J-D

Early this year I started a thread to ask whether anybody had read The Nazarene Gospel Restored by Robert Graves and Joshua Podro. I was interested in people’s reactions to the ideas in it, but I didn’t get many. So I said I might borrow a copy again and post some of the ideas explicitly. Well, now I’ve got it in front of me and, to begin with, this is my summary of Graves and Podro’s summary of their general analysis. I may come back later with some other ideas from the book. In the meantime, I’d be interested to see if anybody has any general or specific reactions to this general analysis or any part of it.

There is evidence in the text of the Gospels that Jesus was familiar with the Jewish scriptures, with apocryphal and similar extra-canonical works, and with the Oral Law tradition of the Jewish sages. The Oral Law was traditionally passed on mainly in the form of commentaries on Scriptural texts, so Jesus’s sayings may originally have taken the same form, and it may be possible to interpret their original wording and intention by finding the Biblical or apocryphal texts to which they relate.

The Jewish religious scholars of the first and early second centuries conducted their discussions in Aramaic. They were not written down, but memorised, in an order based on subject matter, not chronology. It is possible that the followers of Jesus did the same. A generation later such collections of Jesus’s sayings could have been translated into Greek and written down, to form Greek lives of Jesus for Greek-speaking Gentile churches in Egypt, Syria, Asia Minor, and Greece. The people who did this would have known little of Jewish institutions, and would have misunderstood their material and interpreted it in contradictory ways as a result. They would have been further hampered by the fact that, by this time, these Gentile churches would have been separated by doctrinal disagreements from the original Jewish Church in Jerusalem and to some extent from each other. The Synoptic Gospels would have been collated later still from the earliest Greek lives, with partial efforts to reconcile their divergences.

By this stage, the Gentile churches would have had political reasons as well as doctrinal ones to distance themselves from the Jews and their religious leadership, to avoid the hostility of the Romans arising from the Jewish revolts. This would have given them a motive to represent Jesus (regardless of the truth) as quarrelling with the Pharisees, annulling the Law of Moses, and opposing conflict with the Romans. They could have changed the way Jesus appeared in the texts by making only small additions or deletions combined with major reorderings, so that the meaning of genuine original text is changed by being placed in a different context. In order to estimate what sort of changes have probably been made, and what the original version might have been like, it can be useful to refer to known historical facts and to the admittedly scanty references to Jesus in non-canonical sources.

As a result, Christianity as it later developed combines elements of the original tradition with the originally heretical teachings of Paul (which removed many Orthodox Jewish strictures) and with theology deriving largely from Alexandrian Gnostic philosophy as represented in the Gospel according to St John, which is the most heavily altered from the original tradition and latest to be accepted as canonical, although it nevertheless preserves some important details omitted from the Synoptics.

After allowing for this history of distortion, the original story of Jesus can be reconstructed along approximately the following lines: he was biologically descended from the Royal House of David, was designated by John the Baptist as the prophesied King-Saviour, and adopted by a ceremonial rebirth from a virgin into her Levite family so that he could fulfil the prophecies as a King and High Priest. It is known what the prophetic and apocryphal writers said about this expected Messiah, and this gives another reference point to test the Gospel narratives against.

Following prophecy, Jesus expected the end of the world in his own lifetime, to be followed by the Kingdom of Heaven. On religious principle, Jesus did not attempt to perform miracles. Apart from a few greatly exaggerated faith-cures (which he credited entirely to God), he simply preached the Kingdom. He did use symbolic acts to teach moral lessons, and accounts of some of these have been erroneously reinterpreted as miracles. The original Christian traditions about him would have excluded supernatural elements. He never laid claim to divine or supernatural status. He preached, according to tradition, that the Kingdom of Heaven would only be for devout Jews. Since he considered the end of the world to be near, he preached that all who desired salvation should cease to live a normal life and avoid all impurity, including sex. He travelled around his destined kingdom and sent missionaries through it so that all his people could hear his message of repentance preached. Then he decided that the time had come, in line with prophecy, for him to offer himself as a royal sacrifice on behalf of his people: an understanding of this prophecy is necessary to explain his actions leading up to his crucifixion.

According to this interpretation, Jesus never preached to the Gentiles, nor did he tell his followers to do so, nor was he at all concerned for their fate. He expected the literal fulfilment of eschatological prophecy to be imminent. He ‘officially’ died on the Cross but subsequently recovered from a death-like coma. He then gradually realised that the Kingdom of Heaven was not immediately at hand and that his sacrifice had been premature. He then tried to expiate his error by exiling himself from the Holy Land, not to return until the end of the world finally came. He gave his followers parting instructions to continue his preaching, and they continued to expect that he would triumphantly reappear at the destined time. Later, the belief of his original followers (that he would return from wandering as a penitent exiled preacher of repentance among the Jews of the Diaspora) was reinterpreted by the Gentile Churches as the dogma of a supernatural Second Coming from Heaven.

Malachi151

Stop right there. No gospel is evidence of anything "about Jesus". The different gospels are stories that were made up by various sects within the Jewish/early Christian movement, seeking to show that "their savior" agreed with their ideas.

Jesus is a myth, who was used as a mouthpiece for these various sects, so these gospel don't tell us anything about "Jesus", they just tell us about these sects and how they wished to use the "Jesus image".

gnosis92

Bart Ehrman has a similar analysis in his books, especially "Jesus, apocalptic prophet of the new Millineium".

gnosis92

Your claim that no gospel is evidence about anything about Jesus is unsupported by any academic historian of early Christianity, and given that there existed an early Christian movement, who posited Jesus as the center and historical founder of their movement, and that documents were produced as early as 10-20 years after Jesus death, (the Pauline epistles) the most probable explanation is that Jesus is a historical person.

J-D

Thanks for the response.

Obviously the hypothesis you present is incompatible with the hypothesis presented by Graves and Podro in their book. It's not possible for both hypotheses to be true, although it is possible for them both to be false.

Can you present evidence to refute their hypothesis? If not, can you argue a case for preferring your hypothesis to theirs?

J-D

Thanks for the response. I will investigate.

Malachi151

There ar many threads here on the non-historicity of Jesus.

Even is some "Jesus" figure did exist, there is no way to prove that "he" said or did any of these things. What,exactly would make "this books true" and the "other books false".

Even if you take the view that some "Jesus" existed, you have to show that things written about him are history, not fiction. Now, these authors are claiming that this gospel si history and that therefore the others must be fiction.

What is the basis of that claim? Because this gospel says so?

There were dozens of different stories written about Jesus, most of which are all incompatable with each other. There were also dozens of stories written about Dionysus, Mithras, Helios, Zeus, Hera, etc., etc., and even fictious stories written about Alexander the Great, Caesar, etc.

Just because a text says something doesn't make it true.

There is no reason to believe that this gospel is true any more than there is to believe that the other gospels are true, which is to so, no reason at all.

J-D

I know. I have participated in them, and have mentioned in them my reasons (which are not reasons stated by Graves and Podro) for doubting the 'there never was any such person' view.No. That is not their claim. Their claim is that their reconstruction, although fallible, is free of the major implausibilities of orthodox Christian views and likely to be closer to the historical truth.Of course not. That would just be silly. That would be like saying that our book must be true because it's in our book.

Obviously I can't reproduce here the whole argument in favour of their claims, because that would mean reproducing most of the book. I've given a summary of the analysis already. The general argument offered in favour of it being at least approximately true, even if not true in every detail, is that it fits with what is known about the historical context, contains nothing historically implausible, and explains (or contributes to explaining) the subsequent development of Christianity and the texts in existence today.

That is not my argument. It is the argument offered by the authors. It sounds interesting to me, and worth considering, but I am not endorsing it. If there is some specific feature of the outline, as I gave it above, which is implausible or does not fit, then I would like to hear about it.There are indeed fictitious stories about Alexander the Great, about Frederick Barbarossa, and about many other historical figures. What conclusion do you draw from this?

If I tell you that I just read an interesting book on some subject, would your immediate reaction be to dismiss it on the grounds that just because something is written in a book, there's no reason to think that it's true?

Vivisector

I'm hardly ever without an opinion, always delighted when asked to share it

I don't think I have a problem with this being applied to Jesus. But then again, I'm not sure I'd have a problem with it being applied to any contemporary Galilean male. I would question, however, whether Jesus knew Jewish scriptures on the basis of having read them (i.e., whether he was literate). Similar to a previous poster, though, I'm not sure that the balance of what is preserved in the Gospels is in favor of authentic sayings of Jesus. I tend to think the evangelists engaged in quite a bit of retrojection.

I don't think I disagree with the main point, though I question whether it happened as systematically as one might infer from the way you've worded it (e.g., memorization, collection). The first systematic attempts to capture the significance of Jesus seem, to me, to be Q and Gospel of Thomas.

This has always struck me as one of the greatest mysteries of nascent Christianity - how did the movement make the jump into Gentile communities? It seems it must have happened relatively quickly - did it happen during Jesus's lifetime? Why would Gentiles have accepted teachings of a Jewish sage/prophet/whatever as authoritative? What was more important to the Gentiles who did accept these teachings - the teachings themselvels or Jesus's supposed death and resurrection? Anyway, no great difficulties with the foregoing paragraph, though the nuts and bolts of how and why this happened seem important but yet unclear.

Sounds reasonable, but a tall order in terms of reconstructing the original text.

No argument with the above except for skepticism that important details are going to be recovered 60-70 years after the facts.

I have much more trouble here, because I don't see how any of this follows from the previous paragraphs (good reason to read the book, I suppose). Myself, I think all of the points are portrayed in the Gospels as they are because of apologetic reasons and resulted from a (relatively late) systematic search for prooftexts in the "OT" (a process that would seem to have implications on the relationships between the Greek-speaking "Christians" and Judaism).

How do the authors treat the "Signs Gospel?"

Seems reasonable, but if only devout Jews were eligible for the KoH, how does one explain Jesus's early appeal to Gentiles?

This seems to be in opposition to the accusation, preserved in the Gospels, that Jesus was a glutton and drinker. I'm also curious as to how the authors got the idea that Jesus was opposed to sex.

I have a hard time believing that Jesus was willingly crucified, and I'd be interested in understanding how the authors connected the dots in this fashion.

Addressed previously.

Strikes me as fantastic - maybe along the lines of Geza Vermes' book.

It would explain the belief that Jesus was expected to reappear, but seems to depend on the huge assumption that he survived crucifixion. I'll have to chew on this one a while longer.

Thanks for the summary.

Cheers,

V.

J-D

Vivisector, thanks for yours. A few points there to respond to. Obviously I can’t give a full account of Graves and Podro’s arguments, for which you’d have to read the book, but I’ll try to give an indication of their character.

Graves and Podro would agree with you that the existing Gospel text is not an accurate account of what Jesus said. Their view is that is has been subject to manipulation and distortion. However, they feel that it is possible to estimate the likely character of this manipulation and distortion and hence to estimate the probable character of the original version. They may be over-sanguine about how much is possible in this regard, and I am interested in better-informed views than mine on this point. It is not fair, however, to represent them as ever arguing that a saying attributed to Jesus in the existing texts can be assumed genuine solely for that reason without further consideration.

I can’t recall that Graves and Podro ever discuss directly the question of whether Jesus was literate, but I don’t see, in any case, why a reconstruction that assumes he was literate would be implausible. They do definitely see Jesus as distinguished for piety and devoutness, in a conventionally Jewish form, which does necessarily imply more than the average knowledge of Jewish traditional sources, written and oral. If it’s true that Jesus was an active preacher, this seems plausible. Also, if it’s true that John the Baptist singled him out (and they accept this), then it seems likely that he was already known before that for his piety and devoutness.

Q is known only by inference, and I know of no inferential grounds for supposing that it was ever written down. If it is legitimate to infer the existence of Q, why is it not legitimate to infer the existence of other memorised accounts of Jesus and his sayings? In fact, it seems to me that by accepting the existence of Q, you are conceding most if not all of what Graves and Podro assume on this point.

Graves and Podro offer a specific answer to your question about how nascent Christianity leapt from Jewish communities to Gentile ones: they attribute this entirely to Paul, of whom they give an extended and unfavourable account, only part of which I will attempt to summarise here. They suggest that the initial prompt for him to turn to missionising in the name of Jesus was the ‘road to Damascus’ event, which they interpret as a literal meeting with Jesus (see below). They suppose that his ‘prospective converts were already so-called “God-fearers” … who accepted the ethical principles of the Mosaic Law as contained in the Ten Commandments, but did not feel bound to undergo circumcision … Many of them were genuinely attracted by the moral rectitude of the Jews; others seem to have become God-fearers for commercial reasons …’. They trace an inferred history of the relations between Paul and the original (Nazarene) Church, ending with a decisive breach, and conclude thus:As I said initially, Graves and Podro do not assert that their reconstruction is correct in every detail: what they do suggest is that their reconstruction is not open to the same historical objections as the Canonical Gospels. Therefore, it should be closer to the truth than the canonical version. I think they give a word-for-word version to illustrate the kind of distortions the original tradition may have undergone. Giving a full reconstructed account should make more vivid what they are saying.

You express scepticism about the theory that the Gospel of John could have ‘recovered’ important details 60 or 70 years after the facts. It is not being suggested that these details were ‘recovered’, but rather that there would have been naturally developed variations in the oral tradition (this seems plausible to me) and that some important details lost from the tradition (deliberately or accidentally) before it was used to compile the Synoptics were never lost from the separate development of the tradition which became a source for the compilation of John (I don’t know how plausible this is, but I can’t immediately spot anything wrong with it).

You are right that it would be necessary to repeat the whole book to explain Graves and Podro’s reasons for their reconstruction, but I think I can add a little about an assumption I think they make but are never explicit about: namely, that there was such a thing as ‘the original version’. If you accept this basic premise, that surviving accounts of Jesus, both canonical and extra-canonical, derive ultimately from an original tradition, then it seems reasonable to me to proceed by trying to eliminate those parts which there are sound historical reasons for rejecting and then seeing what’s left. I summarised their summary of what they found through this process because they include it in their own summary and because I think it’s of interest. It may well be that there are some elements of their own account which there is good historical reason (neglected by them) to reject, and if so I’d love to hear about it. For example: they refer to prophecies that the Saviour would be legitimately both King and Priest, and suggest that Jesus could have fulfilled them with the assistance of biological Davidic descent and adoptive Levitical descent. To my mind, that raises an obvious question: how legitimate would Levitical status by adoption have seemed to contemporary Jews? I have no idea of the answer to this question. If the answer is ‘Not at all’, then I think that part of the reconstruction would have to be rejected. (I have to admit that I find appealing the way the reconstruction explains the story of Jesus being born of a virgin as a reference to his adoptive mother, but of course that story can also be explained plausibly as pure fabrication.)

Graves and Podro make no specific reference to the ‘Signs Gospel’. Can you tell me when this title was first used? The Nazarene Gospel Restored was first published in 1953. In any event, I think I can estimate what they would have said about it. It is evident that John includes elements entirely absent from the Synoptics. The only possible explanations are either that they are complete novel fabrications or that the compiler got them from somewhere else. Graves and Podro assume collections of material preserved orally (at least initially); I see no reason the hypothetical ‘Signs Gospel’ could not have been one such. This would make no difference one way or the other to their explanation of the miracles atrributed to the ‘Signs Gospel’, which is, as I mentioned, that (except for a few greatly exaggerated faith-cures) they were misinterpretations of morally symbolic actions. (If it isn’t clear what this means, I would be happy to summarise a specific example of their analysis—let me know if you have a particular interest.)

If (and it is an assumption) Jesus were a pious and devout preacher of repentance, then some level of ascetic practice would seem plausible. As grounds for his abstention from wine, Graves and Podro cite Leviticus 10:9, Amos 2:12, and Proverbs 31:4. Again, if (still making the same assumption) he were highly pious, devout, and ascetic, he would not have shared meals with people who were ritually unclean: Graves and Podro suggest that in the original version the conduct he defended in relation to such people would have been coming into their company in order to preach repentance to them, and that this would have been later distorted by Paul or pro-Paulinists for polemical reasons (they refer elsewhere to the evidence from later books of the New Testament that there was conflict between Paul and the original followers of Jesus on such points). They suggest that the original version of Matthew 11:18–19 and Luke 7:33–34 might have been this (or, by implication, something more like this):[They use the Authorised Version for all their quotations, and presumably for that reason they use stylistically similar language for their reconstruction.] This illustrates that it is conceivable that Jesus was ascetic, but less ascetic than John the Baptist.

They have a general argument to explain their interpretation of Jesus’s views on sex, and they support it specifically by reference to the excerpts preserved by Clement of Alexandria from the Greek Gospel of the Egyptians.

They don’t think Jesus intended to be crucified. They present an interpretation of a (reconstructed) portion of Deutero-Zechariah as a prophecy of a future prophet who will preach repentance, but when his preaching is not accepted, will deliberately preach false doctrine to provoke the people, with the result that his own family strike him down. This will bring the people to repentance, they will realise what he was doing, and the apocalyptic ‘Day of the Lord’ will follow. They suggest that Jesus was trying to fulfil this prophecy and expected his own disciples to act the part of his family (which is why he wanted them to have swords at Gethsemane), but that they all misunderstood except Judas. Judas understood but disapproved, thinking that it was wrong for Jesus to try to ‘force the hour’, and tried to have him taken into protective custody. After that, neither Jesus nor Judas was able to control the train of events, and what happened (including the crucifixion) was not what either of them had desired.

Geza Vermes wrote after Graves and Podro, but they themselves acknowledge a still earlier account suggesting how Jesus might have survived crucifixion and also note a record by Josephus of one of his friend who was taken down after some hours on the cross and survived. I understand that others have also explored this idea, but Graves and Podro are the only writers are know who suggest that if Jesus survived, it is possible that he actually met Paul on the road to Damascus. Yet, if he were alive, such a thing is surely possible. (Again, I have to admit that I find this dramatically appealing. It’s the sort of thing I’d like to be true.) Also, if Jesus did survive, it would explain the stories about his being expected to come again.

(Just how much influence it had on his views about Jesus’s survival I don’t know, but Graves records that he took a shell fragment in the lung during the First World War, was picked up unconscious and taken for—and officially reported as—dead, and then started showing signs of life twenty-four hours later.)