INTRODUCTION: JESUS IN THE NO-SPIN ZONE
1. Carl Sandburg, Abraham Lincoln: The Prairie Years and The War Years (New York: Mariner Books/Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2002); C. A. Tripp and Jean Baker, The Intimate World of Abraham Lincoln (New York: Free Press, 2005).
2. Michael Baigent, Richard Leigh, and Henry Lincoln, Holy Blood, Holy Grail (New York: Dell, 1982, 1983).
3. David Mamet, The Secret Knowledge: On the Dismantling of American Culture (New York: Sentinel/Penguin, 2011), chap. 7, “Choice,” pp. 38–49.
CHAPTER 1. HISTORICAL BACKGROUND OR HISTORICAL BALLAST?
1. R. G. Collingwood, The Idea of History (New York: Oxford University Books/Galaxy Books, 1957), p. 240: “If we filled up the narrative of Caesar's doings with fanciful details such as the names of the persons he met on the way, and what he said to them, the construction would be arbitrary: it would in fact be the kind of construction which is done by an historical novelist.”
2. G. R. S. Mead, Did Jesus Live 100 B.C.? An Enquiry into the Talmud Jesus Stories, the Toldoth Jeschu, and Some Curious Statements of Epiphanius—Being a Contribution to the Study of Christian Origins (New Hyde Park, New York: University Books, 1968).
3. Robert M. Grant, Irenaeus of Lyons (The Early Church Fathers) (New York: Routledge, 1997), p. 33.
4. Throughout this book you will notice certain minor inconsistencies in the placement of apostrophes, the form of possessives, capitalization, even the spelling of names. I do not presume to tamper with the usages in quoted material. They reflect yesterday's conventions and different transliterations of foreign and ancient names. But I feel sure you will not be confused.
5. William E. Phipps, Was Jesus Married? The Distortion of Sexuality in the Christian Tradition (New York: Harper & Row, 1970).
6. Even the familiar notion, taken for granted in Killing Jesus, that Jesus was a carpenter is historically tenuous. As Géza Vermes points out in Jesus the Jew: A Historian's Reading of the Gospels (London: Fontana/Collins, 1976), “carpenter,” in the context of synagogue preaching, was a metaphor denoting “skilled exegete,” as in the widely known proverb: “This is something that no carpenter, son of carpenters, can explain” or “There is no carpenter, nor a carpenter's son, to explain it” (pp. 21–22).
7. T. M. Luhrmann, When God Talks Back: Understanding the American Evangelical Relationship with God (New York: Vintage Books, 2012), chap. 6, “Teach Us to Pray,” pp. 157–88.
8. Raymond E. Brown, The Birth of the Messiah: A Commentary on the Infancy Narratives of Matthew and Luke (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1977), pp. 114–15. It looks to me as if Matthew simply used Josephus directly.
9. Ibid., p. 174.
10. Martin Dibelius, From Tradition to Gospel, trans. Bertram Lee Woolf (New York: Scribner's, n.d.), pp. 108–109.
11. David Friedrich Strauss, The Life of Jesus Critically Examined, trans. George Eliot (Mary Ann Evans), Lives of Jesus Series (1835; repr., Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1972), p. 513.
12. Rene Salm, The Myth of Nazareth: The Invented Town of Jesus (Cranford, NJ: American Atheist Press, 2008), shows that not one of the artifacts often claimed to attest to a Nazareth village in the ostensible time of Jesus can be shown to come from that period. So much for O’Reilly's pat assurance that archaeology has increased our confidence in gospel accuracy. And then there is the problem of there being no archaeological evidence of Jesus-era synagogues in Galilee, though the gospels have Jesus visiting them constantly.
13. Collingwood, Idea of History, pp. 234–38ff.
14. Similarly, one still reads in the footnotes in some Bibles that refer to variant textual readings: “Some authorities [i.e., manuscripts] have so-and-so.”).
15. I. Howard Marshall, Eschatology and the Parables (Leicester, UK: Theological Students Fellowship, n.d.), p. 5.
16. Bart D. Ehrman, Forgery and Counterforgery: The Use of Literary Deceit in Early Christian Polemics (New York: Oxford University Press, 2013).
17. Collingwood, Idea of History, p. 260.
18. Ferdinand Christian Baur, Paul the Apostle of Jesus Christ: His Life and Works, His Epistles and Teachings, trans. Edward Zeller and A. Menzies (1873–1875; repr., Peabody, MA: Hendrickson Publishers, 2003), vol. 1, p. 214 and often throughout.
19. Eusebius, The History of the Church, trans. G. A. Williamson (New York: Penguin Books, 1965), p. 152.
20. Ibid.
21. David Friedrich Strauss, The Life of Jesus for the People. (London: Williams & Norgate, 1879), vol. 2, p. 76.
22. G. A. Wells, Did Jesus Exist? (Elek/Pemberton, 1975), p. 19.
23. “Synoptic” means that they share much the same viewpoint as compared with John.
24. Adolf Harnack, What Is Christianity? trans. Thomas Bailey Saunders (New York: Harper & Row Torchbooks/Cloister Library, 1957), p. 144.
25. Albert Schweitzer, The Quest of the Historical Jesus: A Critical Study of Its Progress from Reimarus to Wrede, trans. W. Montgomery (New York: Macmillan, 1961), pp. 85–87.
26. See my critiques of Craig, “By This Time He Stinketh: William Lane Craig's Attempts to Exhume Jesus,” in The Empty Tomb: Jesus Beyond the Grave, ed. Robert M. Price and Jeffery Jay Lowder (Amherst, New York: Prometheus Books, 2005), pp. 411–31; Robert M. Price, Jesus Is Dead (Cranford, NJ: American Atheist Press, 2007), chap. 15, “William Lane Craig's ‘Contemporary Scholarship and the Historical Evidence for the Resurrection of Jesus Christ,’” pp. 195–213.
27. See my critique of Moreland in Robert M. Price, The Case against the Case for Christ: A New Testament Scholar Refutes the Reverend Lee Strobel (Cranford, NJ: American Atheist Press, 2010), chap. 14, “The Circumcision Evidence: Is a Supernatural Resurrection the Best Explanation for Folks no Longer Trimming Their Sons’ Foreskins?” pp. 251–54.
28. Dibelius, From Tradition to Gospel, pp. 108–109.
29. Niels Peter Lemche, The Israelites in History and Tradition (Library of Ancient Israel) (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 1998), p. 154.
CHAPTER 2. BIRD MAN OF NAZARETH
1. Maurice Casey, Is John's Gospel True? (New York: Routledge, 1996).
2. This is an odd way of putting it; the “known world” usually means the extent of the world as then known to ancient geographers, as when we say, “Alexander conquered the known world.” Surely the authors mean the same sort of thing as in the REM song “It's the End of the World as We Know It”?
3. Albert Schweitzer, The Mystery of the Kingdom of God: The Secret of Jesus’ Messiahship and Passion, trans. Walter Lowrie (1914; repr., New York: Schocken Books, 1964), pp. 151–54, for example, “He never pointed to the coming Messiah, but to the expected Forerunner. So is to be explained the proclamation about ‘him that is to come after him’ (Mk 1:7, 8).”
4. The very early heretic Cerinthus taught that the Christ Spirit entered into Jesus at the Jordan and used him as his human host and channeler until the crucifixion.
5. See Appendix One for the dates of the gospels.
6. Robert Eisler, The Messiah Jesus and John the Baptist: According to Flavius Josephus’ Recently Rediscovered “Capture of Jerusalem” and other Jewish and Christian Sources, trans. Alexander Haggerty Krappe (New York: Dial Press, 1931), p. 265.
7. Ibid., pp. 265–66.
8. Ibid., pp. 266–67.
9. Raymond E. Brown, “John the Baptist in the Gospel of John,” in New Testament Essays, ed. Raymond E. Brown (Garden City, NY: Doubleday Image, 1968), pp. 179–81.
CHAPTER 3. HOW NOT TO BEHAVE IN CHURCH
1. J. Ramsey Michaels, John: A Good News Commentary (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1984), pp. 32–33. See also Rudolf Bultmann, The Gospel of John: A Commentary, trans. G. R. Beasley-Murray, R. W. N. Hoare, J. K. Riches (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1975), p. 644.
2. Here we are already hearing the kind of exchange the Synoptics place at the trial (Mark 14:61–62; Matt. 26:63–64; Luke 22:67–70).
3. See Van A. Harvey, The Historian and the Believer: Christian Faith and the Morality of Historical Knowledge (New York: Macmillan, 1969), p. 88.
4. Raymond E. Brown, “Roles of Women in the Fourth Gospel,” Theological Studies vol. 3, no. 4 (December 1975): 695.
5. The frame of the story says this was the first of Jesus’ miracles, but it is obvious Mary is shown to be all too familiar with her son's superpowers. This inconsistency is a dead giveaway that the story has been borrowed from a different context, that of the Infancy Gospel tradition.
6. My grandfather, Welby Price, used to twit my teetotaling Southern Baptist grandmother with this story.
7. Brad H. Young, Jesus the Jewish Theologian (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic Press, 1993); Ann Spangler and Lois Tverberg, Sitting at the Feet of Rabbi Jesus: How the Jewishness of Jesus Can Transform Your Faith (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2009); Bruce Chilton, Rabbi Jesus: An Intimate Biography (New York: Doubleday, 2000).
8. Hyam Maccoby, Jesus the Pharisee (London: SCM Press, 2003); Harvey Falk, Jesus the Pharisee: A New Look at the Jewishness of Jesus (New York: Paulist Press, 1985); Géza Vermes, The Religion of Jesus the Jew (Minneapolis: Augsburg Fortress Publishers, 1993); Amy-Jill Levine, The Misunderstood Jew: The Church and the Scandal of the Jewish Jesus (San Francisco: HarperOne, 2007); David Flusser, The Sage from Galilee: Rediscovering Jesus’ Genius (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2007); Nehemia Gordon, The Hebrew Yeshua vs. the Greek Jesus (Arlington, VA: Hilkiah Press, 2005).
9. Albert Schweitzer, The Quest of the Historical Jesus: A Critical Study of Its Progress from Reimarus to Wrede, trans. W. Montgomery (New York: Macmillan, 1961), p. 206, might as well have been talking about O’Reilly and Dugard when he said this about nineteenth-century Jesus biographer Daniel Schenkel: “Schenkel is able to give these explanations because he knows the most secret thoughts of Jesus and is therefore no longer bound to the text.”
10. Käte Hamburger, The Logic of Literature, trans. Marilynn J. Rose (Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 2nd rev. ed., 1993), pp. 112–13: “Even those historical novels which adhere to historical truth just as exactly as an actual historical document does, nevertheless transform the historical person into a non-historical, fictive figure, transferring him out of a possible system of reality into a system of fiction. For the system of fiction is defined by the figure's not being presented as object, but as subject, portrayed in his I-originarity…it is the process of fictionalizing which renders non-historical all ever so historical raw material in a novel.”
11. Tzvetan Todorov, The Poetics of Prose, trans. Richard Howard (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1977), chap. 5, “Narrative-Men,” pp. 66–79.
12. M. de Jonge, “Nicodemus and Jesus,” Bulletin of the John Rylands Library 53 (1971): 337–59.
13. J. Louis Martyn, History and Theology in the Fourth Gospel (New York: Harper & Row, 1968).
14. Richard Francis Weymouth, trans., The New Testament in Modern Speech: An Idiomatic Translation into Everyday English from the Text of “The Resultant Greek Testament” (London: James Clarke, 1909), p. 246.
15. Hugh J. Schonfield, trans., The Authentic New Testament, A Mentor Religious Classic (New York: New American Library, 1958), p. 393.
16. Edgar J. Goodspeed, trans., The New Testament: An American Translation (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1939), p. 87.
17. William Barclay, trans., The New Testament, Volume 1, The Gospels and the Acts of the Apostles (London: Collins, 1968), p. 265.
18. Rudolf Bultmann, The History of the Synoptic Tradition, trans. John Marsh (New York: Harper & Row, 1972), pp. 31–32.
19. Graham Chapman, John Cleese, Terry Gilliam, Eric Idle, Terry Jones, and Michael Palin, Monty Python's Life of Brian (of Nazareth) (New York: Ace Books, 1979), p. 109.
20. Even though there is no evidence of any settlement having been up there on the mountainside. Rene Salm, The Myth of Nazareth: The Invented Town of Jesus (Cranford, NJ: American Atheist Press, 2008), pp. 202, 217–18.
CHAPTER 4. FISHERMEN, PROSTITUTES, AND PHARISEES
1. Morton Smith, Jesus the Magician (New York: Harper & Row, 1978), p. 10: “Mark has no introduction to these stories; he wants the reader to believe that Jesus had never seen these men before. Their immediate responses to his unexpected and unexplained summons are miracles that testify to his supernatural power.”
2. “He comes to us as One unknown, without a name, as of old, by the lakeside, He came to those men who knew Him not. He speaks to us the same word: ‘Follow thou me.’ and sets us to the tasks which He has to fulfill for our time.” Albert Schweitzer, The Quest of the Historical Jesus: A Critical Study of Its Progress from Reimarus to Wrede, trans. W. Montgomery (1906; repr., New York: Macmillan, 1961), p. 403.
3. Mark, Luke's source, placed the incident of Jesus healing Simon's mother (afflicted with Epstein-Barr?) only after Jesus has called him to be a disciple. The impression Luke gives, of Jesus already being acquainted with Peter, seems to be the result of a goof, placing Mark's episodes in a different order.
4. See Robert M. Price, The Incredible Shrinking Son of Man: How Reliable Is the Gospel Tradition? (Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 2003), p. 158.
5. This connection stems from the topical arrangement of originally self-contained units in Mark. Mark chapter 2 stacks up various controversy stories in which Jesus outwits his detractors. The first one, that of the dispute over Jesus forgiving the sins of the paralytic (Mark 2:1–12), takes place in Peter's Capernaum home. The next one, about Jesus notoriously associating with tax collectors (Mark 2:13–17), takes place by the Lake of Galilee, but no town is named, nor is any location specified in the following controversy stories. This redactional accident is the sole basis for locating Matthew in Capernaum.
6. Graham Chapman, John Cleese, Terry Gilliam, Eric Idle, Terry Jones, and Michael Palin, Monty Python's Life of Brian (of Nazareth) (New York: Ace Books, 1979), p. 14.
7. “If you'd come today you would have reached a whole nation. Israel in 4 B.C. had no mass communication,” Jesus Christ Superstar, “Superstar,” lyrics by Tim Rice, 1969.
8. Joachim Jeremias, The Sermon on the Mount, trans. Norman Perrin. Facet Books Biblical Series 2 (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1963), chap. 2, “The Origins of the Sermon on the Mount,” pp. 13–18.
9. Jack T. Sanders, The Jews in Luke-Acts (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1987), pp. 104–105, explains the accusation that the Pharisees loaded heavy burdens onto the backs of the faithful, which they themselves did not lift a finger to move (Luke 11:46). It is aimed not at anyone in Jesus’ milieu but rather at Christian Pharisees in the early Church who tried to impose Torah observance on Gentile converts (Acts 15:5).
10. See W. D. Davies, Introduction to Pharisaism. Facet Books Biblical Series 16 (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1967).
11. E. P. Sanders, Jesus and Judaism (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1985), p. 40.
12. Charles Cutler Torrey, Our Translated Gospels: Some of the Evidence (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1936), p. 93, proposed that “leper” is a mistranslation from an underlying Aramaic version that designated Simon as “the jar merchant,” which may make a little more sense of the passage.
13. John Lightfoot, A Commentary on the New Testament from the Talmud and Hebraica, Vol. 2: Matthew and Mark (1658; repr., Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Book House, 1979), on Matt. 27:56.
14. David Friedrich Strauss, The Life of Jesus Critically Examined, trans. George Eliot (Mary Ann Evans), Lives of Jesus Series (1835; repr., Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1972), p. 222.
15. Traditionally, the rich man is read as turning down Jesus’ challenge, but this is a misreading. “He went away sorrowful; for he had great possessions” (Mark 10:22). But Jesus told him to “go, sell what you have, and give to the poor.” How do we know that's not what he's leaving in order to do? He went away sorrowful? That doesn't mean he's sorry he asked and is going to seek out some other guru who will give him an answer more to his liking. After all, Jesus comments on the man's departure, saying, “How hard it will be for those who have riches to enter the kingdom of God!” (Mark 10:23). That doesn't have to mean the man is not going to do it. His sorrow reflects the difficulty of the step he is perhaps now resolved to undertake.
CHAPTER 5. THE AMAZING JESUS
1. Albert Schweitzer, The Quest of the Historical Jesus: A Critical Study of Its Progress from Reimarus to Wrede, trans. W. Montgomery (1906; repr., New York: Macmillan, 1961), p. 150.
2. The Holy Infant of Prague is an avatar of Jesus in the form of a baby, dressed in a diaphanous gown and wearing a crown. This has got to be one of the creepiest and most grotesque forms of Catholic devotion, the adoration of Jesus as somehow still an infant. It reminds me of the joke where a tour guide in Paris points out a glass case containing three skulls, ranging from small to large. The guide announces that this is what remains of Napoleon. Someone in the crowd asks which one is Napoleon. The answer is: all of them. One is the skull of Napoleon as a child, the next when he was a young man, the third as an adult.
3. Burton L. Mack, A Myth of Innocence: Mark and Christian Origins (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1988), p. 42.
4. Much in the spirit, one might add, of the control freak Obama Administration today.
5. Mack, Myth of Innocence, p. 45.
6. Andrew J. Overman, Matthew's Gospel and Formative Judaism: The Social World of the Matthean Community (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1990), pp. 44–48, admits that “we have no evidence that the term ‘rabbi’ refers to an official office and function by the end of the first century,” (p. 4) but goes on to argue that the gospels apply the term to Jesus as an informal honorific. But I think his reasoning is circular, simply taking for granted that the gospel stories are reliable history. Proper historical method would be to establish the date of the gospels in accordance with known external data.
7. Gerd Theissen, The Miracle Stories of the Early Christian Tradition, trans. Francis McDonagh (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1983), p. 171.
8. Mark C. Goodacre, “Fatigue in the Synoptics,” New Testament Studies 44 (1998): 45.
9. Collingwood, Idea of History, p. 260.
10. Oscar Cullmann, Jesus and the Revolutionaries, trans. Gareth Putnam (New York: Harper & Row, 1970), p. 9.
11. The name “Zealot” was coined for these militants only in the lead-up to the Jewish War, but Josephus the historian traces the movement back to Judas the Galilean, who led the revolt against Roman taxation in 6 CE. He makes Judas the Galilean the founder of “the Fourth Philosophy,” which in his day was called the Zealots. See Reza Aslan, Zealot: The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth (New York: Random House, 2013), p. 41.
12. S. G. F. Brandon, The Fall of Jerusalem and the Christian Church: A Study of the Effects of the Jewish Overthrow of A.D. 70 on Christianity (London: SPCK, 1951), pp. 104–105; S. G. F. Brandon, Jesus and the Zealots: A Study of the Political Factor in Primitive Christianity (New York: Scribner's, 1966), pp. 243–45; Cullmann, Jesus and the Revolutionaries, pp. 8–9.
13. Cullmann, Jesus and the Revolutionaries, p. 63.
14. Robert Eisler, The Messiah Jesus and John the Baptist, trans. Alexander Haggerty Krappe (New York: Dial Press, 1931), p. 252.
15. Mack, Myth of Innocence, p. 167.
16. Bertil Gärtner, Iscariot, trans. Victor I. Gruhn, Facet Books, Biblical Series, 29 (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1971), p. 7.
CHAPTER 6. THEOLOGY HIDDEN IN PLAIN SIGHT
1. I can't resist pointing out that Robert W. Funk and the Jesus Seminar were ceaselessly accused of being publicity hounds, when in fact they were simply trying to communicate the closely guarded findings of mainstream New Testament criticism to a public languishing in the doldrums of pulpit ignorance. Yes, that's seeking publicity, but only in the sense of letting one's light shine, exactly equivalent to the motives of scholars like Robert Eisenman, who managed to leak the long-shuttered Dead Sea Scrolls to the public.
2. Rudolf Bultmann, Theology of the New Testament, trans. Kendrick Grobel, Scribner Studies in Contemporary Theology (New York: Scribner's, 1951), p. 27.
3. Raymond E. Brown, The Birth of the Messiah: A Commentary on the Infancy Narratives in Matthew and Luke (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1977), pp. 29–31. The Spirit is not mentioned in the Transfiguration story, but in Jewish thinking, the Spirit was pretty much equivalent to the Shekinah glory cloud, which is featured in the story. Gershom Scholem, Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism, trans. George Lichtheim (New York: Schocken Books, 1973), p. 111.
4. William Wrede, The Messianic Secret, trans. J. C. G. Greig. Library of Theological Translations (Cambridge: James Clarke, 1971).
5. David Friedrich Strauss, The Life of Jesus Critically Examined, trans. George Eliot (Mary Ann Evans), Lives of Jesus Series (1835; repr., Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1972), pp. 491–92.
6. Philostratus, The Life of Apollonius of Tyana, vol. 1, trans. F. C. Conybeare, Loeb Classical Library 16 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1912), pp. 457, 459.
7. Lucius Apuleius, The Works of Apuleius Comprising the Metamorphosis, or Golden Ass, The God of Socrates, The Florida and His Defence, or A Discourse on Magic. A New Translation (Anon.) (London: George Bell and Sons, 1910), pp. 401–402.
8. Lucius Apuleius, The Golden Ass, trans. William Adlington, rev. Harry C. Schnur (New York: Collier Books, 1962), p. 241.
9. B. P. Reardon, ed., Collected Ancient Greek Novels (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1989), pp. 753–54. Gerald N. Sandy, trans., The Story of Apollonius King of Tyre.
10. Strauss, Life of Jesus, p. 495.
11. Though, like Lazarus, he had survived it. The Son of Frankenstein, directed by Rowland V. Lee (1939, Universal Pictures).
12. Strauss, Life of Jesus, p. 479.
13. Ibid., p. 484.
14. Graham Chapman, John Cleese, Terry Gilliam, Eric Idle, Terry Jones, and Michael Palin, Monty Python's Life of Brian (of Nazareth) (New York: Ace Books, 1979), p. 37.
15. Hermann Gunkel, An Introduction to the Psalms. The Genres of the Religious Lyric of Israel, trans. James D. Nogalski, Mercer Library of Biblical Studies (Macon, GA: Mercer University Press, 1998), chap. 6, “Individual Complaint Songs,” pp. 121–98; Sigmund Mowinkel, The Psalms in Israel's Worship, trans. D. R. Ap-Thomas (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1962), pp. 79–80.
16. Mowinkel, Psalms in Israel's Worship, pp. 46–78; Gunkel, Introduction to the Psalms, chap. 5, “Royal Psalms,” pp. 99–120; J. H. Eaton, Kingship and the Psalms, Studies in Biblical Theology Second Series 32 (London: SCM Press, 1976), chap, 4, sec. 2, “The Enemies of God as Personal Enemies of the King,” pp. 137–41.
17. Krister Stendahl, The School of St. Matthew and Its Use of the Old Testament (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1968); Richard Longenecker, Biblical Exegesis in the Apostolic Period (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1975), chap. 1, “Jewish Hermeneutics in the First Century,” pp. 19–50.
18. This confusion has led to many writers claiming that Matthew was writing to convince fellow Jews that Jesus was indeed the Messiah. No, his “fulfillment” verses were for in-house consumption.
19. Gershom Scholem, On the Kabbalah and Its Symbolism, trans. Ralph Manheim (New York: Schocken Books, 1969), pp. 5–86.
CHAPTER 7. LIAR, PINHEAD, OR LORD
1. Albert Schweitzer, The Quest of the Historical Jesus: A Critical Study of Its Progress from Reimarus to Wrede, trans. W. Montgomery (1906; repr., New York: Macmillan, 1961), p. 29, describes the eighteenth-century life of Jesus by Johann Jacob Hess in words that exactly apply to Killing Jesus: “His Life of Jesus still keeps largely to the lines of a paraphrase of the Gospels; indeed, he calls it a paraphrasing history. It is based upon a harmonizing combination of the four Gospels. The matter of the Synoptic narratives is…fitted more or less arbitrarily into the intervals between the Passovers in the fourth Gospel.”
2. H. P. Lovecraft, “Notes on Writing Weird Fiction,” in Miscellaneous Writings, ed. S. T. Joshi (Sauk City, WI: Arkham House, 1995), pp. 113–16.
3. Schweitzer, Quest of the Historical Jesus, p. 220.
4. Jonathan Culler, Structuralist Poetics: Structuralism, Linguistics, and the Study of Literature (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1975), pp. 137, 141.
5. Robert M. Fowler, Let the Reader Understand: Reader-Response Criticism and the Gospel of Mark (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1991), p. 21: “In these and other episodes the characters on the stage with Jesus demonstrate no grasp of the action taking place before their eyes…. [F]requently the characters on the stage show no signs of uptake. Only the audience witnessing the drama are in the position to grasp what is happening on the stage; only among the audience is uptake occurring…. [T]he three crystal-clear predictions of Jesus’ death ([Mark] 8:31; 9:31; 10:32–34) secure no uptake within the story; if they have any function at all in the narrative, they function to alert the reader to what lies ahead…. [V]ast portions of the Gospel function for the reader alone.”
6. Henry J. Cadbury, The Making of Luke-Acts (London: SPCK Press, 1961), pp. 123–26.
7. Jason BeDuhn, Truth in Translation: Accuracy and Bias in English Translations of the New Testament (New York: University Press of America, 2003), pp. 103–106, shows that the grammar dictates this translation, not “Before Abraham was, I am,” as if to have Jesus apply to himself the self-revelation of Yahweh in Exodus 3:14. But it certainly depicts him as claiming his own preexistence.
8. In my Pre-Nicene New Testament, I translate John 8:42 as “I came forth from the Godhead and have appeared.”
9. Some of the manuscripts lack “and the life,” which I think actually makes the statement even more powerful.
10. David Friedrich Strauss, The Life of Jesus for the People (London: Williams & Norgate, 1879), vol. 1, pp. 272–73.
11. C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity (1943; repr., New York: Macmillan, 1960), pp. 55–56.
12. Albert Schweitzer, The Psychiatric Study of Jesus: Exposition and Criticism, trans. Charles R. Joy (Boston: Beacon Press, 1948), pp. 60–64.
13. Miracle on 34th Street, directed by George Seaton (1947, Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation).
14. Donald G. Dawe, The Form of a Servant: A Historical Analysis of the Kenotic Motif (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1963).
15. Adolf Harnack, What Is Christianity? trans. Thomas Bailey Saunders (New York: Harper & Row Torchbooks/Cloister Library, 1957) p. 144. Italics in original.
CHAPTER 8. TEMPLE TANTRUM
1. The cure is as bad as the disease, since the extravagant promise of Jesus has spawned endless rationalizations and disappointments.
2. F. F. Bruce, The New Testament Documents: Are They Reliable? (Grand Rapids. MI: Eerdmans, 1960), p. 74: “The whole incident was an acted parable.”
3. Was Isaiah claiming to be God, too? If O’Reilly and Dugard's church had taught them that he was, we can be sure they would take the verse to imply that, too.
4. D. E. Nineham, Saint Mark, Pelican New Testament Commentaries (Baltimore: Penguin Books, 1969), p. 302.
5. Ibid., p. 304.
6. Ibid., p. 301.
7. S. G. F. Brandon, The Fall of Jerusalem and the Christian Church: A Study of the Effects of the Jewish Overthrow of A.D. 70 on Christianity (London: SPCK, 1951), pp. 103–105.
8. Ibid., p. 109.
9. Ibid., pp. 192–94.
10. Warmed over today by Reza Aslan, Zealot: The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth (New York: Random House, 2013), without acknowledgment.
11. Morton Smith, Jesus the Magician (New York: Harper & Row, 1978), p. 39.
12. Burton L. Mack, A Myth of Innocence: Mark and Christian Origins (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1988), p. 292. Nor is he the only one (see Nineham, Saint Mark, pp. 300–301). Some think the whole thing may be a fleshing out of Malachi 3:1–3: “Behold, I send my messenger to prepare the way before me, and the Lord whom you seek will suddenly come to his temple; the messenger of the covenant in whom you delight, behold, he is coming, says the Lord of hosts. But who can endure the day of his coming, and who can stand when he appears? For he is like a refiner's fire and like fuller's soap; he will sit as a refiner and purifier of silver, and he will purify the sons of Levi and refine them like gold and silver, till they present right offerings to the Lord.”
13. Nineham, Saint Mark, p. 301.
14. Another example would be the aftermath of the Transfiguration, where the disciples ask Jesus, “Why do the scribes say that first Elijah must come?” Jesus replies that he has, albeit figuratively, in the form of John the Baptist (Mark 9:13, cf. Matt. 17:13). But why are they asking this question, which implies that it is a problem that Elijah has not appeared? They have just seen Elijah in person atop the Mount of Transfiguration. What Mark must have done is to group together two alternative Christian attempts to explain how Jesus could have been the Messiah if the prophet Elijah had not returned, as expected, to herald him. Some pointed to the Baptizer as a figurative fulfillment of the prophecy. That must not have convinced too many people, so others said, “Oh, but he did come. But he appeared to a total of four people up on top of a mountain. Too bad you weren't there, I guess.” Oblivious of the implications, Mark blithely included both, side by side. David Friedrich Strauss, The Life of Jesus Critically Examined, trans. George Eliot (Mary Ann Evans), Lives of Jesus Series (1835; repr., Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1972), pp. 542–43.
15. S. G. F. Brandon, Jesus and the Zealots: A Study of the Political Factor in Primitive Christianity (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1967).
16. Eusebius, The History of the Church, trans. G. A. Williamson (New York: Penguin Books, 1965), p. 268.
CHAPTER 9. MESSIAHS AND MATCHSTICK MEN
1. Also dubbed “chreias” (Vernon K. Robbins and others, e.g., Burton L. Mack, A Myth of Innocence: Mark and Christian Origins [Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1988], p. 161), “apophthegms” (Rudolf Bultmann, The History of the Synoptic Tradition, trans. John Marsh [New York: Harper & Row, 1968], p. 11) and “paradigms” (Martin Dibelius, From Tradition to Gospel, trans. Bertram Lee Woolf [New York: Scribner's, n.d.], pp. 37ff.; Vincent Taylor, The Formation of the Gospel Tradition: Eight Lectures (London: Macmillan, 1957), pp. 63ff., called them “pronouncement stories.”
2. Mack, Myth of Innocence, p. 176.
3. Bultmann, History of the Synoptic Tradition, pp. 26, 41.
4. Jack T. Sanders, The Jews in Luke-Acts (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1987), pp. 94–97, 111.
5. Morton Smith, Jesus the Magician (New York: Harper & Row, 1978), p. 170: “They are told to display his cleverness in escaping traps.”
6. Mack, Myth of Innocence, p. 176.
7. Ibid., p. 203: “The pronouncement stories in the Gospel of Mark do not record debates Jesus had with the Pharisees…. They record the way people wanted to imagine the conflict and its resolution in retrospect…. They are fictions because they violate the basic ground rules of human discourse and dialogue…. No rationale is given for his authority to make these definitive pronouncements. The Pharisees are merely literary foils. Jesus’ answers seem cogent only to Christian readers. If the scenes were actual records, Jesus’ opponents would never have walked away with their tails between their legs as Mark portrays them.”
8. Richard Longenecker, Biblical Exegesis in the Apostolic Period (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1975), p. 34.
9. Solomon Schechter, Some Aspects of Rabbinic Theology (New York: Macmillan 1910), p. 152.
10. Morna D. Hooker, The Son of Man in Mark: A Study of the “Son of Man” and Its Use in St Mark's Gospel (Montreal: McGill University Press, 1967), pp. 97–98.
11. Joachim Jeremias, New Testament Theology. Volume I: Jesus Proclamation of the Kingdom of God, trans. John Bowden (London: SCM Press, 1971), pp. 111, 140.
12. Schechter, Some Aspects of Rabbinic Theology, pp. 111, 140.
13. Halakhah is the word for the study of the Torah and how its provisions are to be observed as applied to day-to-day specifics.
14. Schechter, Some Aspects of Rabbinic Theology, p. 210.
15. Martin Dibelius, The Message of Jesus Christ, trans. Frederick C. Grant, International Library of Christian Knowledge (New York: Scribner's, 1939), pp. 152, 158, 161, 163–64.
16. R. Joseph Hoffmann, Marcion: On the Restitution of Christianity: An Essay on the Development of Radical Paulinist Theology in the Second Century, AAR Academy Series 46 (Chico, CA: Scholars Press, 1984).
17. If the placement seems odd, beginning with the final verse of one chapter and continuing through the beginning of the next, keep in mind that chapter and verse divisions were not original to the Bible but were introduced many hundreds of years later to make it easier to look up passages.
18. Their view of the Sadducees as Hellenized Modernists, even if incorrect, is by no means stupid. The Mishnah refers to the Sadducees as “Epicureans,” but this seems to be a polemical reinterpretation, turning the tables on Sadducees so as to make them, not their rivals the Pharisees, appear the heretical innovators.
19. Washington Gladden, Present Day Theology (Columbus, OH: McClelland & Company, 1918), pp. 211–17.
20. T. W. Manson, The Servant Messiah: A Study of the Public Ministry of Jesus (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1953), pp. 15–16.
21. Ibid., pp. 18–19. After embracing the nickname (or being unable to get rid of it), they redefined it as if derived from Perushim, “Separated Ones,” or Puritans. Such redefinition of names was quite common in the Old Testament (Hermann Gunkel, The Legends of Genesis: The Biblical Saga and History, trans. W. H. Carruth [New York: Schocken Books, 1964], pp. 27–30.
22. For instance, Geddes MacGregor, Reincarnation in Christianity: A New Vision of the Role of Rebirth in Christian Thought (Wheaton, IL: Quest Books/Theosophical Publishing House, 1978).
23. Smith, Jesus the Magician, p. 170.
CHAPTER 10. THE IMP ACT SEGMENT
1. Tzvetan Todorov, The Poetics of Prose, trans. Richard Howard (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1977), chap. 5, “Narrative-Men,” pp. 66–79.
2. Frank Kermode, The Genesis of Secrecy: On the Interpretation of Narrative, Charles Eliot Norton Lectures, 1977–1978 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1979), pp. 84–86.
3. Hyam Maccoby, Judas Iscariot and the Myth of Jewish Evil (New York: Free Press/Macmillan, 1992).
4. Joseph Gaer, The Legend of the Wandering Jew (New York: Mentor Books/New American Library, 1961).
5. Ibid., p. 50.
6. That is, “If it seems a fair wage.”
7. Kermode, Genesis of Secrecy, p. 86.
8. Ibid., p. 87.
9. Hyam Maccoby, The Sacred Executioner: Human Sacrifice and the Legacy of Human Guilt (New York: Thames & Hudson, 1982), p. 130.
10. C. S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters and Screwtape Proposes a Toast (New York: Macmillan, 1970), p. 8.
11. The screenwriter for the nifty movie Constantine made the same sort of elementary blunder by referring to the sixteen “acts” in 1 Corinthians. Apparently some ignoramus thought references like “1 Corinthians 7:1” denoted act and scene, not chapter and verse.
CHAPTER 11. CHECK, PLEASE
1. Annie Jaubert, The Date of the Last Supper: The Biblical Calendar and Christian Liturgy, trans. Isaac Rafferty (Staten Island, NY: Alba House, 1965), pp. 95–102.
2. Hermann Gunkel, The Legends of Genesis: The Biblical Saga and History, trans. W. H. Carruth (New York: Schocken Books, 1964), pp. 30–34.
3. I should imagine Roman Catholics would detect in the story the origin of the sacrament of penance, but Raymond E. Brown, ed., New Testament Essays (Garden City, NY: Doubleday Image, 1968), chap. 4, “The Johannine Sacramentary,” pp. 79–107, in his survey of Catholic thinking on the subject, does not mention such a view of the passage.
4. Gerd Theissen, The Miracle Stories of the Early Christian Tradition, trans. Francis McDonagh (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1983), p. 56.
5. “Grasped” might with equal justification be understood to mean “usurped” (a contrast with Lucifer or Adam) or “retained” (contrasting with his willingness to abase himself via the Incarnation). For the debate on this point, see Ralph P. Martin, Carmen Christi: Philippians ii.5–11 in Recent Interpretation and in the Setting of Early Christian Worship, Society for New Testament Studies Monograph Series 4 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1967), pp. 134–64.
6. That is just the process Strauss discerned behind the various “I am” statements of Jesus in John's Gospel: making Jesus apply to himself the predicates of Jesus in Christian devotion.
7. Alfred Loisy, The Birth of the Christian Religion, trans. L. P. Jacks (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1948), p. 249.
8. W. O. E. Oesterley, “The Cult of Sabazios,” in The Labyrinth: Further Studies in the Relation between Myth and Ritual in the Ancient World, ed. S. H. Hooke (London: SPCK, 1935), pp. 113–58.
9. Alfred Loisy, The Origins of the New Testament, trans. L. P. Jacks (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1950), p. 101. He calls it “editorial artifice.”
10. Joachim Jeremias, The Eucharistic Words of Jesus, trans. Arnold Ehrhardt (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1955), p. 172.
CHAPTER 12. TRIAL AND ERROR
1. J. Duncan M. Derrett, The Anastasis: The Resurrection of Jesus as an Historical Event (Shipston-on-Stour, Warwickshire: Peter Drinkwater, 1982), p. 55, referring to Josephus, Wars of the Jews 4.317.
2. Woody Allen, “Hassidic Tales,” in Getting Even (New York: Vintage Books, 1971), p. 51.
3. Uh, asked them what, exactly?
4. This sort of thing is by no means unknown in the textual tradition. See Bart D. Ehrman, The Orthodox Corruption of Scripture: The Effect of Early Christological Controversies on the Text of the New Testament (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993).
5. Leibel Reznick, The Mystery of Bar Kokhba: An Historical and Theological Investigation of the Last King of the Jews (Northvale, NJ: Jason Aronson, 1996), chap. 18, “The Bar Kokhba Temple,” pp. 65–76.
6. Géza Vermes, Jesus the Jew: A Historian's Reading of the Gospels (London: Fontana/Collins, 1976), p. 149.
7. Ethelbert Stauffer, Jesus and His Story, trans. Richard Winston and Clara Winston (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1960), pp. 183–84; Hans-Joachim Schoeps, Paul: The Theology of the Apostle in the Light of Jewish Religious History, trans. Harold Knight (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1974), p. 161.
8. Graham Chapman, John Cleese, Terry Gilliam, Eric Idle, Terry Jones, and Michael Palin, Monty Python's Life of Brian (of Nazareth) (New York: Ace Books, 1979), pp. 111–12.
9. Isaac Bashevis Singer, Satan in Goray, trans. Jacob Sloan (New York: Fawcett Crest, 1955), pp. 156, 163.
10. Alfred Loisy, The Birth of the Christian Religion, trans. L. P. Jacks (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1948), p. 118.
11. Miracle on 34th Street, directed by George Seaton (1947, Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation).
12. Though I wouldn't be surprised if Eric Holder did it, releasing a prisoner from Gitmo as a Ramadan gesture to Islamo-fascist terrorists.
13. Gershom Scholem, The Messianic Idea in Judaism and Other Essays on Jewish Spirituality (New York: Schocken Books, 1971), chap. 4, “Redemption through Sin,” trans. Hillel Halkin, pp. 78–141.
14. Eusebius, The History of the Church, trans. G. A. Williamson (New York: Penguin Books, 1965), pp. 349–50.
15. Theodore J. Weeden, “The Two Jesuses,” in Forum, New Series 6, no. 2 (Fall 2003).
16. Burton L. Mack, A Myth of Innocence: Mark and Christian Origins (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1988), p. 318.
17. Ibid.
18. Steve Mason, Josephus and the New Testament (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson Publishers, 1992).
19. Mack, Myth of Innocence, p. 167.
CHAPTER 13. CROSS EXAMINED
1. C. D. Yonge, trans., The Works of Philo (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson Publishers, 1993), p. 728.
2. René Girard, Violence and the Sacred, trans. Patrick Gregory (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1977), pp. 159, 162.
3. And remember, as we saw in the last chapter, the Barabbas scene can be shown to be fictive on other grounds anyway.
4. Jacob Neusner, Rabbinic Literature & the New Testament: What We Cannot Show, We Do Not Know (Valley Forge, PA: Trinity Press International, 1994).
5. Graham Chapman, John Cleese, Terry Gilliam, Eric Idle, Terry Jones, and Michael Palin, Monty Python's Life of Brian (of Nazareth) (New York: Ace Books, 1979), p. 63.
6. Philostratus, The Life of Apollonius of Tyana, vol. 2, trans. F. C. Conybeare, Loeb Classical Library 16 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1912), pp. 403, 404.
7. See Charles H. Talbert, Luke and the Gnostics: An Examination of the Lucan Purpose (New York: Abingdon Press, 1966), pp. 30–31; Elaine Pagels, The Gnostic Gospels (New York: Random House, 1979), chap. 1, “The Controversy over Christ's Resurrection: Historical Event or Symbol?” pp. 3–27.
8. Hugh J. Schonfield, trans., The Authentic New Testament, A Mentor Religious Classic (New York: New American Library, 1958), p. 99, appeals to an old Hebrew text of Matthew for his reading “has no floor to lay his head.” The point is the same, though less strikingly put, in the Greek.
9. Plutarch, Agis and Cleomenes, Tiberius and Gaius Gracchus, Philopoemen and Flamininus, trans. Bernadette Perrin, Loeb Classical Library 102 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1921), p. 141.
10. John has only retained the ladies’ auxiliary from Mark, though he has omitted the occasion for their visit. John is doing a bit of harmonizing, too, for he includes both the Markan/Lukan version (Mark 16:1–8; Luke 24:1–11), in which the women do not see Jesus at the tomb (John 20:1–2), and the Matthean version where they (just Mary Magdalene in John 20:11–18) do get to see him and grasp hold of him (Matt. 28:8–10).
11. David Friedrich Strauss, The Life of Jesus Critically Examined, trans. George Eliot (Mary Ann Evans), Lives of Jesus Series (1835; repr., Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1972).
12. I once sheepishly asked a prominent Evangelical apologist, with his PhD in New Testament, if he had ever chanced to read Strauss's Life of Jesus Critically Examined. He had not. Things began to become clear to me. He didn't know that all his trusty arguments had been thoroughly refuted many decades before he was born.
APPENDIX 1. WHEN WERE THE GOSPELS WRITTEN?
1. Timothée Colani, “The Little Apocalypse of Mark 13,” Journal of Higher Criticism 10, no. 1 (Spring 2003): 41–47, excerpted from Timothée Colani, Jesus-Christ et les croyances messianiques de son temps, trans. Nancy Wilson (1864), pp. 201–14.
2. Hermann Detering “The Synoptic Apocalypse (Mark 13 par): A Document from the Time of Bar Kochba,” Journal of Higher Criticism 7, no. 3 (Fall 2000): 161–210.
3. Arlo J. Nau, Peter in Matthew: Discipleship, Diplomacy, and Dispraise (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press. A Michael Glazier Book, 1992).
4. Adolf Harnack, The Date of the Acts and of the Synoptic Gospels, trans. J. R. Wilkinson, New Testament Studies IV, Crown Theological Library (New York: Putnam's, 1911).
5. W. Ward Gasque, A History of the Criticism of the Acts of the Apostles (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1975).
6. Walter Bauer, Orthodoxy and Heresy in Earliest Christianity, ed. Robert Kraft and Gerhard Kroedel. Translated by a team from the Philadelphia Seminar on Christian Origins (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1971), pp. 82–83.
7. Horton Harris, The Tübingen School (New York: Oxford University Press, 1975).
8. Eduard Zeller, The Contents and Origin of the Acts of the Apostles, Critically Investigated. To Which Is Prefixed, Dr. F. Overbeck's Introduction to the Acts, from DeWette's Handbook, vols. 1 and 2, trans. Joseph Dare, Theological Translation Fund (London: Williams & Norgate, 1876).
9. J. C. O’Neill, The Theology of Acts in Its Historical Setting (London: SPCK, 1961).
10. Richard I. Pervo, Dating Acts: Between the Evangelists and the Apologists (Santa Rosa, CA: Polebridge Press, 2006).
11. Hans Conzelmann, The Theology of St. Luke, trans. Geoffrey Buswell (New York: Harper & Row, 1961).
12. Conzelmann believed the first two chapters were a later addition to Luke, so he did not make this connection, but it seems to me to fit his theory pretty well.
13. Charles H. Talbert, Luke and the Gnostics: An Examination of the Lucan Purpose (New York: Abingdon Press), p. 196.
14. Ibid., p. 196.
15. Günther Klein, Die Zwölf Apostel: Ursprung und Gehalt einer Idee (Göttingen, Germany: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1961).
16. J. C. O’Neill, The Theology of Acts in Its Historical Setting (London: SPCK, 1961)
17. Jack T. Sanders, The Jews in Luke-Acts (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1987).
18. Rudolph Otto, The Kingdom of God and the Son of Man: A Study in the History of Religion, trans. Floyd V. Filson and Bertram Lee Woolf (Boston: Starr King Press, 1957); Walther Zimmerli and Joachim Jeremias, The Servant of God, trans. Harold Knight, Studies in Biblical Theology no. 20 (London: SCM Press, 1965).
19. Richard I. Pervo, Profit with Delight: The Literary Genre of the Acts of the Apostles (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1987); Stephen P. Schierling and Marla J. Schierling, “The Influence of the Ancient Romances on Acts of the Apostles,” Classical Bulletin 54 (April 1978); Susan Marie Praeder, “Luke-Acts and the Ancient Novel” SBL Seminar Papers (Chico, CA: Scholars Press, 1981), pp. 269–92.
20. Rosa Söder, Die Apokryphen Geschichten und die romanhafte Literatur der Antike. Würtzburger Studien zur Altertumwissenschaft 3 (Stuttgart: Kohlhammer Verlag, 1932).
21. Robert M. Price, The Widow Traditions in Luke-Acts: A Feminist-Critical Scrutiny, SBL Dissertation Series 155 (Atlanta: Scholars’ Press, 1997), chap. 6, “Chaste Passion: The Chastity Story of Joanna,” pp. 127–52.
22. Söder, Die Apokryphen Geschichten.
23. Steven L. Davies, The Revolt of the Widows: The Social World of the Apocryphal Acts (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1980); Dennis Ronald MacDonald, The Legend and the Apostle: The Battle for Paul in Story and Canon (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1983).
24. Gerd Lüdemann, “The Acts of the Apostles and the Beginnings of Simonian Gnosis,” New Testament Studies 33 (1987): 420–26.
25. “What I have done is to show that any serious consideration of the window of possible dates for P52 must include dates in the later second and early third centuries. Thus, P52 cannot be used as evidence to silence other debates about the existence (or non-existence) of the Gospel of John in the first half of the second century. Only a papyrus containing an explicit date or one found in a clear archaeological stratigraphic context could do the work scholars want P52 to do. As it stands now, the papyrological evidence should take a second place to other forms of evidence in addressing debates about the dating of the Fourth Gospel.” Brent Nongbri, “The Use and Abuse of P52: Papyrological Pitfalls in the Dating of the Fourth Gospel,” Harvard Theological Review 98, no. 1 (2005): 23–48.
26. C. H. Dodd, The Interpretation of the Fourth Gospel (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1953).
27. Rudolf Bultmann, The Gospel of John: A Commentary, trans. G. R. Beasley-Murray, R. W. N. Hoare, and J. K. Riches (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1975).
28. Raymond E. Brown, “The Qumran Scrolls and the Johannine Gospel and Epistles,” in New Testament Essays (Garden City, NY: Doubleday Image Books, 1968), pp. 138–73. See also, e.g., F. F. Bruce, The New Testament Documents: Are They Reliable? (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1960), p. 58.
29. Robert T. Fortna, The Gospel of Signs: A Reconstruction of the Narrative Source Underlying the Fourth Gospel, Society for New Testament Studies Monograph Series 11 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1970).
30. C. H. Dodd, Historical Tradition in the Fourth Gospel (New York: Oxford University Press, 1963).
31. Thomas Cottam, The Fourth Gospel Rearranged (London: Epworth Press, 1952).
32. Raymond E. Brown, The Gospel according to John (I–XII), Anchor Bible 29 (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1966).
33. David Trobisch, The First Edition of the New Testament (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000); David Trobisch, “Who Published the New Testament?” Free Inquiry 28, no. 1 (December 2007/January 2008): 30–34.
34. Robert M. Price, “Is John's Gospel Gnostic?” Christian*New Age Quarterly 23, no. 1 (Summer 2013).
APPENDIX 2. DO ANCIENT HISTORIANS MENTION JESUS?
1. Pronounced “penis,” poor devil. See Shlomo Pines, An Arabic Version of the Testimonium Flavianum and Its Implications (Jerusalem: Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities, 1971).
2. Edwin M. Yamauchi, Jesus, Zoroaster, Buddha, Socrates, Muhammad (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1972), pp. 43–44.
3. Never mind that some of the same writers take refuge in precisely such proposals when they are the only remaining expedient for denying an error in the Bible: “Oh yeah? Prove this error was in the original autographs! Go ahead! It must have been a scribal alteration.” ¡Ay caramba!
4. Theodore J. Weeden, “The Two Jesuses,” in Forum, New Series 6, no. 2 (Fall 2003). Steve Mason, Josephus and the New Testament (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson Publishers, 1992) revives the view of a less timid scholarly generation, arguing that Luke-Acts made significant use of Josephus, too, not merely paralleling it. See his chap. 6, “Josephus and Luke-Acts,” pp. 185–225.
5. Dennis Ronald MacDonald, The Homeric Epics and the Gospel of Mark (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2000), pp. 154–55.
6. William Whiston trans., The Works of Flavius Josephus (London: Ward, Lock & Co., n.d.), p. 25.
7. Steve Mason, Josephus and the New Testament (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson Publishers, 1992), p. 213.
8. Robert Eisenman, James the Brother of Jesus: The Key to Unlocking the Secrets of Early Christianity and the Dead Sea Scrolls (New York: Viking Penguin, 1997).
9. Ibid., pp. 286–89.
10. Ibid, p. 881.
11. Ibid., chap. 25, “The Conversion of Queen Helen and the Ethiopian Queen's Eunuch,” pp. 883–95.
12. F. F. Bruce, Jesus and Christian Origins outside the New Testament (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1974), p. 22.
13. Ibid., pp. 25–27.
14. Ibid., p. 21.
15. Robert E. van Voorst, Jesus outside the New Testament: An Introduction to the Ancient Evidence (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2000), p. 39.
16. J. N. D. Anderson, Christianity: The Witness of History (London: Tyndale Press, 1969), p. 19.
17. William Hansen, trans., Phlegon of Tralles’ Book of Marvels (Exeter, UK: Exeter University Press, 1996).