Some Comments on the Gospel
of John: (Based on John
Spong’s Book). A Blast from
the Past
A couple of people on the blog have suggested that as a
feature of the blog, I periodically provide a Blast From the
Past — that is, repost a blog post from a few years ago. I
think it’s a great idea. My guess is that most people on the
blog haven’t read everything from then, and if they have, if
they’re like me, they won’t remember them! So I decided to go
back from three years ago today (well, tomorrow) and see what
I was saying.
Here’s the post.
I don’t remember it at
*ALL*!!! But I still think now what I did then.
**************************************************************
***********************
John Shelby Spong, former Episcopal bishop of New Jersey and
highly controversial author (because of his skeptical views
about the New Testament and traditional Christian doctrine)
has just published a new book on the Gospel of John, called
The Fourth Gospel: Tales of a Jewish Mystic. I have not read
the book, but Spong has written an interesting article on it
that appeared in the Huffington Post yesterday, at this
address:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/john-shelby-spong/gospel-of-john
-what-everyone-knows-about-the-fourthgospel_b_3422026.html?ref=topbar
In the article Spong summarizes the conclusions he advances in
the book, based on an “intensive five-year long study.” He
acknowledges that many of his findings are those that scholars
have held for a long time. Spong himself is not trained as a
biblical scholar but has made a very successful, and useful,
career out of making scholarship known to a wider audience. So
too, his goal in the book, in large measure, is to bring major
scholarship to a general reader, a goal I obviously sympathize
with deeply.
The following are the points that he stresses in his HuPo
article. I will comment on them from my perspective – with the
caveat, once more, that I haven’t read what he adduces as
evidence, only what he says in this article. I will respond to
his views in two posts. Here are his first four major points.
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1) There is no way that the Fourth Gospel was written by John
Zebedee or by any of the disciples of Jesus.
I absolutely agree; this is a common view among scholars.
2) There is probably not a single word attributed to Jesus in
this book that the Jesus of history actually spoke
Well, that’s a bit extreme. Jesus’ first words in the
Gospel (1:38) are “what are you seeking” – and I bet
Jesus said that at some point in his life.
In any
event, Jesus surely said *some* of the things in the
Gospel.
3) Not one of the signs (the Fourth Gospel’s word for
miracles) recorded in this book was, in all probability,
something that actually happened.
Again, I completely agree. The seven “signs” are not
historical records. John explicitly doesn’t call them
“miracles.” It is striking that in the Synoptics Jesus
refuses to do “signs” (that is, to show who he really
is). In the Gospel of John, that’s virtually *all* he
does. Moreover, in the Synoptics he never teaches about
himself. And in John, again, that’s virtually all he
does. So unlike the Synoptics, Jesus in John teaches who
he is (the one sent from heaven to provide eternal life)
and does signs to prove it that what he says about
himself is true (so he says he is the bread of life, and
then he feeds the multitudes with the loaves; he says he
is the light of the world, and then he heals a man born
blind; he says he is the resurrection and the life, and
then he raises a man from the dead; and so on.
4) Many of the characters who appear in the pages of the
Fourth Gospel are literary creations of its author and were
never intended to be understood as real people, who actually
lived in history.
Now Spong is getting on tricky grounds. I don’t think you
can say that because someone is unhistorical that the
author either *knew* that they were unhistorical or that
he wanted you not to *think* they were historical. We
don’t know what the author “intended,” but I don’t see
any reason to think that he wanted his reading audience
to think that he was producing fiction. Moreover, just
because Nicodemus in ch. 3, or the Samaritan Woman in ch.
4, do not appear in other Gospels (this is one of Spong’s
points) does not mean that the author wanted you to
assume they didn’t exist. For one thing, I don’t think he
assumes that you’ve read the other Gospels – so he
himself would not be assuming a point of comparison. For
another thing, it’s not clear to me that these figures
are inventions of the author of the Gospel; he may well
have inherited these stories (and so, these narrative
figures) from the traditions he had heard. If so, why
wouldn’t he think they were historical? And even if he
did make them up himself (how would one show that??), I
don’t see any indications in the text to suggest that he
wanted his readers to think that they were make-believe
rather than figures that actually interacted with Jesus.
In short, the fact (which I take to be a fact) that they
were *not* historical figures who interacted with Jesus
has no bearing, in my mind, on the question of what the
author’s intentions were in narrating his stories.
As you can see, this will be a controversial book not
only for lay people who have never been introduced to
Johannine scholarship before, but even among scholars who
have worked long in the field.
Jesus’ Virgin Birth in Mark
(Reader’s Mailbag February
26, 2016)
It is time for the weekly Readers’ Mailbag. This week I will
be dealing with only one question, one that I find
particularly intriguing. If you have any questions you would
like me to answer, either in a comment or in the mailbag, let
me know. I can’t answer every question I get, either because
I don’t know the answers (often enough!) or because I can’t
get to them all. But I take them all seriously and will do my
best to get to yours!
*******************************************************
QUESTION:
I’ve read of one NT scholar who is critical of your reasoning
in How Jesus Became God. He says that your argument from
silence is fallacious. For example, he says that just because
the virgin birth is absent in Mark’s gospel does not
constitute evidence that the writer did not believe in the
virgin birth.
RESPONSE:
Great question. The first and most obvious thing to
point out is that there is no way to know what another person
believes (either the person who wrote Mark or the person who
lives across the street) unless they say something about it
(and even then it’s complicated: people say things all the
time for all sorts of reasons!). So anyone who thinks that an
ancient author such as Mark believes something he doesn’t talk
about – such as the virgin birth –obviously they bears the
burden of proof. What hints does Mark give that he subscribes
to the idea of a virgin birth? None at all.
But how could you show that Mark probably does not believe in
the virgin birth (or possibly even know about it), if he never
says one way or the other? I think there are a number of
things that have to be born in mind.
The first thing to stress is that the virgin birth is
mentioned in only …
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Christ
as
Son
of
God
in
Mark’s Gospel
In my previous post I indicated that by the early fourth
century, the debates over Christ’s divine nature had become
extraordinarily sophisticated and complex (though not as
sophisticated and complex as in the two centuries to
follow!). At the Council of Nicaea in 325 CE the question was
over whether Christ, the God who created the world, was a
subordinate divinity to God the Father, one who came into
being at some point in time, or if, instead, he was just as
eternal, just as powerful, and just as glorious as the Father,
completely “one” with him, even in his essence. It was this
latter view that won the day.
One of the things that I contend in my book How Jesus Became
God, and in the debate I had in New Orleans with Michael Bird
(as many of you will know by now) was that these issues were
not at *all* what the earliest Christians were debating and
arguing about, either with one another or with non-believers.
Our earliest Gospel is Mark, and a large part of its message
concerns who Jesus is. In fact one could argue this is its
overarching message.
The Gospel begins with the words “The
Beginning of the Gospel of Jesus Christ.” Much of the Gospel
is meant to explain just how Jesus can be the Christ. There
was a clear and straightforward reason why this was an issue.
Everyone who knew anything about Jesus knew full well that he
had been crucified as a criminal by the Romans. And so how
could he possibly be the messiah? Mark’s Gospel is meant to
answer that question.
I should stress – as if stress is necessary – Mark is not
concerned to show whether Christ is co-eternal with the
Father, equal with him, of the same essence as him. These
questions never once occurred to the Christians of the first
century; or if they did occur to them, they never bothered to
mention them. Mark was dealing with a far more fundamental
issue. If Jesus was crucified (as everyone knew he was) how
could he be the Christ?
This question never occurs to most Christians today for a very
simple reason. Christians simply assume that the messiah was
*supposed* to be crucified. Isn’t that what’s predicted in
the Old Testament? Won’t you find that taught explicitly in
such messianic passages as Isaiah 53 (“He was wounded for our
transgressions; he was bruised for our iniquities; the
chastisement for our peace was upon him; and by his wounds we
were healed) and Psalm 22 (“My God, my God, why have you
forsaken me?”) and … well, and lots of other places?
If the
messiah had to suffer for the sins of others, and Jesus
suffered for the sins of the other, then he’s the messiah,
right? Why don’t Jews see that? Why don’t they just read
their own texts? Can’t they read? Are they stupid?
So, the reality – which Mark knew full well – is that…
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Weekly
Readers’
January 24, 2016
Mailbag:
A day late, here is this (past) week’s Readers Mailbag.
I
will be dealing with two questions this time, one on why Mark
includes Aramaic words in his accounts of Jesus’ sayings and
the other on where someone might find English versions of the
surviving Greek manuscripts of the New Testament. If you too
have a question, simply ask it here as a comment, or send me
an email, and I will add it to the list!
QUESTION:
Why is Mark sometimes quoting Jesus in Aramaic? I know, that
Jesus cry on cross is possibly reference to the psalms, but
why is Mark spicing his gospel with Aramaic much more than
other gospel authors? Is it sign of a oral/written source used
by Mark?
RESPONSE:
Ah, good question.
It’s true that Mark on occasion does
record some of the words of Jesus in Aramaic.
For example,
in chapter 5 Jesus is told that a young girl (daughter of
Jairus) has died; he goes to her in her room, and taking her
by the hand and says “Talitha cumi” (5:41); the author then
tells us that this means “Little girl, arise.” She rises from
the dead.
But why does Mark quote the line in Aramaic?
(Here’s an interesting tidbit that you probably have never
heard. In the book of Acts, the apostle Peter is told that a
woman named Tabitha [note how close it is to Talitha] has died
and is asked to come and do something about it. He goes to
her in her room, prays over her, and says “Tabitha arise”
[Acts 9:40]. She rises from the dead.
Did the “Talitha
arise” of the story in Mark 5 become garbled in…
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The
Myth
Christmas
of
the
First
Over the years I’ve been asked to write short articles on the
meaning of Christmas for various news magazines. Looking back
at some of these articles makes me realize how many different
views of the season seem to be competing with each other
inside my head. Or maybe I’ve just been in different moods!
I thought I would reproduce a couple of these articles on the
blog. The following is one I wrote a few years ago for the
British journal The New Statesman. I called it “The Myth of
the First Christmas.”
(Apologies to those with better
memories than mine: I just checked after posting this article
and see that I did so earlier — three years ago!
But no
matter, I didn’t remember what was in it, and so probably you
won’t either!)
**************************************************************
****
Once more the season is come upon us. At its heart stands a
tale of two-thousand year vintage, the Christmas story. Or
perhaps we should say the Christmas myth.
When Post-Enlightenment scholars turned their critical tools
on the tales of Scripture, the birth of Jesus to a virgin in
Bethlehem was one of the first subjected to skeptical
scrutiny. Not only was the notion of a virgin birth deemed
unhistorical on general principle. The other familiar aspects
of the story were seriously called into question.
The story comes to us as…
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Jesus
and
Prophecies
the
Messianic
In my previous post I started to explain why, based on the
testimony of Paul, it appears that most Jews (the vast
majority) rejected the Christian claim that Jesus was the
messiah.
I have to say, that among my Christian students
today (most of them from the South, most of them from
conservative Christian backgrounds), this continues to be a
real puzzle. They genuinely can’t figure it out.
In their view, the Old Testament makes a number of predictions
about the messiah: he would be born in Bethlehem, his mother
would be a virgin, he would be a miracle worker, he would be
killed for the sins of others, he would be raised from the
dead. These are all things that happened to Jesus! How much
more obvious could it be? Why in the world don’t those Jews
see it?
Are they simply hard-headed and rebellious against
God? Can’t they *read*? Are they stupid???
What is very hard to get my students to see (in most cases
I’m, frankly, completely unsuccessful) is that the authors of
the New Testament who portrayed Jesus as the messiah are the
ones who quoted the Old Testament in order to prove it, and
that they were influenced by the Old Testament in what they
decided to say about Jesus, and that their views of Jesus
affected how they read the Old Testament.
The reality is that the so-called “messianic prophecies” that
are said to point to Jesus never taken to be messianic
prophecies by Jews prior to the Christians who saw Jesus as
the messiah. The Old Testament in fact never says that the
messiah will be born of a virgin, that he will be executed by
his enemies, and that he will be raised from the dead.
My students often don’t believe me when I say this, and they
point to passages like Isaiah 7:14 (virgin birth) and Isaiah
53 (execution and resurrection).
Then I urge them to read
the passages carefully and find where there is any reference
in them to a messiah.
That’s one of the problems (not the
only one). These passages are not talking about the messiah.
The messiah is never mentioned in them. Anyone who thinks
they *are* talking about the messiah, has to import the
messiah into the passages, because he simply isn’t there. I
should stress that no one prior to Christianity took these
passages to refer to a future messiah.
Then why are they read (by Christians) as if referring to the
messiah? What happened is this: ancient Christians (within a
couple of decades of Jesus’ death) who believed that Jesus
*was* the messiah necessarily believed that Jesus fulfilled
Scripture. They therefore began to read passages of the Old
Testament as predictions of Jesus. And so the interpretation
of these passages was changed so that they were now seen as
foretelling the birth, life, and death of Jesus.
Once those passages are read that way, it is very hard indeed
to read them the way they had been read before.
When
Christians read Isaiah 53, they simply can’t *help* but read
it as a prediction of the crucifixion and resurrection of
Jesus. But for those who read the passage just for what it
has to say, it does not appear to be about the messiah.
(You’ll note that the term “messiah” never occurs in it.)
So that is one problem with Christians using the Old Testament
to “prove” that Jesus is the messiah. They are appealing to
passages that do not appear to be about the messiah.
The
other is the flip side of the coin. Christians who think that
Jesus fulfilled predictions of the Old Testament base their
views, in no small measure, on what the Gospels say about
Jesus’ life: He was born in Bethlehem. His mother was a
virgin. He healed many people. He was rejected by his own
people. He was silent at his trial. And so on – there are
lots of these “facts” from Jesus’ life, it is thought, that
fulfilled Scripture. But how do we know that these are facts
from Jesus’ life?
The only way we know is (or think we know it) is because
authors of the New Testament Gospels claim that these are the
facts.
But are they? How do we know that Jesus was actually
born in Bethlehem? That his mother was actually a virgin?
That he was actually silent at his trial? And so forth and so
on?
We only know because the Gospels indicate so.
But the
authors of the Gospels were themselves influenced in their
telling of Jesus’ story by the passages of Scripture that they
took to be messianic predictions, and they told their stories
in the light of those passages.
Take Jesus’ birth in Bethlehem.
A couple of times on the blog
I’ve talked about how problematic it is to think that this is
a historical datum. It’s true that both Matthew and Luke say
that Jesus was born in that small village. But Mark and John
do not assume that this is true, but rather that he came from
Galilee, from the village of Nazareth.
Moreover, Matthew and
Luke *get* Jesus born in Bethlehem in radically different and
contradictory ways, so that for both of them he is born there
even though he comes from Nazareth. Why don’t they have a
consistent account of the matter?
It is almost certainly because they both want to be able to
claim that his birth was in Bethlehem, even though both of
them know for a fact he did not come from Bethlehem, but from
Nazareth.
Then why do Matthew and Luke want to argue (in
different ways) that he was born in Bethlehem? It is because
in their view — based on the Old Testament prophet Micah 5:2 —
that’s where the messiah had to come from. And so for them,
Jesus *had* to come from there.
They aren’t recording a
historical datum from Jesus’ life; they are writing accounts
that are influenced by the Old Testament precisely to show
that Jesus fulfilled the Old Testament.
You can go through virtually all the alleged messianic
prophecies that point to Jesus and show the same things:
either the “prophecies” were not actually predictions of the
future messiah (and were never taken that way before
Christians came along) or the facts of Jesus’ life that are
said to have fulfilled these predictions are not actually
facts of Jesus’ life.
One fact about Jesus life is certain: he was crucified by the
Romans. And that was THE single biggest problem ancient Jews
had with Christian claims that Jesus was the messiah. There
was not a Jew on the planet who thought the messiah was going
to be crushed by his enemies — humiliated, tortured, and
executed. That was the *opposite* of what the messiah would
do. To call Jesus the messiah made no sense — i.e., it was
nonsense – virtually by definition.
And that was the major
reason most Jews rejected the Christian claims about Jesus.
Jesus as the
Mark’s Gospel
Messiah
in
In this thread within a thread within a thread I’m discussing
the portrayal of Jesus in the Gospel of Mark as the Son of God
whom no one knows. For background, see my preceding post on
the topic. One of my overarching points is that Mark goes out
of his way to portray Jesus as the Son of God, even though the
title does not occur very often in the Gospel – but only at
really crucial points of the narrative, in the first episode
of Jesus’ life (his baptism), in the final episode of Jesus’
life (his crucifixion), and at the very middle of the Gospel
(the transfiguration).
My other point is that even though both Mark and God himself,
in the narrative, declare straightforwardly that Jesus is the
Son of God, no one understands it. And when they do start to
understand it, they misunderstand it.
That no one “gets” it is obvious if you read the first eight
chapters carefully.
Everyone around Jesus – his townsfolk,
his family, the leaders of his people, and even his own
disciples – show they have no clue who he really is.
In
exasperation at one point, Jesus asks his disciples, “Don’t
you understand yet?” (Mark 8:21)
That begins to change precisely …
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Jesus as the Son of God in
Mark
I am set now to return to my thread on the changes in our
surviving manuscripts of the New Testament that were made in
order to make the text more amenable to the theological agenda
of orthodox scribes and to help prevent their use by
Christians who had alternative understandings of who Christ
was.
I have been arguing, in that vein, that the voice at Jesus’
baptism in Luke’s Gospel originally said “You are my son,
today I have begotten you” (as in some manuscripts) but that
it was changed because scribes were afraid that the text could
be too easily read to mean that it was at this point that God
had adopted Jesus to be his son. These scribes believed that
Christ had *always* been the son of God, and so God could not
say that he “made” him the son on the day of his baptism.
Their change was remarkably successful: the vast majority of
manuscripts have their altered text, in which the voice says
(as it says also in Mark’s version): “You are my beloved son
in whom I am well pleased.”
My next step in showing that Luke had the *other* version, in
which God claims that it was on that day he “begot” or “gave
birth” to his Son is a little more complicated than the other
pieces of evidence I have cited. This new kind of evidence
has to do with how Luke later in his Gospel and in the book of
Acts looked back on what happened at the baptism of Jesus, and
it involves subtleties that are easily overlooked by someone
who is reading Luke’s text superficially. The matter is so
intricate that I need to prepare the way and set the stage.
I’m going to do that not by talking about Luke, but by talking
about Mark. You’ll see why in later posts when I get to the
point – a point I can’t get to without substantial background.
Most readers of the Gospels never realize how amazingly….
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Really??? Stories of Jesus’
Virgin Birth
COMMENT:
When I bring up the possibility that the original Luke did not
have the first two chapters which include the virgin birth
narrative, Christians say to me: “How could such a new twist
to the story of Jesus have developed so soon in the first
century if some of Jesus’ family, disciples, and friends were
still alive to verify its accuracy? If Jesus had truly been
Joseph’s son, wouldn’t SOMEONE have said, “Hey. Wait a
minute. Jesus nor his mother ever claimed that he was the
virgin-born son of Yahweh. This virgin birth story is bogus
nonsense.”
RESPONSE:
This is an interesting point and one that we should reflect
on. As it turns out, it’s one I’ve reflected on it for some
thirty years now! (And it is related to what I discuss in my
next book on how memory affected the oral traditions
circulating about Jesus before the Gospels were written.)
It
is one of those points that on the surface sounds really
convincing: of *course* that’s the case! No one could make up
stories about Jesus’ family if his family was there to correct
them, right???
Well, I think the answer is actually just the opposite:
wrong! Here let me make several points that I do not think
are easily refuted.
First, how many people in the first century (since I date the
Gospels to the first century) are telling …
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First, how many people in the first century (since I date the
Gospels to the first century) are telling stories about the
virgin birth?
We don’t actually know how many Christians
there were in, say, the year 90.
I wish we did, but we
don’t. We do have some ballpark ideas. There are more than
10 and fewer then 10,000, almost certainly. So, let’s pick a
number.
My guess is that the answer is probably 3000 or
4000. Let’s just be conservative and say 3000.
OK, of those 3000, how many do we know for certain are telling
a story about Jesus being born of a virgin.
Here there is a
clear and certain answer.
We know of two.
(And that’s
assuming that Luke originally had chapters 1-2).
the other 2998 people saying about Jesus’ birth?
What were
We have no
way of knowing. I would *assume* that the readers of Matthew
and Luke would have agreed with what they read: but when it
comes to knowing who was actually telling the stories, we know
of only two. How many were telling contrary stories? We have
absolutely NO way of knowing.
We often forget how utterly limited our access to early
Christians is, and how woefully ignorant we are about what
they were saying to each other. All we have are the surviving
documents. And the only first century documents we have are
the 27 books of the New Testament and probably one book from
outside of the NT (the book of 1 Clement).
So, of those 28
books, how many are talking about Jesus’ family life? Again,
two So that’s 2 out of 28 that we know of.
Why didn’t someone correct the authors of Matthew and Luke and
say that it didn’t happen that way? Well, here’s a big
question: How do we know that someone WASN’T correcting
them???
We simply have no evidence.
But let’s assume, again just to be on the conservative side,
that no one bothered to correct them. How could that be, if
there were living members of Jesus’ family who could do so?
Well, let’s think further. Was Jesus’ mother alive still when
Matthew and Luke were written? Almost certainly not – she
would have had to have been a hundred years old.
She had
almost certainly been dead for decades at the time of their
writing. Who besides his mother could have confidently
corrected the story?
Well, presumably his father, but he
wasn’t living then either. And his brothers would not have
known anything about their parents’ sex lives. But even so,
they probably weren’t still alive either.
But suppose somehow they *were* very (very!) old men and they
*did* know about how Jesus was conceived? Would they have
corrected Matthew and Luke? Remember: Jesus and his family
came from a remote rural area of Aramaic speaking Palestine.
We have no record of them traveling outside their homeland.
And they did not speak Greek.
What about Matthew and Luke?
There is no evidence that they had ever been to Palestine and
they did not speak Aramaic. They were highly educated Greekspeaking Christians living 80-90 years after the event (Jesus’
birth) that they are narrating.
Jesus’ immediate family was
almost certainly dead by this time, and there was no one from
that family going around Greek-speaking circles of the Roman
empire correcting what others were saying about their
grandmother’s sex life.
And even if they were (see how implausible this whole thing is
starting to be?), how could they correct what everyone said
about their grandmother?
I deal with a related issue in my
forthcoming book Jesus Before the Gospels. The question is:
can eyewitnesses correct what others want to say about
someone?
Or maybe I should say: is there any way that
eyewitnesses can make sure that others tell their stories
correctly? (Remember: none of these grandchildren of Joseph
and Mary would even be eyewitnesses to how they conceived
Jesus.) Here’s how I put it in the book:
One obvious point to stress, which has not occurred to
everybody, is this: stories about Jesus were circulating even
during his lifetime [NOTE: That’s not the case for the stories
of Jesus’ virgin birth]. Moreover, even then they were not
being told only by eyewitnesses. When someone who saw Jesus
do or say something then and told someone else who wasn’t
there, it is impossible to believe that this other person was
forbidden from sharing the news with someone else.
Life just
doesn’t work that way.
Think about any public person you
know: the President of the United States, a movie star, a
famous author, or even just a popular university professor.
People tell stories about them.
And other people repeat the
stories.
Then other people repeat the stories.
And the
stories obviously are told in different words, every time.
Thus, the stories change.
Moreover, stories get made up.
You don’t have to take my word for it.
Ask any public
figure. It is true that the people about whom the stories are
told might hear a wild version and correct it. But there is
no guarantee that everyone will hear the correction so that
from then on they tell the story correctly. On the contrary,
non-eyewitnesses continue to tell the story.
stories.
And yet other
This happens even when people are alive and there are plenty
of eyewitnesses who can correct things.
If the President has
a meeting with his cabinet and word leaks out about what was
said there, and it gets reported in the news, and someone in
Kansas tells his next door neighbor about it, then that person
tells her husband – is there an eyewitness in her living room
(someone from the President’s cabinet) to make sure that she
tells the story correctly?
Let’s say someone in the year 75 (after Mark’s Gospel was
written) told someone else that he heard that Jesus’ mother
was a virgin.
The person he told tells his wife, who tells
her neighbor, who tells her husband, who tells his business
associate who tells his cousin who tells his wife, who tells
their children.
Now, in the year 76, when all this telling
and re-telling is finished, are we supposed to believe that
the descendants of Joseph and Mary are going around and
checking with everyone who tells the stories in order to make
sure they get it right? It seems unlikely.
So again, as attractive (and common!) as this view is, I think
it is completely implausible and is not an argument against
the standard critical view, that the stories of Jesus’ virgin
birth appeared relatively late in the oral traditions
(sometime after both Paul and Mark were writing).
Is
Luke’s
Consistent?
Christology
Does Luke present a (strictly speaking) consistent view of
Jesus throughout his two-volume work of Luke-Acts?
I raise the question because of the textual problem
surrounding the voice at Jesus’ baptism. I have been arguing
that it is likely that the voice did NOT say “You are my
beloved Son in whom I am well pleased” (as in most
manuscripts; this is what it clearly does say in Mark’s
version; Matthew has it say something different still);
instead it probably said “You are my Son, today I have
begotten you.”
In the past couple of posts I’ve suggested that this wording –
found in only one ancient Greek manuscript, but in a number of
church fathers who quote the passage (these fathers were
living before our earliest surviving manuscripts) – makes
particular sense if the Gospel did not originally have
chapters 1-2, the accounts of Jesus’ birth.
In yesterday’s
post I gave the evidence for thinking that originally the
Gospel began with Jesus’ baptism.
But if I’m wrong about that (and hey, it won’t be the first
time), then don’t we have an irreconcilable problem on our
hands?
Because that would mean that Luke first says that
Jesus is the Son of God because of his miraculous birth, where
God is literally his father (this is explicitly stated in
1:35) but then says that he is the Son of God because God
adopted him to be his Son in 3:22.
My view is that even if …
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