It’s been ten years now since Bart Ehrman published his great book How Jesus Became God (HarperCollins, 2014). At the time, I didn’t realize how significant the book was. I thought it was great, but looking back, I now believe that such book, coming out for a popular audience, could have changed a lot of minds. Ten years later, it appears that the ideas and insights in the book still haven’t trickled down to even the educated segments of the population. I’m writing this piece to help spread awareness about some of the important ideas from the book.
Popular books prior to Ehrman’s informed readers that Paul’s letters to the Corinthians were written before any of the Gospels, but, to my knowledge, none of these books let readers know that there were statements in Paul’s letters that go back even further than even the earliest Christian writings. Burton Mack has written popular books, and he probably mentioned the pre-Pauline oral traditions, but I’m not sure. I have trouble even finding a scholarly book that reveals what Ehrman did in his bestseller (Shortly after writing the preceding sentence, I discovered the non-specialist book What Really Happened to Jesus by Gerd Lüdemann. On p. 11, he tried to make the existence of the earliest tradition known to general readers. You can read the book for free here: https://archive.org/details/what-really-happened-to-jesus-resurrection-gerd-ludemann/). Regarding 1 Corinthians chapter 15, Ehrman clearly wrote, “There are very good reasons, in fact, for thinking that the original form of the creed was simply vv. 3-5, to which Paul has added some comments of his own based on what he knew” (139). In a specialist publication, you can read that “the construction changes” after verse 5. You can read about the “hypothesis” that this “two-line credal formula” is a “very old tradition” (Jesus’ Resurrection: Fact or Figment?: A Debate between William Lane Craig & Gerd Lüdemann, ed. by Paul Copan & Ronald K. Tacelli, Downers Grove: Intervarsity Press, 2000, 53). Burton Mack, in a scholarly publication, seems to have argued that all of the names were added to the original tradition, but maybe I am misinterpreting him (See A Myth of Innocence, Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1988, 104 & 113, fn where he wrote, “the statement ‘And he appeared’ does not require further qualification”). Ehrman argued that only Cephas’s name was in the original form of the creed (Cephas is another name for Peter). If the first person to see the Risen Jesus was an individual, then skeptical scholars have proposed that that appearance was a bereavement vision. (Gerd Lüdemann even used the word “hallucination” when writing about Peter’s vision being the result of a “process of mourning”. See What Really Happened to Jesus, 93 & 94.) Notably, Ehrman is probably the first scholar to connect Peter’s experience to bereavement visions in a bestseller. We at least have a natural explanation for how the Christian faith started. What can we say about the other appearance(s)?
According to Gerd Lüdemann, “the text of 1 Cor. 15.7 comes from a later period, when followers of James (or James himself) claimed that James was the first witness” (What Really Happened to Jesus, 14). I had forgotten that Ehrman wasn’t convinced that James had a “vision” of Jesus (How Jesus Became God, 192). If a mainstream scholar like Ehrman isn’t sure about the tradition, then I don’t think we need to bother with coming up with some alternative explanation. The tradition about “the Twelve” deserves much more scrutiny. Apologists think that everyone should just accept their supernatural “explanation” because otherwise we would have too much to explain away. When it comes to the tradition about “the Twelve,” it’s the apologists who have to explain away inconvenient details. One of the problems was apparent to the scholar John Dominic Crossan: “Normally one thinks of the Twelve Apostles…. But here the Twelve seem distinct from the Apostles” (Who Killed Jesus? 1995; HarperSanFrancisco, 1996, 203). An obscure author, writing almost a century ago summed up the major problems with the appearance to the Twelve:
Can any reader recite straight off the names of [the Twelve Apostles]? Even with the texts before him, can he construct a consistent list? Their appointment must be supposed to have been important, and yet, with the exception of “Peter,” “James,” and “John” (and even of these, who can settle the identity of the “James” of Paul?), what do they effect? Some are mere names, and (with said exceptions) they all disappear quickly from the pages of the New Testament. In the Pauline literature there is one solitary mention of a “Twelve”… [The verse creates] an insoluble problem, for according to [sic] Gospels and Acts it ought to have been “the eleven”; besides which, just below, we are told of “all the apostles.” Who were “all the apostles” if not the twelve, or, at any rate, the eleven? (Edward Greenly, The Historical Reality of Jesus, 1927, An Anthology of Atheism and Rationalism, ed. Gordon Stein, Amherst, New York: Prometheus, 1980, 189 & 190)
Apologists rarely address these problems because debaters don’t bring them up. For example, here’s an excerpt from a famous Gary Habermas-Antony Flew debate:
Flew: Why didn’t the writers of the Gospels report the appearance to the five hundred?.... [W]ouldn’t the Gospel writers, if they were familiar with this story and believed it was true, have brought this into the Gospels?
Habermas: The Gospel of Matthew does say that Jesus appeared on a hillside. More may have been there than just the eleven disciples…. I still want to base the case on the eleven disciples, who claimed they saw the risen Jesus.
Just seconds later, during the same debate, Habermas made it clear that he made no distinction between the eleven disciples and “the Twelve”:
Habermas: But the group appearance to the disciples is recorded in the creed. I Corinthians 15:5 says that Jesus first appeared to Peter, then to the twelve disciples…. [T]hat’s in the creed, it’s eyewitness testimony… (Gary Habermas and Antony Flew, Did Jesus Rise From the Dead?: The Resurrection Debate, ed. Terry L. Miethe, San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1987, 53 & 54)
Later on, Flew would get frustrated with Habermas constantly asserting that we had “eyewitness testimony”: “What we have in I Corinthians is St. Paul’s statement that there was this experience happening to a dozen people. We have also got other evidence that St. Paul talked with one or two of the people in question. Oh, good heavens, would you hang a person on this evidence?” (Did Jesus Rise From the Dead?, 101). I’m frustrated too because the appearance in Matthew, which is the oldest narrative appearance we have (How Jesus Became God, 190), doesn’t involve a dozen disciples, and no one besides a Christian apologist would use the words “eleven people” and “twelve people” interchangeably as if they meant literally the same thing (Did Jesus Rise From the Dead?, 101; I’m aware that, mathematically speaking, eleven is a subset of twelve, but are these folks really insisting that Jesus appeared to the “eleven plus Matthias”? [Ibid, 108; See also Acts 1:26] There is no explicit record of such an appearance anywhere in the New Testament). Frankly, the idea of Peter and James reciting a creed where they have to refer to themselves in the third person seems odd to me. Some translations make it sound like James wasn’t an apostle. According to the Jerusalem Bible, “Even when after three years I went up to Jerusalem to visit Cephas [Peter] and stayed with him for fifteen days, I did not see any of the other apostles; I only saw James, the brother of the Lord, and I swear before God that what I have just written is the literal truth” (Galatians 1:19 & 20). If James was an apostle, then how is it the case that Paul “did not see any of the other apostles”? Perhaps, Ehrman was skeptical about the appearance to James because there is no firsthand testimony with respect to that appearance.
Apologists like Habermas also repeat that “the disciples died for their message” (Did Jesus Rise From the Dead?, 59). Therefore, they must have all seen Jesus after he was dead and buried. While debating William Lane Craig, Bart Ehrman told the audience, "I hear that claim a lot, but having read every Christian source from the first five hundred years of Christianity, I’d like him to tell us what the piece of evidence is that the disciples died for their belief in the resurrection” (The link I used to use, https://www.psychics.smu.edu/pseudo/Ehrman-v-Craig.html, no longer works, but you can still read the debate on Craig’s website: https://www.reasonablefaith.org/media/debates/is-there-historical-evidence-for-the-resurrection-of-jesus-the-craig-ehrman). Thankfully, Ehrman included in his book the following: “We don’t know what happened to most of the disciples in the end. We certainly have no evidence that they were all martyred for their faith. On the contrary, almost certainly most of them were not” (How Jesus Became God, 165). What the Gospels actually do say about the disciples hasn’t gotten the attention it deserves. Even among scholars, the issue “has not been given its full due” (How Jesus Became God, 189). Either go and find Ehrman’s book now or keep reading if you want to know what the issue is.
Before moving on, I need to fill potentials readers in on a piece of information that many won’t see in their Bible. I implied that Mark did not narrate any afterdeath appearances of Jesus. Bruce Metzger, Ehrman’s teacher, explained why: “In the earliest manuscripts of the New Testament the second Gospel breaks off suddenly at 16:8 with the words, ‘for they were afraid.’ What follows in verses 9-20 is an early attempt to provide a more or less suitable ending for what was soon recognized as a most unsatisfactory close for a book which presents ‘the good news of Jesus Christ’… Whether Mark was prevented by death from completing his Gospel, or whether the original copy was accidentally mutilated, losing its final sheet (or sheets), no one can say” (The New Testament: Its Background, Growth, and Content, Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1965, 92). Therefore, the oldest appearance narrative is in Matthew. The scene is brief. In the King James Version, it reads, “Then the eleven disciples went away into Galilee, into a mountain where Jesus had appointed them. And when they saw him, they worshipped him: but some doubted” (28:16 & 17). That last verse by itself should’ve gotten more attention, but there’s more to it than just that verse. Ehrman was correct to say that scholars, in general, have not spent enough time on what Ehrman called the “doubt tradition” (How Jesus Became God, 189). Here’s an example of a scholar who did notice it: “Certainly we find in the material we possess (Luke and John, the author of the present end of Mark, the uncanonical Acts of John, etc.) indications that Jesus could change his guise (compare Mark 16:12). Perhaps this idea originated and found a place in the records to account for and excuse the difficulty the disciples evidently had in crediting the Resurrection (Mark 16:11, 13, 14). Even when confronted presumably with Jesus in person ‘some doubted’ (Matthew 28:17)” (Hugh J. Schonfield, After the Cross, San Diego: A. S. Barnes & Company, Inc., 1981, 26; Read it here: https://archive.org/details/aftercross00scho/). You may not have known that some of the disciples doubted that Jesus had been raised from the dead, but the evidence was there all along. Instead of trying to suppress the “doubt tradition,” the Gospel of Luke tried to explain it away. Ehrman spent over three pages on the “doubt tradition,” and it’s essential reading. Ehrman concluded, “If historically only a few people had the visions, and not everyone believed them, this would explain many things. Mary didn’t doubt what she had seen, nor did Peter or Paul. But others did. Still, as the stories of Jesus’s ‘appearances’ were told and retold, of course, they were embellished, magnified, and even made up; so soon, probably within a few years, it was said that all of the disciples had seen Jesus, along with other people” (How Jesus Became God, 192). Ehrman’s conclusion makes sense, unlike the narrative we see in Matthew. The narrative makes no sense because it’s trying to combine truth and legend. Instead of throwing out the legend, later writers tried to answer the question that Ehrman asked: “Why would they doubt if Jesus was right there, in front of them?” (How Jesus Became God, 190). Either Jesus historically didn’t look like his pre-crucifixion self or we’re dealing with an ad hoc way to make sense of the doubt tradition. Pardon me, but if you believe the former, it’s a sign of gullibility.
Ehrman was not the first scholar to discuss the “’doubt’ motif” (Willi Marxsen, The Resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth, Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1970, 67 & 80), nor is he the first to draw a radical conclusion after looking at the evidence. He almost certainly is the first scholar to popularize this potentially revolutionary research. I may be overstating because even the average educated person probably doesn’t know about what scholars are saying about the origins of Christianity. Whether you need to do counter-apologetics or you just wish to be informed about an important subject, you still need Ehrman’s book.
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