NOGO

he spouts grandiose Hellenistic mysticism and proclaims himself a divine personage.

Sorry, but this is incorrect.

Nowhere does the Jesus in GJohn claim to be divine.
You need to reread this Gospel.
What is claimed to be divine is not the man but the spirit of God inside the man. You can think of GJohn's Jesus' as possessed or has having a split personality. If you want evidence, I can show you. There is plenty!


it is very difficult to assign pre-Paulist context to anything "John" wrote

Yet there are things in common which are not present in the Synoptic Gospels. For example both John and Paul tell us that Jesus created the world.

capnkirk

At best this is just a paraphrase of the conclusion of the first Nicaean Council that Christ was both wholly human and wholly divine. There is nothing left of the Jewish messiah in either description.

Vorkosigan

This is an excellent point. Another issue it raises is this: let's assume that Paul had the kind of charisma that enables doubters to overcome their doubts, like those leaders who retain followers even though they fail each time (one thinks of Nasser leading Egypt to slow destruction economically and defeat in war, yet remaining popular, or Hitler). When you look at charismatics like that through history, few, if any had any tolerance for leaving systematic theology or, even written texts to guide the followers. If you want to argue that Paul led charismatically, you are in effect making a point against the authenticity of his letters.

Vorkosigan

NOGO

Yes, but Paul also believed in a Jesus that was both human and divine.

However, Paul'e human side to Jesus was not in the form of a flesh and blood man. It was the spirit of God inside each believer.
Again this is in line with GJohn.

capnkirk

Sooo? That certainly contrasts vividly with the Jewish concept of a NOT IN ANY WAY divine Jewish messiah. AND supports my stated contention that GJohn simply reflects the (by then) dominant view created by Paul, and not anything pre-Paul...and that was my point in my initial response RE: GJohn as indicative of any views TJC had.

Nom

Pardon the interruption, but I'd just like to drop in my $0.02 on the subject of the OP, Ehrman's Lost Christianities. I finished the book yesterday, and found it quite readable, enjoyable, and informative. I think it has a few faults and shortcomings, but for someone like me -- who isn't a Biblical scholar and wouldn't know a Marcionite from a Martian -- it's a good introduction to early Christian thought. I found myself particularly interested in the sections dealing with Marcionite beliefs, since I've always wondered at the radical change in God's character in the OT vs. the NT, and hadn't before encountered this early, radical answer.

I also found plenty of irony for skeptics like myself. I got a specially good chuckle out of (proto-orthodox) Irenaeus' complaints about the Valetinian Gnostics, namely that they were difficult to fight with since they varied so widely on matters of doctrine and tradition and appeared to invent new opinions and interpretations of scripture daily. Christianity, it seems, hasn't changed all that much in 2,000 years!

I also enjoyed the mention of a gnostic gospel in which Jesus uses "Oberon King of Faerie"-like powers on Simon of Cyrene, the poor slob who has to help carry the cross during the Passion narrative. In this version, Jesus changes his own appearance to Simon's, and Simon's to his (a glamour!), and it's Simon who gets nailed up while Jesus stands by laughing! (After which, I suppose, he recites a few rhyming stanzas about considering all these events a dream if they offend you and goes off to rejoin Queen Titania!)

Ehrman does a good job, generally speaking, of presenting the various early Christian beliefs without judging whether they were "right" or "wrong." He points out that many scriptures that later came to be rejected were widely popular in places for a long time, and that some of the books in the "official" NT, like Hebrews and Revelation, are probably forgeries. He also notes, again without comment, that the proto-orthodox movement that eventually won also practiced the kinds of forgery, Gospel editing, and selective interpretation (a passage is literal unless it says something we don't like, then it's figurative, or vice-versa) it routinely accused its opponents of.

I do wish Ehrman had done more than simply note in passing that many of these "lost" Christianities have modern counterparts. Groups like Jews for Jesus are well-known; do any of them claim to trace back to the Ebionite movement? He mentions Gnostic churches in California. Are these ancient holdouts or something new that popped up after the discovery of old Gnostic literature? Yes, I know, I can go find the answers out for myself, but some discussion of this topic seems warranted beyond the few sentences on page 252 (which seem to suggest both ancient and new roots).

The one thing that annoyed me the most about the book is the place where Ehrman's "Christian slip" is showing: his repeated casual assertion, in the absence of anything resembling adequate proof or even argumentation, that the whole of Western civilization wouldn't have happened if the proto-orthodox movement hadn't won. That's a pretty sizable claim (like about the size of Antarctica!), yet his only real defense of it, found in the fourth footnote to the first chapter, is the admission that it's impossible to know what would have happened if a different Christianity had won, but we can still imagine (his word) it anyway. (I interpret this to mean: I know this is bullsh*t but I just can't help myself.)

Ehrman indulges his flight into fancy several times, eventually devoting several pages to this speculation in the very last chapter. However, several of the "what ifs" he plays with are less than convincing (such as, if the Gnostics had won, we might not be able to read a newspaper in a literal manner), and a discussion (it's not quite even an argument) of how the proto-orthoox theology was the only one that would have been acceptable to Constantine, thus becoming the state religion, is undercut, again in the footnotes, by the note that Constantine didn't abandon pagan worship when he accepted Christianity. The Christian God that was initially just added to the pantheon of gods Romans worshipped could have just as easily been the Marcionite one, for example. (And then there's the possibility that Islam would have served just as well, which isn't even mentioned.)

Why does Ehrman do this? Well, any speculation on my part would only be bullsh*t, but I just can't help myself . In short, I think Ehrman realized that his work, while only a summary of pre-existing knowledge, on the whole agues against two theistic beliefs. The first is the inerrancy of the Bible. It's clear from the history of the texts that there was no original, inerrant word of God and, further, that what we have today is completely riddled with both accidental error introduced through thousands of years of copying, and intentional editing as the proto-orthodox movement axed or changed things that supported their adversaries.

His discussion also knocks down a popular (by which I mean non-scholarly) apologetic, the idea that the success and longevity of Christianity is in itself proof that it's true. After all, how could so many people believe a lie for so long? However, Ehrman's summary provides numerous mundane and logical reasons why the "proto-orthodox" movement succeeded, from its active encouragement of martyrdom to the simple fact it was centered in Rome where there was lots of money and lots of people who understood how to build a bureaucracy. In short, nothing divine to see here, move along.

So, with his "Western civilization wouldn't exist" speculation, Ehrman is (IMHO) providing comfort for Christian readers who might have believed these things. He doesn't defend it because he knows it won't stand up to skeptical review, but for people already inclined to believe that there was a "purpose" behind Christianity, such speculation is suggestive.

But that nitpick aside, I liked the book. I may actually have to pick up the companion volume, Lost Scriptures, for a look at the actual texts. Fascinating stuff, at least to me.

Now back to your regularly scheduled debate...

Toto

Jews for Jesus is a modern movement, supported by evangelical Christians trying to convert Jews, with no real roots in Judaism or ancient Christianity.

The Gnostic churches in California are an outgrowth of the New Age movement, with roots in Theosophy, a nineteenth century movement that tried to syncretize all ancient wisdom.

Nom

Thanks, Toto. I kinda figured the "Jews for Jesus" thing was some kind of dodge, and from your description it doesn't sound like the "modern" gnostic churches would have much in common with the early ones. (C'mon, Ehrman, would it have been so hard to scribble a few more sentences?)

One thing I neglected to mention in my earlier review: I agree with other earlier posters here that Ehrman definitely doesn't come off as an apologist for "orthodox" Christianity. If anything, his comments on early Gnosticism and Marcionites are ones of approval and guarded admiration, while in contrast the proto-orthodox come off very badly: they routinely misrepresent their opponents' positions, practice character assassination, forge their own false scriptures, and redact existing ones to remove anything that helps the other guys.

And a question for the good capnkirk: what do you make of these folks: http://www.netzarim.co.il/ ?

It's amazing who comes up as a "yahoo sponsor" when you plug "Jews for Jesus" into their search engine...

capnkirk

I haven't done any more than look over the home page on netzarim, but the first impression is that they're a bunch of Jews who are saying that Jesus was a classical messiah (albeit a partially Hellenized one), then waxed mystical in their interpretation that he actually succeeded in fulfilling the prophesies by virtue of being the last teacher to be accepted by all three Abrahamic religions.

I can agree with them on the first part, but the rest sounds just like the kind of revisionism that I am contending Xtian scribes did with the gospels. Some things never change.

Over the weekend, I have been reading John Crossan's EXCAVATING JESUS. Having just completed his THE HISTORICAL JESUS: THE LIFE OF A MEDITERANEAN JEWISH PEASANT. Now Crossan is a catholic, but in stark contrast to Ehrman, carefully explains how we don't have four gospels to work from. How, instead we have one gospel, two embellished and contemporarily PC redactions of the first, and one gospel where there is almost no historical Jesus left. Then he adds that the three Synoptics were further edited to remain PC in a rapidly changing landscape.

In other words, he is not afraid to openly point out shortcomings he sees in canonic books, which Ehrman seemed overly reluctant to do. Ehrman never seemed able to even suggest that the part of the NT that deals specifically with the life of the nominal founder of the religion named in the book title, is by far the most redacted part of the whole testament. That ALL of Paul's letters had been written before the first gospel appeared (Certain, because Paul was already dead by then.) Specifically where I contend the REAL 'Christianity' was lost. (Well, that's not quite correct: The real JESUS was lost; replaced by CHRIST.). The necessary antecedent to anything's being "lost" is for it to have once been possessed. LOST CHRISTIANITIES, for me was no exception; there always seemed to be an implicit sense that all his interpretations presumed that there WAS a Jesus Christ, savior. And while the process was down and dirty, it didn't start until after the Ascention (i.e. implicit presumption = there was a Christ = Christianity is still valid even if the canonization process was horribly corrupted.).

I think Ehrman was at his best when describing this or that Xtian sect and how they played their part, but the closer one was to the earliest writings, the more the aforementioned presumptions seemed to show.

Vorkosigan

You mean, the supposedly authentic letters.