According to Robert Price, "[T]he Twelve, Schmithals argues, are a group of authorities originating in the early church that was subsequently read back into the time of Jesus in order to give them greater clout" (Deconstructing Jesus, 80). Bart Ehrman, however, believed that he had a good reason for believing that Jesus in fact did have twelve disciples. To fully grasp the argument, you should be familiar with the lost gospel known as “Q”. The document was apparently in existence in the first century, and we only know about it because New Testament authors used it. As we’ll see, we can’t be certain about what was in the document. Ehrman’s argument relies on what Q originally said. According to him,
There is one saying of Jesus involving the twelve that almost certainly passes the criterion of dissimilarity. This is the Q saying I mentioned earlier, given in Matthew as follows:
“Truly I say to you, that you who have followed me, in the new world, when the Son of Man is sitting on the thrones of his glory, you will be seated—even you—on the twelve thrones ruling the twelve tribes of Israel” (Matthew 19:28).
That this saying probably goes back to Jesus himself is suggested by the fact that it is delivered to all twelve disciples, including, of course, Judas Iscariot. No one living after Jesus’s death, who knew that he had been betrayed by one of his own (as reported in all our early sources), would have made up a saying in which the betrayer would be one of the rulers of the future kingdom. The saying, then, was generated before the events leading up to Jesus’s death. That is to say, it appears to be something that Jesus actually said. (Did Jesus Exist?, HarperOne, 2012, 318, emphasis added)
The late Burton Mack, however, seemed to disagree with Ehrman. Generally, he preferred Luke’s version of Q. According to him, “Since the text of Q will not be found printed separately in anyone’s copy of the New Testament, I will have to refer to its contents in this book by citing chapter and verse in the Gospel of Luke. Luke is preferred over Matthew because, in the majority of cases, Luke did not alter the terminology and sequence of the sayings as much as Matthew did” (Who Wrote the New Testament?, HarperSanFrancisco, 1995, 48). In his book, he cited Luke’s version of Jesus’s saying: “You who have followed me will sit on thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel (Q 22:28-30)” (Ibid, 53). Notice that, when taken out of context, Luke’s version doesn’t necessarily have Jesus telling Judas that he would be sitting on a throne in a future kingdom. Luke’s version is shorter than Matthew’s, and, generally, shorter versions of a saying are more likely to be original. Luke, however, is not reliable because he would often revise problematic prophecies. For an example of Luke altering his material on purpose, read the following:
Luke has entirely dropped the early-Christian expectation of a speedy end to the world. … [T]he way he rewrote Jesus' words (as given in Mark) to the high priest makes it quite clear that he did not expect Jesus to return to earth soon. According to Mk. 14:62, these words were "You will see the Son of Man seated at the right hand of power, and coming with the clouds of heaven."
Luke rewrote this so as to exclude the suggestion that some contemporaries would witness his second coming. … Luke's version reads: "From now on the Son of Man shall be seated at the right hand of the power of God" (Lk. 22:69). (G. A. Wells, The Historical Evidence for Jesus, 1982, 113, 117 & 118)
Did Luke try to cover up Jesus’s prediction in Q? If so, it would indicate that the Jesus in Q did not know the future. What if we wanted to argue that Luke’s version was the original version? If so, it’s difficult to explain why Matthew would alter the saying in such a way that it would make Jesus look fallible. It would be great if we had the Q document, but we don’t. We can, however, decide whether the saying, as found in Matthew, is something that no Christian would have made up.
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