWO MEN, OR TWO ANGELS?

AGAIN, LET’S LOOK AT THE TEXTS IN QUESTION:

6 TIMES IN THE BIBLE WHERE ANGELS APPEAR AS MEN

HOW MANY ANGELS WERE THERE?

#4. THE WOMEN SPREAD THE WORD OF THE EMPTY TOMB (OR DID THEY?)

BUT DOESN’T MARK 16 HAVE TWENTY VERSES?

LETTING THE SKEPTICS SPEAK

IS MARK’S GOSPEL INCOMPLETE?

BUT WHAT IF MARK REALLY INTENDED ON STOPPING AT VERSE 8?

THE RESURRECTION ACCOUNTS AREN’T HOPELESSLY CONTRADICTORY

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