Steven Carr

Here is Ehrman's footnote in 'Did Jesus Exist' explaining how he wrote a peer-reviewed article in a mainstream Biblical journal which was refuted by an incredibly simple observation that neither he nor any of the reviewers of the article spotted.

'Earlier in my career I played with the idea that Cephas and Peter were two different persons, but now I think that’s a bit bizarre—as most of the critics of the idea have pointed out! The most compelling reason for identifying them as the same person is not simply John 1:42 but the historical fact that neither Cephas nor Peter was a personal name in the ancient world. Peter is the Greek word for “rock,” which in Aramaic was Cephas. And so Jesus gave this person—his real name was Simon—a nickname, “the Rock.” It seems highly unlikely that two different persons were given precisely the same nickname at the same time in history when this name did not previously exist.'

How do mainstream Biblical journals allow articles through peer-review when they are 'bizarre' and refuted by just 3 sentences pointing out how unlikely it is two people have the same name?

Just how broken is peer-review in mainstream Biblical scholarship when articles in professional journals are refuted by the simplest of observations?

Diogenes the Cynic

To be more precise, Ehrman says they would not have created a crucified Messiah a priori. That it's a post priori response to a real crucifixion. That would still be an idiosyncratic position within Palestinian Judaism, but that's exactly why the movement was a complete failure within Judaism, and only caught on with the Gentiles after Paul had the idea to package his 2.0 version.

We also have the modern example of Rabbi Schneerson as a parallel.

Steven Carr

And how does Ehrman know they would not have created a crucified Messiah a priori?

Present his evidence that a crucified Messiah was unthinkable until Christians started looking in the scriptures for a crucified Messiah, when they quickly found one.

And how could the crucifixion have been why the movement was a failure when we are told the movement failed before the crucifixion, because Jesus was rejected by the Jews?

If Jesus existed and was rejected, then Jesus would have been the stumbling block, not the idea that the Messiah was crucified.

Presumably , Jews were happy to hear from Christians how a Messiah was prophesied in the scriptures, right until the moment they heard from Christians how scripture prophesied a crucified Messiah.

Jews, even on Ehrman's reckoning, gave Christianity a fail for *theological* reasons 'The Messiah can't be crucified.', when there should have been historical reasons for Jews to reject Christianity (We already got rid of this mad preacher once, why are you touting him again?)

Diogenes the Cynic

Well, just for the record. there is no crucified Messiah in the Hebrew Bible (in fact, no reference to crucifixion at all), No suffering Messiah and no dying or resurrecting Messiah. The passages Christians chose mostly have nothing even to do with the Messiah. You can't find a crucified Messiah in the Hebrew Bible. That is an eisegetic reading, not an exegetic one. It's certainly not a reading multiple readers would derive independently.

There is also the fact that Hebrew scripture and Jewish expectation define the Messiah universally as a conqueror, not a victim. There isn't a single example of pre-Christian evidence for a Jewish expectation of a suffering/dying Messiah.

Ehrman also cites Paul's own letters admitting that the crucifixion was against Jewish expectation, as well as a Pauline quotation of an OT passage stating that executed criminals were "cursed" merely by the fact of being executed.
Who said this?
Where are you getting that Jesus was "rejected" as anything while he was alive? that's not a claim made by Ehrman (or by me).
I honestly don't know what you're referring to here. When did Jews ever care or listen to how Christians interpreted Jewish scripture? When were they ever "happy to hear" a damn thing from them?
Where are you getting this "first rejection" from? Most of the Jews, even in Jerusalem on the day of the crucifixion, would have never heard of him, much less "rejected him as the Messiah." "rejecting" somebody as the messiah doesn't even really make sense in a Jewish context. The Jewish Messiah is defined by accomplishments, not by birthright. Nobody is the Messiah unless and until they fulfill the Messianic expectations. The only that absolutely disqualifies a person from being the Messiah is death.

We have no good evidence that Jesus ever even claimed to be the Messiah, so there would be no reason to eject a claim that was not made while Jesus was alive in the first place.

Steven Carr

So having comprehensively trashed the idea that Jesus ticked any Messiah boxes, you now have to invoke a miracle to explain why Christians thought of Jesus as the Messiah.

And it is little use saying that Christians thought Jesus was the Messiah because he was crucified, as you trash that idea yourself.

andrewcriddle

Peer review does not in general exclude articles for being, in the reviewers opinion, implausible.

It seeks to exclude articles for being incompetent or misleading. As long as the data (eg references to ancient writers) is being handled accurately and objectively, and the argument is clearly laid out, the article may well be published.

Ehrman's article was probably thought worth publishing because it clearly laid out the early multiple attestation for distinguishing Peter and Cephas, despite the implausible conclusion drawn from by Ehrman this evidence.

Andrew Criddle

Diogenes the Cynic

"Miracle?" What miracle did I invoke? They thought he was going to return as the Messiah, but no miracle was involved. At most, somebody may have had some kind of visionary/theophanic experience (i.e. hallucination). I don't know why (nobody knows why) his followers were so fixated on him and remained so after his death, but there are numerous other examples of similar personality cults holding onto hope or expectation that the objects of these cults will return after death. Personality cults are commonplace, explicable, happen all the time and commonly transcend or transgress the original religious contexts these personalities emerge from. Religious assumptions are adjusted to serve the fixation. Individual personalities are the one thing that's well known to be able to cause people to transgress or alter their own religious assumptions.

By contrast, I'm not aware of any examples at all of religious assumptions being radically altered simply to fabricate a non-existent personality.
They didn't think he was the Messiah because he was crucified, they thought he was the Messiah because (they thought) he had been raised to Heaven after he was crucified.

I think there is also an alternative possibility that they saw Jesus as an Elijah figure, announcing the Messiah, but maybe not the Messiah himself. There are a number of similarities between Elijah and Jesus - as much or more so than a lot of the pagan comparisons that are drawn. Elijah fled Judea to escape an evil king, raised the dead, multiplied food, controlled the weather was taken bodily up to Heaven and was expected to return to announce the coming of the Messiah. An early interpretation of a real Jesus as Elijah is, I think, is as viable as Jesus being created from whole cloth as a Jewish version of Attis or Osiris.

aa5874

Why have you PRESUMED your Jesus existed.

I am NOT aware that your Jesus did exist.

When did people see Jesus??? When did people first hear the Jesus story???

You are NOT doing history you are INVENTING stories from your imagination.

There is NO such thing as a Posthumous King of the Jews, or posthumous Messianic ruler.

Please, get familiar with the Bible and Jewish tradition.

The Jews do not look in GRAVEYARDS for a Messianic ruler.

DCHindley

What Ehrman did in his article was bring up numerous examples where early Christian writers showed a willingness to think that Cephas and Peter were different folks.

E1 A distinction between Peter and Cephas, as individuals, is found in a number of early Christian documents. He also notes that these speculations fly in the face of the equation of Peter with Cephas in John 1:42. [I've misplaced by photocopy of Ehrman's JBL article, but Allison says he drew from 2nd century Christian traditions found in Epistula Apostolorum 2; a fragment from Clement of Alaxandria as preserved by Eusebius History of the Church 1.12.2; 3rd & 4th centuries in Pseudo-Hippolytus The seventy disciples; the Praediciatio Pauli preserved by Pseudo-Cyprian On Rebaptism 17; Pseudo Dorotheus The 70 disciples of the Lord and the 12 apostles; the Egyptian Apostolic Church Order; the 7th century in Chronicon Paschal; the 9th century Codex Sinaiticus Syriacus 10; and the 10th century the apostoilic list wrongly attributed to Symeon Logothetes. - And yes, I "Englishized" the titles of some of these works]

E2 That the variations between identifications of where these Peters and Cephases fit into Church tradition about Jesus and his followers suggest that a living tradition was at work rather than a direct literary borrowing of earlier statements by later writers.

It was the counter article by Allison that proposed:

A1a The underlying meaning of the names Peter (stone, sometimes rock) and Kephas (rock, stone) make the names near synonyms. Since known pre-Christian sources use Aramaic Kepa as a name only once, and PETROS not at all (although he notes that C. C. Caragounis stated that "in view of the predilection of the ancients for names derived from PETROS/PETRA ... it is only natural to suppose that PETROS was in existence [in pre-Christian times], though no examples of it before the Christian era have turned up as yet", and he "can demonstrate pagan use of the name in the first and second centuries CE"), he thinks it highly unlikely that there could be two men with such rare (sur)names.

Apparently Ehrman felt that Allison made a good point there, and himself came to adopt it, significantly reducing the liklihood of the traditions cited above.

DCH

la70119

One of those early Christian writers apparently includes the writer of Galatians, specifically chapters 1 & 2. A normal reading of it would indicate to the reader that "Paul" was talking of Peter and Cephas as if they were two different people.

It looks like the Christians were making it up as they went along.