Review
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Title: Jesus Before The Gospels: How the Earliest Christians Remembered, Changed, and Invented Their Stories of the Savior
Author: Bart D. Ehrman
Publisher: HarperOne
Genre: New Testament Studies
Year Published: 2016
Number of Pages: 326
Binding: Hard cover; also available as an e-book or audio book
ISBN10: n/a
ISBN13: 978-0-060228520-1
Price: $27.99
Reviewed by Richard Packham for the Association for Mormon Letters
Bart Ehrman, professor of religious studies at the University of North Carolina, has become one of the most popular and widely read scholars of the New Testament, generally respected by other New Testament scholars as well as a wide circle of lay readers. The reasons are not hard to find. His books are well researched and carefully documented. His arguments are clearly reasoned. And his writing style is pleasant and readable to the layman. Add to that the number of books he has produced in fairly rapid succession (at least for a scholarly writer) and one can see why he is so widely known and respected by so many people.
The exceptions are those who dislike the implications of his research, namely, the believers in the literal (or almost literal) historicity of the New Testament and the Messiah whose life and teachings are presented there. Merely citing Ehrman’s previous book titles reveals his general conclusions: *How Jesus Became God: The Exaltation of a Jewish Preacher from Galilee,* *Jesus, Interrupted: Revealing the Hidden Contradictions in the Bible…,* *Misquoting Jesus: The Story Behind Who Changed The Bible And Why,* *The Orthodox Corruption of Scripture:..,*” only a partial list of his previous eleven books.
The book under review covers the same general territory, but here Ehrman takes a completely different approach from his previous books.
Those who espouse a more literal acceptance of the Gospels as historically accurate usually base their arguments on several premises which would seem to be obvious to anyone:
– The Gospels are eyewitness reports, or based on eyewitness reports, and eyewitness testimony is reliable;
– Because Jesus’ world was generally illiterate, people relied more on memorization to preserve history; thus, oral tradition is as reliable (or more reliable) than written records;
– Unusual events such as miracles make a more indelible impression on the mind, and are thus remembered more accurately.
To determine whether these premises are justified, Ehrman undertook a lengthy study of modern research into what we now know about memory (both individual and group memory), eyewitness reliability, and the reliability of oral tradition in modern nonliterate cultures. The result: none of the assumed premises are correct. Again and again, modern studies show just the opposite.
The fundamental problem with the canonical Gospels is that they were not written until decades after the events they claim to describe. Ehrman asks: What was going on between the actual events (whatever they were) and the appearance of the Gospel reports of the events?
The general consensus among New Testament scholars for many years has been that Mark is the oldest of the Gospels, written about 70 AD (about forty years after Jesus’ death). Matthew and Luke are a decade or two later, both of which used some materials from Mark and a now lost collection of Jesus’ sayings (referred to by scholars as the “Q” source). Those three Gospels, because they have some similarities in the events they describe, are called the “synoptic” Gospels, to distinguish them from the much later Gospel attributed to John, which is usually thought to be of even later date, around the turn of the century or later. Most New Testament scholars agree that the authors of the Gospels are probably not the men whose names now appear on them (Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John).
As Ehrman here examines the Gospels in detail, he is continually asking the questions: What were the circumstances of the group for whom the Gospel was written at the time of the writing? What was the writer emphasizing (what was important to him, and what was not)? Those questions are based on a characteristic of human memory which studies have shown: what we remember about the past, and how we remember it, is determined largely by our present circumstances and our present needs. That simple fact implies that NO memory of the past can be 100% accurate and unbiased.
Many casual readers of the New Testament are unaware of some fundamental contradictions between Gospels. Ehrman points them out, as a way of determining what the writer’s situation was and what was important to the group for which he was writing. Mark, for example, emphasizes that Jesus repeatedly wanted his identity (as Messiah) kept secret. In contrast, John’s Gospel portrays Jesus as proclaiming loudly and frequently that he is divine, the Son of God, the Lamb of God (a phrase not found in the other Gospels). The chronology of Jesus’ activities is starkly different between the synoptics and John. Which chronology is accurate? Why do they not agree? Ehrman also points out that many conversations must be later inventions: how could anyone have been a witness to Jesus’ prayer in Gethsemane, or the dialogue with Satan during the temptation in the wilderness, or the examination of the captive Jesus by Pilate? They must be later inventions, serving some later purpose.
As another example of a clearly fictitious Gospel conversation, Ehrman cites the dialogue between Jesus and Nicodemus (John 3), where Jesus tells Nicodemus that one must be “born again” to be saved. Nicodemus understands the answer to imply that he must return to his mother’s womb, but Jesus meant a spiritual renewal from heaven. Ehrman points out that in the Greek text, the word translated in the King James Bible as “again” is ‘anothen,’ which actually has two meanings: 1) “a second time,” and 2) “from above.” The Gospel shows that Nicodemus took it in its first meaning, whereas Jesus intended the second. The problem? The misunderstanding could only have occurred in Greek. But Jesus and Nicodemus were both Aramaic-speaking Jews. They were not speaking Greek, but Aramaic. And the misunderstanding due to the dual meaning is impossible in Aramaic. The conversation as reported never took place.
The changing attitude toward Pilate in later Gospels (both canonical and noncanonical), Ehrman suggests, shows a changing attitude among Jesus’ followers in how they needed to remember the events involving Pilate. Non-biblical sources (primarily Josephus) show Pilate to have been despotic and disdainful of his Jewish subjects, and thus unlikely to grant the Jewish crowd the release of one prisoner. But over the years he is made less and less culpable for Jesus’ death, with some eastern Christian groups eventually regarding him as a saint. The downplaying of Pilate’s role was part of an effort to avoid antagonizing the Romans against the new religion and distancing the Christians from the Jews, who by then were in rebellion against Rome. The memories were adjusted to present needs.
Ehrman also examines a number of the many non-canonical gospels, most of them written later than the canonical ones. They are filled with miraculous events not mentioned in the Bible, and yet they are presented exactly like the biblical events – as reliable stories of events that actually happened, as remembered by so-called eyewitnesses. Yet no modern reader would accept them as accurate reports.
Oddly, Ehrman makes no mention of a similar modern phenomenon that we are all familiar with: the “urban legend.” “Urban legends” is the term given to those wild stories of odd or mysterious events that are rapidly passed nowadays from person to person and often even end up as news stories on the inside pages. Anthropologists and folklorists have collected thousands of them in the last few decades and studied them.
Another factor in the development of the Jesus stories, yet not named directly by Ehrman, is the role of “cognitive dissonance.” “Cognitive dissonance” is the name given by psychologists to a phenomenon which sometimes warrants psychiatric treatment, but perhaps does not always become so severe as to affect an individual’s normal functioning. It arises in an individual (or a group) when two incompatible and contradictory facts seem to become so undeniable that neither one can be denied. In religions, for example, especially in those based on a leader who claims prophetic ability, the problem of cognitive dissonance arises when the prophecies do not come to pass.
For the followers of Jesus, the two incompatible facts were, first, that Jesus was the promised king (‘messiah’) who was going to usher in the Kingdom under God and make the Jews the leaders of the world, and, second, that Jesus was executed before establishing that expected kingdom. How could his disciples reconcile these two contradictory facts? Obviously a dead man cannot found a kingdom of any kind. Therefore, Jesus must somehow be alive. But how is that possible? As Ehrman shows, his followers developed the ideas of the resurrection and the “kingdom not of this world.”
Although Ehrman does not specifically use the terms urban legend or cognitive dissonance, his approach uses the ideas.
Mormon readers of this book will likely feel some discomfort. Not only because Mormonism relies heavily on the New Testament as an accurate historical and doctrinal account of Jesus’ life and teachings, but because the methods Ehrman uses to examine the New Testament can (and should) be applied similarly to the records of events on which Mormonism is based. How accurately were those events remembered and passed on? Recall that Joseph Smith’s “First Vision” in its present official form was not recorded until 18 years after it was said to have occurred. How accurate would the memory be, knowing what we now know about how memory is faulty? (And in light of the fact that the Prophet’s memory about it varied widely during those intervening years.) What about the reports from the Saints hearing Brigham Young and Sidney Rigdon contending for the martyred prophet’s mantle, who witnessed Brigham’s physical transformation into the likeness of Joseph? How accurate are those memories, which are held only by the Utah (“Brighamite”) Mormons, but unknown to those who did not follow Young to Utah?
The inspiring story of the miraculous appearance of the seagulls from the Great Salt Lake, just in time to save the Saints’ precious crops, has inspired many. But examination of historical records, diaries from the time, casts considerable doubt on the occurrence as some of the faithful Saints remembered it, just as early Christians embellished experiences to strengthen and spread their faith.
Other examples in Mormonism could be mentioned to illustrate that the memories of the Mormon past are subject to change, according to later needs and changing circumstances, just as was the case with Jesus’ followers.
Ehrman’s writing style is casual, although rigorously scholarly. He is sometimes repetitive, but the repetitions are well-placed and not distracting. This book is a new approach to the study of the beginnings of Christianity, as well as a template for examining the beginnings of any religion as remembered later.